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Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research
- tomhoward 6y agoSee also: David Bowie.
- iguanayou 6y agoSee also: Elton John
- caro_douglos 6y agoSee also hunter s thompson.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- grugagag 6y agoYes, Ziggy Stardust David Bowie needed this persona to perform, he was otherwise an introvert and shy. “As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs onstage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going onstage and being myself. I continued designing characters with their own complete personalities and environments. I put them into interviews with me! Rather than be me — which must be incredibly boring to anyone — I’d take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do.”
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoI got a nickname when I was 14, my life completely changed after that. I went from sitting alone at lunch, to having parties with over 100 people. Most of them only knew me by the nickname, or variants of the nickname. I went by it almost exclusively for over 10 years. I definitely feel like a different person than I was then.
- Timpy 6y agoI had the same experience. When I talk with the few people remaining in my life from that era we refer to the nickname as a third person. I'm not that person any more, I think most are not the same person they were 10 or 15 years ago.
- miloignis 6y agoNow this is interesting - I also got a nickname in highschool from a popular kid that helped me gain an identity in other people's minds and be much more social and involved, but I don't think it was an alter-ego. I think it helped make me memorable to other people while giving me a confidence boost (as the nickname was complimentary), but I think that it just brought out the real me. I don't go by that nickname since I left highschool, but I feel the same as I did then. It was more about getting over shyness and being included than being someone else. I suppose it varies from person to person! Edit: The super pervasive nickname is a fun phenomenon, eventually even the teachers and principal called me exclusively by the nickname.
- nefitty 6y agoMy nickname has followed me for about 23 years... I had never considered how it might have impacted my life.
- 50ckpuppet 6y agoyou mean like 4chan?
- tasogare 6y agoI’ve recently browsing 4chan again (only few specific boards) and I have the feeling it’s the reverse: people there can state their opinions, totally disregarding how socially unacceptable it would be. Which means their alter-ego is probably the IRL one, which has to shut up a lot of thoughts to blend in society.
- Twisol 6y ago> Which means their alter-ego is probably the IRL one Another possibility is that they can make claims they don't really stand behind, because there's no personal responsibility for their statements. Trolling, essentially. The problem is, it's often hard to tell which is which. A bit of Poe's law.
- interestica 6y agoChristopher Poole did a Ted Talk 10 years ago on the value of anonymity online. Hiding a real-world persona has the power to create new and different things. https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
- ben_w 6y agoI wonder how much this applies to furries. How often is a fursona “the real me” vs roleplay? I’ve witnessed both in different individuals, and also both within a single person (primary ‘sona and some other separate ones which are just role playing). Adjective Species probably had an article on this, though it also reminds me of the discussions about therianthropy, contherianthropes, and New Age discussions of the use of masks in tribal religions.
- dmuth 6y agoYep, this is the comment I came here for! On a related note, I attended Dr. Gerbasi's research results at Anthrocon a few years ago, and she noted from her furry survey that the experimental group (furries) rated themselves higher in response to questions such as "I feel good about myself" versus the control group. (her college students)
- InitialLastName 6y agoThat might just be what you get with a WEIRD control group though.
- ben_w 6y agoAnthrocon was probably also dominated by the Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic subset. Might be related to the oxytocin furries get from all the snuggling, though.
- InitialLastName 6y agoIt could also be biased by age; I assume that the furry subject group skewed older than the students (or at least that the students were a more tightly restricted age group). I know I felt far more self-assured at 30 than I did at 20.
- nashalo_nighly 6y agoAs a graduate student myself I’d be wary of taking students as a control group.
- maps7 6y agoDoes anyone here do this? Seems like a powerful thing - I might try it. I'll need to come up with some good names.
- sn41 6y agoThis sounds a bit like "fixed role therapy" [1] [1] http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/fixed-role-ther.html http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/fixed-role-ther.html
- duggable 6y agoThis worked on our (then) 5 year old, who was shy on the soccer field but kicked it up a notch when we told her to be a dinosaur. Of course, this also resulted in her running around with t-rex arms and baring her teeth, so I guess you have to be careful which alter ego you adopt.
