For most of the last couple years, my primary mode of engagement on the internet has been pseudonymous. Behind a stoic non-human profile picture as a mask, I engaged in banter, dreamed wild ideas, and connected with people across the globe. I was writing dozens of tweets and replies daily, improvising and playing, with the freedom of a dolphin in the sea. It felt glorious.
There are liminations to a masked existence - I wanted to start creating in video format, and connect with people face-to-face, human-to-human. But taking off the mask and venturing into the avatarless world has thrown me back into a domain that more resembles my constrained, pre-pseudonym existence, where I didn’t trust the ideas that came out of my head to survive their journey out of my mouth.
When I switch between my pseudonymous handles and my face-first accounts it feels as if a foot has stepped on the garden hose carrying my creative energy. When my face is attached, a thought that seemed profound now appeared banal, a verse that seemed evocative now childish, an opinion that seemed jovial now distasteful.
The words haven't changed, the only variable is the image in the little circle next to them, and yet it makes all the difference. How come?
To me it seems there are two main factors: the world’s perceptions of a person, and my expectations of myself. If I had to guess, they're probably mixed 20/80, with my self-image being by far the larger factor.
The world's expectations of a person
The halo effect is a psychological phenomenon where our assessment of a person's individual traits is coloured by our impression of the person as a whole (which we formed by assessment of their other traits). For example, we're more likely to consider an attractive person as competent in other skills. If you've seen patterns of interaction on social media sites, you will notice how often people treat ideas as more profound if they come from someone famous, powerful or beautiful.
To me, the Halo Effect suggests that each of us holds some assessment of a person's valence-goodness as a kind of “baseline score” - and in the absence of other evidence we default to using this as our prediction of all of their traits. If someone considers you to have a high baseline score, you will get more of their attention and more opportunities from them.
So one factor here is my lack of confidence in my appearance. I assess my looks as solidly “ok” - not beautiful enough to trigger the halo-positive regard that more popular viral creators inspire with their appearances, but unlikely to be a big negative score (except perhaps to people with racial biases). The world of avatars is a level playing field - where I may even have a slight advantage, with reasonable confidence in my aesthetic sense making a good impression. In the world of faces, I have no such edge.
Another factor is that an interesting thing happens when people use avatars as masks: the masked them becomes almost a separate person, in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. The masked figure becomes its own semi-independent entity, for the accrual of these halo effect baseline scores. It is the character, not the person, that gains beauty for wisdom and loses it for buffoonery.
So creating pseudonymously, then, becomes a lower risk activity. Your outrageous take last night doesn’t affect the way your acquaintances look at you in person the next day the same way, if you do it from behind an avatar. You are spared the worst of the world's instantaneous judgements. It becomes a safer place to experiment.
Incidentally, if you are interested in reading more about the effect of masks on the psyche, I recommend the relevant chapter of Keith Johnstone's book Impro. Here is an excerpt.
It’s not surprising then to find that Masks produce changes in the personality, or that the first sight of oneself wearing a Mask and reflected in a mirror should be so disturbing. A bad Mask will produce little effect, but a good Mask will give you the feeling that you know all about the creature in the mirror. You feel that the Mask is about to take over. It is at this moment of crisis that the Mask teacher will urge you to continue. In most social situations you are expected to maintain a consistent personality. In a Mask class you are encouraged to ‘let go’ and allow yourself to become possessed.
Alas, just as we are spared the world's judgements when we are masked, we also fail to accrue their positive regard. Everything witty and charming that happened behind the mask belonged to the mask and not to me. If I wanted to have the world's impression of me reflect my output, I needed to be able to produce it as myself.
Self image
Perhaps the biggest contributor to my difficulties creating with my own face is my attitude towards myself.
I catch it out of the corner of my mind when I create ideas. Something seems to be a good concept - I refine it in my mind, using evaluations I trust and endorse - yet as soon as I write it down or imagine it said out loud, against my own image, it is precisely at that moment that the harshest judgement floods in. “This will make you sound pretentious.” “This will make you seem childish.” “This is nonsense and you’ll seem crazy” “This is so banal it will cause visceral discomfort to those who read it.”
The unifying emotional content behind every piece of judgement is cringe.
To me this persistent cringing is a symptom of a chronic deficit of self love. The origins of such symptoms and the approaches for treating them are best left as topics for deeper dives for other posts, but suffice to say that I have explored it enough to notice the way it sneaks in to my mental patterns. I wouldn’t think this way unless I was habitually belittling myself, and that belittling attitude starts when I contemplate my own image.
In other words, my own halo-effect baseline score for myself is stuck deep on the negative.
I do in theory know techniques to ease up this inner critic - understanding that it comes from a place of self-protection, empathising with its efforts and finding within myself more effective and loving ways to do the samething. Like I said, best left as a topic for future posts. But suffice to say that I have been working on it, it has been getting better, but it's still often there and can’t be simply wished away when it appears.
The use of a non-human avatar, then, has been a very effective workaround in this regard. Everything witty and charming that happened behind the mask belonged to the mask and not to me, which means it didn’t have to fight my own negative self image for me to consider it good. I could, as a result, accrue an ongoing positive score towards my own avatar.
And perhaps as time went on, I was able to have some of that positive score bleed through to my own self image. Perhaps it was partly through the benefit of that gradual accrual that I am here at all, writing on substack under my own first name.
Gaining persistent self-love and healing persistent self-judgement is a long journey. But in the meantime, at least I know that whatever negative judgements I have of my ideas, it is only because I am simulating the harshest critics that might ever lay eyes on them.
Thoughts for the reader
May you be blessed with sufficient self-love to never need to contemplate these problems.
Remember that your self-judgements are not likely to be accurately reflective of the judgements of others.
A persistent lack of self-love and painful self criticism can be healed - if this is you, come on the journey with me and many others.
Every opportunity to be seen negatively by the world is also an opportunity for people to see the good in you.
If there are things you struggle to say in your own voice, try embodying an avatar.
"The unifying emotional content behind every piece of judgement is cringe."
This post resonates deeply with me. I tried too hard to put on masks so I could create something, anything. But I couldn't manage it, somehow they kept bleeding into each other.
I think what really helped was knowing that I have at most 10 followers and no one really cares what I say. So I might as well put little tweets out there as soon as they arise.
Another was having a 100 rule. This was inspired by Visa's `create 100 things, not matter how crappy you think they are'. I added another little rule- I'm not allowed to judge anything I create until I create a 100 of that thing. I'm not allowed to be critical or mean or compare to anything else. I am only to create the thing, put it out into the world and then make the next thing.