Silhouette,
I think you’ve got that pretty much spot-on. It’s no so much my personality being different, but simply different situations dictating and demanding different approaches to achieve the same result.
Very technically, your “approach” IS your personality. Personality is entirely defined by one’s approach to handling the world.
The real question is whether you, or anyone, would respond differently online if faced with the same question, accusation, insinuation, opportunity to reply or correct, and so on.
Just from my own perceptiveness, I would expect not much difference in Sil’s on and off line behavior. Although I would not expect much difference in Pav either. I suspect that Pav’s personal surroundings would not get to see him in this online situation and thus perhaps misjudge how he actually is inside, but merely due to their restricted view.
But many other people, I have seen and personally known to be very different in handling confrontation and opportunity on and off line. They forget who they were as they fall into a new persona. In many ways, each transition affects and sways the other persona, but it takes a while for the schizoid like bi-polarization to settle.
Anonymity has been shown to play a critical role, but is isn’t just that. Not to beat a dead horse, but who we are is a socially contingent thing and the social environment in which we find ourselves on-line is different than the one we find ourselves in off-line. That doesn’t really mean anything. I act differently around guys at the bar than I do on a first date. I act differently on a first date than I do with a co-worker. I act differently with a co-worker than I do with someone with whom I’m working on some political campaign. I act differently with a co-campaigner than I do with a dear friend. I act differently with a dear friend than I do with guys at the bar.
That isn’t a function of some inauthenticity, it is just that the environments are entirely different. So of course I’m not the same person, to assume that I would be would assume a rather radical notion of the self!
So, err, so what?
I think you might be projecting a bit of presumed judgment. The OP isn’t insinuating guilt of any kind (no need for a “so what?”).
Yes, anonymity (or the perception of it) is a big factor in the perception of opportunity and freedom. A person can make a mistake, completely deny it despite how obvious it is to everyone, gain a really bad reputation, yet come back the next day as a totally different character (no moss on the rolling stone - yet).
My observation is that some people will actually alter the way they handle similar situations by “falling into” a different persona. This is a characteristic of an over-focused mind often caused by distractive anxiety and is common. The person temporarily forgets their other self and demeanor.
Smartass.
Better smart than dumb ass.
Guys I think you are forgetting something very important:
Trolling.
You can’t really troll people face to face. They can usually sense something is off. Online, though, you can bait people into talking/ranting about just about anything. I do it all the time—more than I should, really—and many of the people who know me think I act or believe certain way, or certain things, when really I’m just kind of half playing around, bored, and looking for entertainment.
The other day I implied someone was slow just so he would type out exactly what his beliefs are—which was what I wanted to know. If I had asked him, though, he probably wouldn’t have typed out what I wanted to see.
It’s all a game, imo. Even RL.
My “so what?” was more about the whole notion of “real” vs. “on-line” as though the two are somehow distinct, that some monolithic “real” entity exists is the first fiction. Having addressed that, the on-line persona becomes just another feature of the various roles and relationships that we engage in; however, anonymity becomes a rather huge factor because that necessarily changes the entire nature of how we engage in our relationships.
But it really isn’t too different from our normal social relationships in this highly mobile society. Sure, in a small town or during our time as minors, our mobility is limited so the consequences of our actions can echo for a very long time. However, our social environment is presently sufficiently fluid that we can pretty much engage in reinventing ourselves whenever we want. In America we’ve even ritualized this in the upper classes by attending college somewhere different than where we grew up.
Gobbo makes the point that trolling in real life is less common, but is it really? There are plenty of real life trolls out there, from the professional provocateurs that currently manage our political discussions to that smart ass at the bar. There are plenty of people out there who engage in trollish activities, that is, trying to get a rise out of someone purely for the sake of getting a rise out of them. In real life, of course, such people develop reputations. Which brings us back to the absolute fluidity found on-line – a sort of absurdist end point to the general direction that society has been moving anyway.
But already there are correctives being put in to remove those elements. Facebook is a voluntary program but its use has become ubiquitous, so the separation between on and off line personae becomes less apparent. I predict this trend will grow as time progresses. There are also involuntary programs, such as the mandated internet identity that is practiced in South Korea and will likely be adopted to varying degrees elsewhere. As extreme as that might sound it, really isn’t. IP addresses can be easily tracked and, while there are work-arounds for that approach (as there are for S. Koreans, people are good at sneaking around), ultimately it isn’t too hard to identify someone using their IP address.
