Who is this Body?

Who is this body?

Ok—surprise! I’m continuing that idea I started writing about forever ago. It should be here, if you’re interested. I swear the title of this isn’t just clickbait.

So, who is THIS body?

The one you’re encountering as you read right now. Is it your computer? Your phone? A secret third thing? Am I projected onto your screen? Or do you imagine me as a separate entity beyond what medium you’re viewing this on?

It’s a thought I encounter a lot as someone who navigates a significant amount of my relationships through the digital space. When I talk to friends I’ve met online (and have only ever encountered in digital spaces), I find myself missing a crucial part of their identity. Even when I know what they look like, I don’t think I’ve ever pictured them when I speak to them. Sometimes, they live in my mind as faceless entities who only are constricted by the bounds of their personality. I can’t fathom many of their lived experiences, either. It’s quite different from real life where I can witness my friend’s navigation through life based on outward identity; I cannot even pretend to do this with my friends who live in, say, the Philippines. 

Speaking of, I had the opportunity to do a film-style project for a linguistics course I took, and I used this chance to interview my friends in the Philippines. I had them record themselves answering questions I sent over, and then I edited the clips together alongside additional analysis. The bulk of the project isn’t that important, though. What I mean to bring up here is that through the process of editing their interviews, albeit very much constricted through the bounds of my assignment, I was so enamored watching the words leave their mouths in front of me on screen. It was a weird feeling; I’ve seen these people before. I’ve heard them speak. I’ve seen videos of them speaking, too. But editing them–meticulously cutting clips over and over, watching them speak over and over and over–was weirdly surreal. I was witness to a body suddenly being attached to this personality formed in my head all these years. 

Again I ask, who is THIS body?

If you know me, you probably know what I look like. Even if you haven’t seen me, it’s likely that you’ll notice most profile pictures I keep on various sites all contain some sort of character with green hair. This trait I’m proud of, I share blindly, and I upkeep as a part of my persona. This is surface level though, right?

If you’ve seen me, as in, like, a picture of me, maybe you’d be able to recall more traits. Perhaps that I’ve got pierced ears, or that I wear rings all the time. Maybe that I wear glasses, or that I always have eyeliner on. Maybe you’d recall me being awkward-looking, lol.

But if you haven’t, it’s likely you read this without any projection of who these words belong to. Maybe you’ve just conjured some sort of image in your head of what I look like. There’s a good chance you’re totally off, but who cares. I can’t even picture what I look like half the time. 

Does that matter, though? Do my words need to be stuck to a physical form? Maybe. I don’t know. I’d like to think that my words, departed from my body, belong to a different entity entirely. I argue this is a second person that exists only online, as explained by ME in a previous blog post:

“I'm two people at once.

I am who I am perceived as online. and I am who I am in real life.

I've been online for a very long time. I was gifted a computer when I was young and have had pretty unrestricted internet access for a very long time. There's no telling to what I've seen online in the past ~2 decades I've been alive. the comments I've left, the tweets I've written, the blogs I've posted (haha, like what you're reading right now) all remain online for anyone to stumble upon at any time. When they do, they're meeting me. I am there, in that moment, staring them face to face.

But, I'm not, right? I'm sitting behind my computer, typing a little awkwardly because my nails have grown longer than I know what to do with but ah, I don't really want to cut them because they're just so pretty and- yeah. you get the point.

That's not me. That's not the me you're meeting right now, is it? No, right now you're face to face with duwwy, and that's the only person you'll ever meet if you speak to me online.

To be online is to adopt a new identity. I speak differently. I engage with people differently. I am different. I'm not the person I am in real life; whoever that is does not exist with the beauty of anonymity.”

If you’ve already read that, be glad to have been given the chance to read my impeccable writing again. Just kidding. I know. But really, I think this all the time. It’s true that I’m technically the same person writing both statements, but we encounter each other very differently. For instance, I wrote the above excerpt A FULL YEAR AGO… I’m definitely much further into thought about it now than I was then, when the idea had just arisen. 

I’ve also had much more time to think about what it means to carry both these identities (or, as I argued previously, “meet each other in passing” or something like that). I still agree with that notion, I did just encounter myself from a year ago, and that is not the same person as the one writing this (as my real-life counterpart was the one who had to make sense of the online-persona post) (how many parenthesis can I put in this single paragraph) (we are all in parenthesis right now) (Hi). I think there’s much more to the idea than simply online ego and real life counterpart.

What does that mean for movie stars? Are they different entities in every movie they appear in? What about social media interns? Does the person managing the Wendy’s account on twitter connect deeply with the perception of the brand? All good questions, and none I have a simple answer to. Perhaps they’re something for you to think about.

All this to say, the imagined “body” you perceive when encountering me online is one that I view as more of a spectacle than anything, and frankly, regardless of how I feel about it, little can be done to influence that perception. I have so much to say about this that I'm overwhelmed reading my words as I write them. For now, I will depart. Expect more from me (online? heh..) later. 

Love you. Thank you for reading. Or skimming. Or both. Perhaps just scrolling to the bottom. Thanks anyway.