The dichotomy of man, the in-person and online persona.

2026 Day 208. #PersonalDays.

The internet has increase the population of the world several times over without affecting the birth rate. It has simply given one person the power to hide behind multiple masks and let loose the different sides of them. Of course there are bots too, but rarely do they have a personality and are just following a purpose assigned by someone else.

While this is a huge problem in the world, I never thought I would be a part of it too. I am hiding behind multiple masks, not to manipulate things, but to build myself up.

I too adopt certain personas for certain tasks — on Instagram, I share a curated set of photos from my travels, on Facebook, I am barely active, on Snapchat I used to share the funny moments of my everyday life, on Reddit I am a tech guru or a chess nerd, and so on.

While I would love to justify that all of this is necessary and how I do not hide behind fake accounts to be a bad actor, I have realised that this division of me did not come about in a day. I have used various social apps for the past decade in various ways. I have only just settled down in the very specific ways that I use the app over the last 2 years.

This has served me a great purpose. I have been able to segment my personality according to the best use of the media. I can share the parts best suited for that app and that helps me be content with overall.

Only one idea connects everything together.

Direct Messages.

I have conversed with hundreds of people across these apps, with freinds, strangers, frenemies, scammers, and possibly bots. All of my personalities converge here and I share my true self with others.

Or at least I thought I did.

My online communications are much different from my actual persona. I have been able to figure out a few reasons for this.

• I text mostly in English. There have been studies about how bilingual people can adopt two different personalities when they conversing in each language. Because I am primarily conversing in English online and my in person conversations are in Hindi, there is bound to be some difference between the two.
• Another reason that I have theorised is that my brain often jumps between things. I find it hard to hold a single conversation. When I am having an in person conversation, I tend to not only listen to their voice but observe their tone, their body language, and facial expression. All of this combined helps me judge their tone better and avoid boredom. On text I tend to be a little more distracted and spontaneous because I am involved in some sort of multi-tasking at that point of time.
• Lastly, because the person is unable to gauge my tone or sarcasm on text (because of a lack of hints) I tend to act livelier to portray my true intentions subtly. While this does not change much directly, it does have a major effect in my words and usage.

This difference in persona is not something I calibrated over the years. My personality would have developed the same even if I was not this segmented over social media.

The problem that arises often is that some people are in fact much different from how they show themselves to be.

People will pretend to have a richer lifestyle than they do, talk more religously than they are, talk more piously than they ever will and generate an air of superiority. They will use their social following as evidence of their insincere personality and people get manipulated.

Instead we should focus on the real world and real events and draw out personas from there. Leaving behind influencers or social media stars, we can work very well without them and their larger than life personas.

Just as you are disappointed after your new jobs turns out to be much worse, or your date does not have the same energy as they did in person, or your favourite star gets called out for rude behaviour, we must be wary of online personas and try to keep in touch with reality. It is not unfair to be wary of everyone, but it is certainly better than being played for a fool.

See you tomorrow.