So, just like moving to a new town, the anonymity exists more as a mutually shared illusion than as an actual fact. But that illusion does have (obvious) psychological consequences.
This was my first thought upon seeing this thread. What one might deem a “fake” personality, or a front, is not an entity in/of itself. What you get is essentially the same personality expressing itself differently in accordance with a different set of conditions.
Realistically, we would all have innumerable distinguishable personalities if we were to define a “personality” simply by its mode of expression or representation. I think we have to look more into what/who is being represented and the motive and intent of his expression.
For example, say you have a nerdy, intellectual kid who gets picked on in school so he adopts something of an ‘e-thug’ persona on line. He has not created a new personality by any means - his desperation to gain acceptance and respect was the motive and intent for the act he puts on; but more importantly that is part of who he truly is.
On the other hand, say you have a person with a split personality disorder. What is being expressed could be considered an alternate personality because a unique, distinguishable set of beliefs is being represented. Thus, the motive and intentions of expression are unique to that personality as well.
You presumed the wrong meaning of “real” in the title. The title meant, “real-time” (non-online) persona versus online persona. It isn’t a discussion of the “real personality”, but of the different persona yielded from a personality due to the different arena.
There’s a Chinese saying along the lines of: A wise man is the same in all situations. I glanced that online a fews years ago and it’s been imprined on my mind ever since. There are a few opportune things to being online, such as the ability to control where you are and who you’re with, and the ability to take consideration into what you say, and how you say it. But I don’t believe people should be content to have the two personas. Online activity can be an exercise to who you are in reality. And with a little effort the things we control online can be controlled offline. Hindsight into foresight.
But is that really ‘wise’ to be the same in all situations?
Don’t you think that different situations call for different parts of ourselves - is wisdom always the best way to go? Of course, that would mean agaaaaaaaaaain defining wisdom.
Speaking personally, I am much more in reality or ought I to say as i actually am, in here. I think that the kind of ‘environment’ which we make ourselves a part of can dictate and be condusive to bringing out the real ‘you’ or ‘us’.
In other words, experience+awareness=wisdom? 
perhaps…I might prefer to substitue the word wisdom for ‘true’.
Hell no. The people and the places you interact with online are one-dimensional. Not in reality of course but in the limitation you have in terms on contact. The world outside is the only worthwhile stage to be on. I can’t help but think of that film, Gamer maybe, where greasy-obese guys were sat stewing in their own filth impersonating perky-young girls online getting it on with other greasy-obese filth-mongers. :-&
I think the point is that online allows for inner perspectives to come out and breathe. In some cases, those are not very nice perspectives. But in many cases, what is allowed to express itself, is more sane than the “real world” would have allowed, often merely due to who else is in that world with the person and how they react.
Inner perspectives that only remain inner are irrelevant unless they manifest outer. Whether they’re nice or not at least be them, then it’ll simply be a matter of if they can survive or not. Sink or swim. And “the real world” isn’t some out-of-bounds school stationary room requiring permission to enter: fuck the others and be yourself. Basically.
So easy for some to say.
Easy to say and not to do? Tell me, what prevents you from being yourself other than yourself?
I have heard it spoken of as keeping your center, always acting from that deep true place in your soul that is really you. I used to be so envious of people like that and want to be that way. But then somewhere along the way I found that my true self expresses itself in many different ways; I’m just not the calm, centered type but I can still express myself truly. One of my inner truths is originality and self-expression, finding new and different ways to say things or express myself. But I still deeply appreciate those centered yogic spiritual people who bring such a lambent sense of tranquility and centeredness to life.
That’s a very good question. I suppose the real answer might be absolutely nothing. But then, there is the decision that one would have to make, to determine…to say ‘goodbye’ to a friend or two who simply do not understand where you are coming from and who cannot accept you so much as you are, in part, how you think and how you live your life, even to the point of not understanding why I would ‘waste’ my time and energy coming onto a philosophy forum - it’s stupid, and why I am simply ‘crazy’ because I worship/love nature so much. To them, it is simply a waste - they cannot conceive of the idea, it is ‘not’ them; ergo, I ought not to do it. 
But still, we are all flawed and I try to transcend their judgment of me. But who knows…one day perhaps.
I suppose that in the end it comes down to…To thine own self be true…if there needs to be a sacrifice, a letting go of.