According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, personality is said to be the set of emotional qualities, ways of behaving, that makes a person different from other people. So in short, personality is what makes you YOU. But with the advent of the internet, whereby one can interact with another, miles and miles away, gives way to develop some sort of alter ego.

For instance, an introvert who is most likely to keep to himself, might be very outspoken online. This difference in mannerism from his offline self, is what i would call one's online personality. I have grouped this online personality into two, known and unknown online personality, but i'm more interested in the latter. the known online personality would be associated with facebook, whatsapp and their likes, where most of your friends are those whom you are acquainted with in real life, and often more than not, your online personality mirrors that of your real life. Cases whereby the personalities do not mirror one another might be regarded as "fake life" by others. This is because one can only spot fake when one knows the original.

The unknown online personality, which refers to the attitude one takes up in a faceless forum or anonymous social network, is very fascinating. Often more than not, the personality is not identical to one's real life self. An online bully might turn out to be a timid person, one with a bossy nature might be milder in speech online and a staid man making facetious jokes all over faceless forums like this one. But what is the reason for this change in disposition? In one hand, the change might be the change the individual wants in his life, his real life I mean. the timid person, asserting dominance over everyone, in a bid to cope with his lack of courage, the bossy one, acting a little less bossy so as to console himself on his poor people skills and the staid man, trying to prove to no one but himself that he is not as drab as people conclude. And in the other hand, to know what it feels like to give life a different approach, whereby neither their age nor appearance play any role in their interactions with people, whilst juxtaposing between this two different realities. consequentially, you end up making friends with people whom you'd never as much as whisper to, based on your discrepancies. Although, the change can be sometimes minute, such as swearing frequently compared to one's offline self.

We can go philosophical and ask "which is the real personality?" "the offline or the online one?". "give a man a mask and he would show you his true face"- Oscar wilde. What if we don't really say what is on mind becuse we fear we might be called out, if we had the ability to go incognito in our offline life would we say a lot more? if on this forum, our monikers were replaced by our real names would we still say the same things? Me as a case study, when i find myself around strangers, strangers I am certain I would never see again, I tend to be a bit sassy, sarcastic and a lot more jovial as opposed to my real usual self (one personality is just more recurring than the other) whereby I usually keep to myself and mind my business amongst people I encounter regularly. still, this is in the offline life, but we can equate it to being in a faceless social network. so, how different is your offline life from your online life?