- grimjack00 6y agoAt least she doesn't need the costume: https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html
- woliveirajr 6y agoYes, and indeed it works: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html
- armandososa 6y agoYour story reminded me of this comic http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/10/menace.html which I like to read every once in a while. Edit: And of course you already had two suggestions for this. I should refresh the page before commenting.
- MagnumPIG 6y agoGoes to show how great that comic was.
- jlangemeier 6y agoIn high school, it was wearing a three-piece suit (because if you're not wearing a vest, are you really wearing a suit?) for all of my speech and debate events; now, it's wearing one of my kilts. For those of us with anxiety, esp social anxiety this entire article isn't necessarily surprising, as many of us use some form of externalizing our confidence to get through big presentations, meetings, etc. If I've got an important set of meetings that I'm going to be at it's always going to be a kilt (with appropriate vest as well, everything snazzy needs vests) or a full suit. If I'm going to something where I know I'm going to need to be social, it's always the kilt. It's amazing how much a kilt is just a segue for other people to talk about their "scottish or irish" heritage; talking about myself is terrible, but listening to the 10,000th person today talk about their boring ass family tree is great (the convo will eventually turn to something interesting or the person will wander off). It also makes me extremely memorable and findable, so I don't have to initiate most conversations which is also a terrible, horrible thing.
- birdyrooster 6y agoNeck Beard Level 100 Achieved
- james_s_tayler 6y agoKind of reminds me how my 25th great uncle is Robert The Bruce. Fun times. Walks off
- jlangemeier 6y agoI'm sure you are silently judging the fact I don't really like bagpipes too... Groundskeeper Willie fist shake
- james_s_tayler 6y agoI fucking hate bagpipes. Maybe England only wanted control over Scotland to shut the fucking bagpipes up.
- heyitskoen 6y ago
- lefstathiou 6y agoTrue Story: the guy who leads our sales team is a super star named John (legal name). He’s fearless, organized, focused, determined “and Canadian” as he would say. Any way, while he was a rising junior his GF came to the office one day and I heard her call him Jake (nowhere in his name legal name). I asked “who the hell is Jake?” to which she replied “oh, that’s what we call John back home”. I looked at him and he said “John likes to make cold calls, Jake doesn’t”. It works...
- hanoz 6y agoWhat, John liked cold calls so much that he had to invent alter ego Jake, who didn't like cold calls, in order to get a girlfriend?
- IncRnd 6y agoIt's often the other way around... Many times, salespeople use different names on the phone than in real life.
- Consultant32452 6y agoI always assumed it was to make it more difficult for me to hunt down and kill cold callers.
- rriepe 6y agoThis is funny, but I think the real insidious reason is that it takes away the "saying your name" psychological advantage.
- pc86 6y agoWhat's insidious about that, exactly?
- HugeAcumen 6y ago
- derefr 6y agoSee also, section III of https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-of-consciousness-in-the-breakdown-of-the-bicameral-mind/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-of-...
- dx87 6y agoThis reminds me of something I read in a book about self love, where it's easy to confuse what you do with who you are. For example, someone who acts shy in large groups of people might start to think that they are a shy person, and that there is nothing they can do about it.
- mr_overalls 6y agoI've long been fascinated by the complex imaginal techniques of tantra in Tibetan Buddhism, in which you vividly imagine yourself as a yidam, or tutelary deity. Via intense concentration on elaborate self-visualization, repetition of the yidam's mantra, and ritualized hand gestures (mudra), you take on the form, attributes and mind of the yidam for the purpose of transformation - to recognize that one's own mind is not, in fact, different from the all-pervading Buddha-nature. https://studybuddhism.com/en/tibetan-buddhism/tantra/buddhist-tantra/buddhist-deity-or-mickey-mouse-what-s-the-difference https://studybuddhism.com/en/tibetan-buddhism/tantra/buddhis... 'One of the most characteristic features of tantra is what we call “deity-yoga,” where we imagine ourselves to be a Buddha-figure. The term is usually translated as “visualize” instead of imagine, although we’re not just dealing with some visual picture of ourselves. I think the word “imagine” is great because we imagine that we really are a Buddha in the form of this figure. Not only do we imagine looking like this figure, but we also imagine speaking, thinking, helping others and experiencing pure enjoyment with all our senses like it does. We also imagine having all its good qualities, such as equal love and compassion for all beings and deep understanding of everything. Of course, to do this successfully we need to have trained beforehand in each of these qualities with sutra practice. Putting them all together with deity-yoga, then, is like a dress rehearsal for actually being a Buddha. By rehearsing now, we build up powerful causes for attaining enlightenment. This extremely efficient method is known as “practicing causes that are the most similar to the result.”'
