Avatars

On and off for the last eight years I’ve frequented an online forum dedicated to a third-party add-on for a videogame. Years after the add-on was cancelled, many of us are still there. We debate politics, react to current events, discuss movies, celebrate birthdays, rant about work, come out of the closet, discuss religion, express condolences, share inside jokes, talk about the good old days, and insult each other. We’ve exchanged pictures and real names, mostly for curiosity’s sake. Some of us have even made the point of meeting each other in RL (our term for real life), though I’ve avoided it. I tend to forget the pictures and names in favor of the text and the pseudonyms. Lucid Iguana, Codebreaker, ZeusLegion, beejasmorl, kultchershok, phal, visser, Palin, Mack, Seawolf, etc. I think these avatars still exist because through the text of the Internet, we know each other both far worse and far better than we could know anyone in real life. It’s easier to lie about ourselves with the anonymity that the Internet offers. It’s also easier to be honest.