the off/online you

I read an article on Social Media Today about the differences between people online and offline. The author was vividly dissecting what matters to online personalities and offline personalities and how the two are different. The arguments in the article may be well thought through but there is fundamental flaw in this thinking. I wholeheartedly disagree that people are different online and offline.

I believe people have one personality offline and online. I believe that there has been an apparent separation of off/online identity only because most of the people who use the internet and mobile technologies have grown into these technologies and not with them.

What it means is, the more integrated the technology in one’s life is, the bigger blur there is among these seemingly different personalities right now. I don’t think there are more than one personalities. I think it is only a different manifestation of a personality only given different stimuli that prompt different behavioural patterns. Yes, the internet speeds up things, makes us more connected etc etc, but that is just the fast lane for behaviour we are naturally prone to.

This is why to me with an increased integration of modern mobile and interactive technologies in our lives this blurr between personalities will be more obviously irrelevant.

This is why to me digital and traditional agencies should not be separated.

It’s all human behavior.