- themonoid 6y agoIf you're using tantra (vajrayana) for ego-oriented material benefit, then that's called "spiritual materialism." According to Tibetan Buddhism, the vajrayana can be dangerous for you and those around you. Edit: I apologize. I realize that was very heavy handed. I felt obligated to throw out the usual warnings about Buddhist tantra.
- alchemism 6y agoNot everyone is a Milarepa of course, but it does go to show you that a well-timed path-switch can be advantageous across lifetimes.
- anoncake 6y agoHow do I refer to myself in the third person without feeling like Gollum?
- aloisdg 6y agoTwo ideas: * Create duplicate account with different persona and make them talk. Fun on reddit. * Start roleplaying and mostly dming. One of my favorite experience in life.
- sircastor 6y agoI feel like the former is a lot of the Internet in the late nineties. People pretending to be someone they’re not. Nobody knows you’re a dog in the Internet.
- 082349872349872 6y agoBefore the internet, people used to behave differently depending upon "which hat" they were wearing...
- rainbowzootsuit 6y agoThe Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents.
- aeyes 6y agoInstead of feeling like Gollum you could feel like "The Rock" (Dwayne Johnson).
- Marcus316 6y ago"I need a handle, man. I don't have an identity until I have a handle." - Joey Pardella, Hackers, 1995
- AltruisticGap2 6y agoThere are interesting correlations with the research on the sense of self, and how it relates to spiritual teachings which equate much of suffering with the sense of being a separate "self" entity (rather than seeing oneself as an indivisible part of a whole). Maybe this trick helps reduce the activity of the DMN (default mode network) which is attributed to much of our worry based thinking, which is self centered? https://jeffwarren.org/articles/neuroscienceofsuffering/ https://jeffwarren.org/articles/neuroscienceofsuffering/
- spicymaki 6y agoHip hop artists use alter egos to explore different stage personas and styles. e.g. Daniel Dumile as MF Doom, King Ghidra, Viktor Vaughn or Eminem as Slim Shady.
- spanhandler 6y agoThe Beatles — Sgt. Pepper David Bowie... a different one practically every album.
- jayrot 6y agohttps://classichiphopmagazine.com/answers/2018/3/29/what-are-all-the-wu-tang-clan-members-nicknames https://classichiphopmagazine.com/answers/2018/3/29/what-are...
- bitwize 6y agoOr one of the pioneers, Shock G as Humpty Hump.
- heyitskoen 6y agoOh sweet I don't see many MF DOOM fans in the wild!
- nate 6y agoI've done a lot of this as a writer. I'll actually take an article from a favorite writer of mine and paste it on the page. Then'll I'll go through that article and write my own article on top of it paragraph by paragraph. None of the content or subject matter is the same. I'm not "rewriting the original article". But it helps keep the patterns similar. I can see how I might want to change pace, structure the story, etc. But even more importantly it helps me imagine being that other, successful, famous author.
- nefitty 6y agoI wonder if this would work for coding!
- wry_discontent 6y agoI often rewrite solutions to identical problems in different ways. It helps me get a good handle on what works in different situations, and how solutions differ in general. I recently rewrote a JS problem I did in an interview in a much more functional style, a style that just visually appealed to me, and I feel like I learned a thing or two from it, or at least reinforced some things I already knew.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rubicon33 6y agoI need an alto ego... Frederick König. I am a man who can sit for hours working productively at his computer. I am a man who is not affected by boredom. I desire nothing more than to sit, and code. My productivity is off the charts and I am being considered for a promotion. I have excellent coding ability and can apply it with ease by sitting, and coding, for hours, and hours.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- animal_spirits 6y agoIs that the person you desire to be?
- c00ls0sa 6y agoSounds like it's just classic Fredrick König to me.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hombre_fatal 6y agoThere's an infectious tranquility in the air when König is on the clock because everyone knows he'll get it done when others cannot.
