Thank you for replying, John, I appreciate it. Well, yes, I do think using this character is allowing me to express a large part of who I am. I'm generally a very friendly and caring person...I don't notice a tendency to be a maternal figure for anyone in my off-line life, but like my on-line persona, I'm generally liked by everyone around me, and and enjoy listening to people and talking about lots of different things to get an understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling, and to get a better understanding of my own thoughts and opinions. I can usually make people laugh when I want to, and I feel I can relate to the viewpoints of many different kinds of people. It feels strange typing this stuff out, but these are some of the qualities about me that I feel I tranfer to my on-line identity, and I feel that they're some of the better qualities about myself. I never acknowledge these things out loud in 'real life' or online. I (as well as my online persona) am fairly humble and find it hard to take compliments and thanks, it embarrassses me. I'm aware of the popularity of the practice of adapting a false persona online. I've done quite a bit of reading on the subject, mainly in the field of gender, because it's a subject that hits so close to home for me. I've noticed many 'female' posters strongly displaying eveidence that they are men, showing many of the attitudes, tones, and reactions commonly attached to male posters. The strange thing is that I didn't start reading about all of it until I had already been doing it for a couple months...as I read about it, I found that when posting as a female I was already following the general female style of posting referred to in lots of the studies that have been done on the subject. I never really make a conscious effort to sound like a female, I just think it naturally comes out. There's very little difference between her and I. I've felt guilty since the very beginning, but it only comes from the fact that I'm lying about my gender and that I've convinced so many people that I'm a female. At first I thought that the ends fairly justified the means, I figured that as long as I was doing everything with the best of intentions in mind, making people feel good and making myself feel good at the same time, what was the harm? Beyond the feelings of guilt that come from decieveing people, I don't have any pressure at all to reveal my 'real' identity that I can think of. I've never been questioned about it, and I've never noticed anyone 'testing' me, though if they did I don't think I would have a hard time convincing them that I am indeed a woman if that's what I wanted to do. I'm not worried about being found out, except for the fact that I've posted my story here. As unspecific as I tried to be, I would bet that there are hundreds of people out there who would know exactly who I was from reading my posts here, as there are millions who are members of the site I inhabit. If I do decide that I want to tell people, I would want to be the one to tell them rather than see my posts copy/pasted from this site to the message boards, and I'm slightly worried about that because many of the people I've met are interested in the subject of online communication. The group that I've formed for next year is a group that's likely to be around for years, and I just don't know how long I can live with the guilt of lying to people every time I post my name. I guess I'm looking for someone to tell me what to do, or at least tell me what they'd do in the same situation. What's the right thing to do?
When I started, my only goal was to give some female players a fair place to play, that was it, I was barely interested in pretending to be a woman. The reactions I got from men and women fascinated me, though, and I found it hard not to become interested in all the people in the message board myself. I've stuck around because it's fun to help people and make them smile, while also destroying common stereotypes about female players. I like that people are glad to have me around.
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