by Arielle Lana LeJarde

Growing up in the age of the internet to others may seem weird, but for people like me and my friend Sheila Harrison*, it was just the world we were brought into.

As a creative writer, Harrison was the perfect person to interview. The internet was full of endless possibilities. We could be whatever we wanted and nobody would know. Sure, it’s a little different now and we’re more easily traceable, but growing up in the ’90s was a different story.

*Name has been changed for protection. Interview was edited for length and clarity

L: What social media platforms and apps they have used now and in the past?

H: Myspace, Facebook, Espin, Instagram, Lushstories

L: Lushstories? Never heard of that. Can you elaborate a little?

H: Wellllllll, it’s an erotica type thing.

L: Interesting… So do you always use your real name or do you have any aliases?

H: I usually use my real name. I don’t recall ever changing my identity online. I had sort of aliases, but those were just usernames. I would sometimes use my middle name if the person I was talking to was a stranger as a way to separate myself from the individual so they couldn’t look me up. That’s also why I never gave my full name.

L: You say you’ve never changed your identity, but how about any online personas you may have subconsciously created to play out something exciting or try something you couldn’t have anywhere else?

H: I did kind of create a persona when I was on different platforms. I was myself on the standard Facebook/MySpace pages, but on the more niche websites, I tended to act more innocent or more daring. On Espin, which was like a pseudo dating site for teens I often acted cooler than I actually was. I was still being myself, but not who I was at school. When talking to older men on sites like Lushstories, I pretended to be more innocent because I noticed that for some reason men take pleasure in corrupting girls, so I played along until I stopped caring about what men wanted. Online it was easier to be myself because people didn’t know my economic background or stereotype me based on my race, mostly because I don’t think many people know you can have green eyes and be Latina. [Editor’s note: Which is both true for Harrison] I could be myself which most people considered white. So most of the experiences were the same, I didn’t really lie about my life only about sex.

L: Do the digital personas they construct help you cope with problems or just end up creating new ones?

H: A little bit of both. I found it helped me figure out a little who I was by playing out different aspects of myself, but it always got complicated with men and feelings. Online I was basically poly, but in real life, I was generally alone and feeling a bit guilty for kind of lying to them. I stopped around senior year of high school because I got way too involved with three guys online and decided this was not for me. From then I didn’t talk to anyone online for a few years. Now I’m one of those people who deletes and re-downloads dating apps at random. In the end, I’d say I learned to balance it a bit better.

I definitely related Harrison’s story to Turk’s article “Aspects of the Self.” Gordon was 23-year old college dropout who created different characters to be more confident, witty, or sexually daring. It ultimately led to Gordon’s engagement. Turk says this is because “there is relationship among his different personae; they are each an aspect.of himself.”

My questions for you guys are:

1. The internet and catfishing are so prominent in our culture so much that there is a stigma on online dating. Do you think there are any positives to the online dating culture and ultimately being able to “hide behind a screen”?
2. Have you ever had a real life role-playing experience that changed your outlook? What is the benefit of putting yourself in other people’s shoes?