- mleonhard 6y agoI have infinite patience. It doesn't matter if the tools are broken, the docs are missing/incomplete/incorrect, the API is non-sensical, the library is buggy, the service is unreliable, the support team is incapable, or the space around me is filled with hordes of ignorant and disrespectful people. These difficulties are temporary. Like smoke in the wind, they may block my view, sting my eyes, congest my nose, and make me cough, but will be gone soon. I keep moving on, away from the source of the smoke. I move steadily toward my goal. My soul is enveloped in a shimmering cloud of dispassionate focused equanimity.
- 6y ago
- golemotron 6y agoTeaching kids how to dissociate may not be completely good.
- throwanem 6y agoThis isn't about dissociation. This is about using the tool of a constructed or adopted persona to engage differently with the situation at hand. Dissociation is about finding a way to disengage from the situation at hand. I have experience with both - the former after a fashion although I don't think of it that way, the latter in such extensive detail that it took me the better part of a couple of decades to learn how not to do it - and I can tell you, they're not even a little bit similar. Also, again based on experience, I do not think that parents who teach their children to dissociate - or, more accurately put, make it necessary for their children to learn to do so - are particularly skillful at identifying what is and isn't good for those kids. They seem very often to be very sure that they are, but I wouldn't recommend taking their word for it.
- abledon 6y ago> may not be completely good it seems like a powerful tool, but the question is, should we limit teaching powerful things if they have the 'possibility' to be dangerous?
- johnchristopher 6y ago> Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of ‘self-distancing’, which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately. What's the difference between this and repressing feelings, emotions and basically not dealing with it ? Does it work only in short lived moment (a presentation, a concert, etc.) and can't be used 24/7 (or even less) ?
- moduspol 6y agoI don't think it's necessarily repressing feeling and emotions or not dealing with them. This is the same kind of thing I've heard from meditation advocates. If you're the boss at a company and an employee shows up late for the third time this week, you would be completely (morally) justified in being frustrated, responding sharply, and/or lecturing that employee on why being punctual is important. But there's a good chance that those responses do not positively affect your own goals. None of those things are likely to make the employee be more punctual, and an off-the-cuff response could lead the employee to act out or quit, which will just make things worse. So it's better to understand your subconscious feelings (being frustrated about the employee being late), but be sufficiently grounded to consciously respond in a way that benefits you (or at least doesn't work against you).
- shoes_for_thee 6y agoThis would be dissociation. It would be different from repression, but not any less neurotic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism
- mleonhard 6y agoDissociation is a defence action. I think it could be quite helpful if used intentionally. If it becomes a habit, it could cause problems. Unintentional and habitual use of defence mechanisms leads to negative consequences. This is what people think of when they use the term "neurotic."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- acp2020 6y agoIs this also why ketamine is shown such good results treating depression?
- 9214 6y agoAnxiety-management tricks that I personally employ is to either refer to a group/class I find myself in as "we" or to use passive rather than active voice. The former I borrowed as a kid watching Spider Man 1994, where Brock/Venom symbiont calls themselves "we"; the latter is an inspiration from David Bohm's rheomode. Both shift the perspective from your ego to the environment that it is embedded into and is a part of: e.g. a company, a crowd, a body ("we" as a human microbiome), humanity, or nature itself; not as an object, but as an ongoing process, from being to becoming. A giving up of ontological primacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_without_organs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_without_organs
- mundo 6y agoRelatedly, I've noticed that video game youtubers almost always refer to themselves plurally (as in, "We're going to take our main army over here" or "We won!"). I assumed this was to cultivate a sense of belonging or identity for their followers, but separating their performing-identity from their regular identity could have a lot to do with it as well.
- crooked-v 6y ago"We" is also common for old-school Let's Play series, dating back to the screenshot-only days, though those often have some level of voting or other interactivity that gives some fan involvement in each segment.
- shoes_for_thee 6y agoShifts to passive voice make me immediately wonder what the speaker is trying to hide. I notice it immediately and it grates.
- tryauuum 6y agoYeah, but I hope the parent comment's author doesn't refer to himself as "we" while speaking in public
- rmrfstar 6y agoIf you haven't yet, read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
- rewgs 6y agoYup, it’s super helpful. An alternative abbreviation of my name is one I typically associate with shitty people (never met someone who went by that version of the name that I liked), so whenever I find myself wanting to engage in some form of negative behavior (even tame, like being a little lazy) I tell myself that that’s what [abbreviated name] does, not me. Works pretty well.
