I watched Catfish the other day. I find that I have a lot to say about these documentaries that are running rampant these days. For one thing, there are a lot of these documentary type shows that I get suckered in to. Is it another form of reality television? I’m sure it is. We’re starved to see how other people, live? (I just saw two reruns of the Jenkins documentary show today on MTV.)

Anyway, my actualy point is that it’s interesting for me to think about online personas. You see, I have a huge history of dealing with them. For one, I was MUD-ing and playing all sorts of text-based RPG games on the internet… oh 10 years ago. From then, I’ve met a lot of people, some of who I am still friends with this day. I’ve been to their weddings, met their families, and it all started with some weird encounter in some made up fantasy tavern at 3am. A lot of people would consider that to be odd, but for me, it was a whole different world. This is just to say that I am experienced in the world of needing to escape, fake identities, and real people being nothing like their online personas. This is how I expressed and dealt with a lot of teenage angst.

I also remember the subworld of camgirls, stileproject, internetgossip, and that whole shebang that popped up around 5+ years ago. There were a lot of friendships, internet mysteries on weird personalities, and people coming together to discuss that. I don’t think I can really convey that whole sphere in a few paragraphs here, but there are lots of small internet phenomenons that a lot of people in the popular culture missed. (Survivor cam, anyone? I was an advent voyeur of people like Chelle.)

So, for people like me who probably spent way too much time on the computer in their youth (you know, with the advent of AOL and communities), stories like Catfish doesn’t really raise any goosebumps. I probably had a completely different experience than most people whose first foray into internet intimacy was/is Facebook.

The internet is a great place to build fantasies close friendships full of intimacy that doesn’t necessarily need to be anchored in any truth. I feel that the fantasy can very much feel and … even BE real, because it involved real emotions. I think people who pretend to be who they are not and fool other people, are creating a suspended alternate world… which unfortunately cannot come into full fruition. i think fantasy can be a window into someone’s heart.