- nurettin 6y agoPeople at work just add the Mr. prefix in front of my name and I turn into my alter ego who is always calm, deep, calculating and focused. They love it, I love it. Strange thing is, I never tell them to refer to me that way, it just happens after a while whenever I join new work place.
- shoes_for_thee 6y agoHow long have you been a teaching high school?
- Threeve303 6y agoOne of the many dangers with this line of thinking is that on some level you're letting other people define you if you don't define yourself. A lot of people are awful, so the definition you are given will be one you may not agree with and one that doesn't match reality. A sort of sunk cost fallacy combines with an illusory truth effect to reinforce the narrative created about you. Eventually it won't matter what you think about you, it will only matter what other people think about you.
- ta1234567890 6y agoThe comments here reminded me of Tulpas: https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-head-real-life-versus-movies-tulpa-psychiatry-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-head-... We are capable of holding more than one identity in our minds and switching between them. Some people use that ability to create "characters" (tulpas) that they interact with or even allow to take over their bodies. Apparently some people go as far as replacing themselves with a tulpa they've created (they call this ego-suicide).
- alchemism 6y agoThis is also the foundation of so-called Chaos Magic. It uses the 'mental frameworks' of any belief system to obtain results by becoming a temporary adherent of it. Switching frameworks would be done with physical objects, e.g. a pair of spectacles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAdd a hunched back and you've got Clark Kent.
- ta1234567890 6y agoThank you for the comment and that link. Fascinating stuff. The basic philosophy behind Chaos Magic seems to be very much in line with some ancestral eastern philosophies and religions. The gnostic state is pretty much the whole goal of some forms of meditation and religious practices. Are there any other resources or books you could recommend to dig deeper into Chaos Magic?
- uhhyeahdude 6y agoI hadn't heard of tulpas; what a fascinating strategy! Bernard put on his new spectacles and sat in silent appreciation of his newfound visual acuity. He would need it in order to collect and parse as much extant academic research exists pertaining to something called a "tulpa."
- heyitskoen 6y ago
- OneGuy123 6y agoThis is bad and will never allow the person to be free. Merely the fact that an "alter ego" is needed points to the fact that the person experiences fear and anxiety towards something. If he needs an alter ego to overcome that it is supression/dissociation. This will ensure that this person will never be free of it. This only looks good on the surface, but in reality this will emprison the person for life. Those who wish to come to the root of the issue will find many answers here: Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- james_s_tayler 6y agoIt's also used by top performers the world over.
- grugagag 6y agoI am a shy and quiet person. But, once in a while I get an alter ego, it’s vague, it doesn’t have a name but it’s my disinhibited persona. Acts completely unlike the shy me but is not too crazy or obnoxious to make me feel uncomfortable afterwards. Im thinking of it as a ‘mode’ i enter and exit from. I use it when I need to perform in front of a public.
- SMAAART 6y agoThat's what my friend says, too bad that nobody can see him therefore nobody listens to him.
- alexslobodnik 6y ago“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
- lokl 6y agoI had an unwanted alter ego once. A colleague called me by the wrong name for the entire time we worked together (a few months). I considered correcting him, but I wanted to see how it would play out.
- DreamScatter 6y agoif you didn't correct him, then it wasn't unwanted. so how did it play out?
- lokl 6y agoIt was initially unwanted, but it became interesting because it lasted so long. What made it possible was that we didn't work closely (different groups) and encountered each other only infrequently and usually one-on-one, so there weren't others around to correct him. When I left, there was a social event with mainly people from my group, so he was not present, and I don't actually know whether he ever learned of his error. Maybe my alter ego still lives in his memory.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hnarn 6y agoIt’s a variant of the suggestion often given in therapy and recently popularized by Jordan B Peterson I believe — and no matter what you may think of him as a person, it is a good strategy — “Treat yourself as someone worth taking care of”. Meaning: look at yourself as you would look at your own child, a pet, or anyone you would have the responsibility of looking after. It’s easy to miss meals, not dress yourself well and so on, but you might look at it differently if it was your kid or pet that was hungry. So take care of yourself as if you weren’t you! The same thing goes with investments. To get over my own sometimes pathological cheapness (a combination of growing up poor and other stuff) I sometimes view myself as a corporation when making purchases: what do I need, are there goals I have that lack materials, what needs to be replaced — then I just sign a blank check to myself as it were and buy the things I need. In a way, taking care of yourself does become easier when you pretend it isn’t you. Especially if you have issues with caring about “you” in the first place.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y agoJP did a great job of packaging self-care and advice for disaffected young men, it's unfortunate he was put into a coma attempting to treat his addiction to benzodiazepines for 8 days in Russia. :( I also struggled to buy nice things for myself, especially clothing I wore the same converse for like 6 years until they fell apart. Definitely something growing up poor did to me. EDIT: Whoops I completely messed up the time period he was in a coma.
- ipnon 6y agoJordan Peterson was given a medically induced coma for 8 days, not 8 months, in January of this year, according to his daughter.[1] [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/the-doctors-here-have-the-guts-to-medically-detox-someone-mikhaila-peterson-on-her-fathers-condition https://nationalpost.com/news/the-doctors-here-have-the-guts...
- GaryNumanVevo 6y agoThanks, I edited it. Really sad to see his addiction has really put him through the wringer. I haven't heard him speak since he came out of treatment, in due time I suppose.
- PaulHoule 6y agoI was watching the D-A-L anime the other day and thinking about this character https://date-a-live.fandom.com/wiki/Natsumi_Kyouno https://date-a-live.fandom.com/wiki/Natsumi_Kyouno who has the power to become anything so decides to become what a kid would think is "flashy" and "cool" to cover up her own feelings of vulnerability.
- amelius 6y agoAre there any downsides to this technique? E.g. will you become less authentic, and will you become a stranger to your friends, family and perhaps even yourself? Will people think you have lost your mind?
- nefitty 6y agoI think social interaction is just us donning a series of different masks anyway, so the concept of authenticity seems to be point at something nebulous at best. Am I less authentic when I’m on an antidepressant that helps me cope with life? Am I less authentic if I’m forcing myself to be polite to a coworker I don’t like? Am I more authentic when I’m alone and dancing to some song I like? This reminds me of some content analysis research done on leaders. It basically splits the private life (journals, etc), public life (meetings, conversations) and the performative life (speeches, etc). I guess one could argue that the only time we approach authenticity is when speaking to ourselves...
- site-packages1 6y agoThere was a joke about this in the show The Office, American version. I don’t remember the specifics, but Andy was auditioning for an a role and it required him to put his eyes in the emergency eye wash . He was deathly afraid of this, which was characteristic. So the advice given to him was to play a character auditioning for a role that wasn’t afraid of the eye wash.
- monadic2 6y agoI wonder when it will become taboo to know one's birth name.
- tryauuum 6y agocan't tell if you indeed don't know about taboos about birth names or you are being ironic... It's hard to detect irony online
- monadic2 6y agoI actually am unaware about taboos regarding birth names. Please let me know of my ignorance.
- tryauuum 6y agoWeird, I tried to google it and found almost nothing. I was sure many cultures had this tradition when they call their child a fake name, while keeping real name a secret. It is thought that evil forces cannot harm child if they don't know their real name. All I could find was a paragraph on wikipedia: All previously mentioned names fall into domestic category were used in family circle. However, when a person entered a broader social group (changing his occupation or place of residence), his name was replaced or supplemented by another. This sort of nickname exceeds family names in number - an adult has more distinct characteristics that can be used as a basis for a nickname than a child.
- monadic2 6y agoI can't be the only person uncomfortable interacting with someone who is obviously performing some role.
- anthk 6y agoSo every aliased used in the internet.
- wtroughton 6y agoAnyone familiar with Breaking Bad? Walter White goes under the alias of Heisenberg. When he’s Walter, he’s anxious and fearful. It’s such a contrast compared to the calm, calculated Heisenberg. The writers did a phenomenal job of using an alter ego to slowly change the character from Mr. Chips to Scarface.
- zitterbewegung 6y agoI actually do this when I give presentations. It helps a great deal. Projecting a presence and working on humor or even just levity really helps me do better presentations. Instead of framing myself as doing a presentation I decided to attempt to think of what kind of a presentation I would be interested in. I eventually figured out would be some kind of exaggeration of myself that was more sarcastic and it actually played out quite well. I actually discovered that I was good at stand up comedy by attempting to crack jokes while the presentation video wasn't working. At the end of the presentation people asked me if I was a stand up comic and I responded I am one now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- strogonoff 6y agoThis reminds me of masks, but unexpectedly used in real world rather than in acting and/or improv. For more on masks, if someone’s interested, read Impro by Keith Johnstone and (tangentially) Emissary’s Guide to Worlding by Iain Cheng. Also, British comedy improv trio Pappy’s comes to my mind—in some podcast episodes there is a time where Tom spontaneously drops into another persona; Matthew immediately switches to addressing that mask instead of Tom, until Tom snaps out of it. It would’ve sounded incredibly bizarre to me had I not read Impro prior.
- Razengan 6y agoWhen you talk to yourself, do you say "I" or "we"?
- tryauuum 6y agoand you? | I cannot quite remember if I even use any pronouns in internal monologue
- lostgame 6y agoHere's a neat story. I'm a transgender iOS programmer living in Toronto and I've been diagnosed with chronic anxiety and CPTSD. I am also a rapper/producer under the name 'Nikki Grace', on Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube, etc... I've been producing and engineering music for bands and other folks for about ten years, but I had never released any solo material. After my Mother's passing last year, I decided to strut out my first mixtape of just five songs. I was extraordinarily nervous, as being transgender, I had assumed an entirely different tone and inflection in my voice; and rapping was something I had rarely done before. I put it out in July of last year, and; to my surprise, the music was incredibly well-received; well-reviewed by my peers - and - to my surprise, each song on that 5-track mixtape, with no advertising, has had tens of thousands of listens on Spotify since. The confidence increase in this was immense! My anxiety about certain integral things has certainly gone down - especially in the field of music, I second-guess myself far less often than I used to; I hit 'stop' on over-analyzing things earlier than before, amongst other tangible benefits. I've never even performed on stage and often end up with around $100-300 of revenue a month just for putting myself out there. (Which, in streaming revenue; is a shockingly large amount of streams!) There have been serious crises in my life since my Mom's passing; I had to take leave from my work for time, but; guess what? Nobody listening to my music knew any of that. The alter ego literally just lets me go through all of that, put out music every few months, and turned out to be the healthiest outlet of my life. It is absolutely true - it's paramount that you find your outlet and do it.
- klerpi 6y agoAmazing read. Keep doing music and being awesome!
- emptyparadise 6y agoThis is why I think it's a huge shame we moved to using real names and no alt accounts online. No more space to experiment.
- randomdude402 6y agoThat's very true on Facebook, and it's true that Facebook is the dominant online destination so far as numbers go. There are still regular old forums for a lot of hobbies and interests though, and even on here people can use handles. Reddit and Twitter as well. I will confess to having multiple alt accounts on Facebook. There is room to experiment still.
- james_s_tayler 6y agoTodd Herman wrote a book about how develop an alter ego. He used the technique through his professional career. Through media interviews you can piece together that Kobe Bryant was one of his clients.
- taurath 6y agoYeah furries have figured this out for decades. It’s also also extremely helpful to have an abstraction of yourself you can make edits to as experiments.
- duncanmeech 6y agoThis sounds like a viable strategy...it certainly seemed to work for Norman Bates in Psycho.
- xerox13ster 6y agoI have dissociative identity disorder, as a result of severe pervasive trauma when I was young. I have several alter egos, each fully conscious and each of which are capable in their own unique ways. They are nearly always present in my mind, speaking to me or each other and we have internal experiences nearly as rich as external experiences. We absolutely have alters that are simply more composed than the rest of us, and that come out in specific scenarios. Some of us have worked and held positions supporting technology others of us can't even understand! Then others of us are better with people and can work with them more efficiently. It's not all fun and games with this though. It's a very extreme form of PTSD, and it can be very difficult to manage, though in a way it's a blessing because we HAVE to be organized to work together. I wouldn't wish the flashbacks on anyone though, or the fact that most of us are still mentally teenagers even though we're physically nearly 30, which presents real and serious challenges to functioning as an adult.