The Mask (and Hypocrisy)

[sufi]

i must say the thought of corona masks as not in my mind at all
i was thinking about Nina's monkey and our avatars

 

[sufi]

What annoys me especially is that bull sessions are impossible online without assuming a persona: expressed opinions have to be squared with every other of one's opinions and defended for eternity. There is little room for speculation, experimentation and depersonalised debate.

this sort of thing

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Debating-competition debate is almost wholly absent: that is, when one is randomly allocated a viewpoint and has to defend it to the hilt.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

What annoys me especially is that bull sessions are impossible online without assuming a persona: expressed opinions have to be squared with every other of one's opinions and defended for eternity. There is little room for speculation, experimentation and depersonalised debate.

not just online. that's all public discourse - all online discourse (besides p2p like email etc) being public discourse.

politicians, and all other public figures who express opinions for a living, have the same problem

it's one of the main reasons - besides avoiding persecution etc - people have historically used nom de plumes

an interesting avenue of discussion might be how online avatars compare and contrast to earlier types of masks

 

[shiels]

Performance, avatars, role-play comes up a lot here

to understand why certain masks are worn it can be helpful to start from the perspective of the audience and the arena. The intentions of the individual are of course important but they're reactive and extremely contingent upon greater social forces, pressures, expectations, incentives. It's unsettling when you see someone you know and love warped by a new audience, your mum being different at work say, or see the change in yourself. It can almost feel like something has been betrayed, things go out of rhythm, everythings a bit off, oh fuck we're all horribly flawed and fragile and impressionable

 

[shiels]

an interesting avenue of discussion might be how online avatars compare and contrast to earlier types of masks

again from an audience perspective i see the main difference as scale and huge amounts of feedback. most of us now have access to huge audiences who respond very quickly, validating and amplifying and gaming certain behaviours

 

[luka]

i dont. how did you get access to a huge audience?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I like those moments when I'm in a certain social situation and everything is lovely and pleasant - because I'm acting according to the expectations of the immediate context - and then I start letting seep in some horribly weird or disgusting opinion and feel the mood change. If that moment of inappropriate excess can be integrated back into the situation as a whole or if it spurs others on to letting their guard down, it can feel like something real has happened.

 

[shiels]

You had 93 barefoot goldsmiths students hanging on your every word over zoom last week!

 

[constant escape]

If we think of an online persona as being an abstraction from the offline persona, what appears to be the impetus of this abstraction? That is, if an online persona is a sort of auxiliary persona, what is this auxiliary branch growing toward, or how is its movement different from the larger branch?

 

[sus]

why does this open with a Books tune

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

most of us now have access to huge audiences who respond very quickly

I agree about amplification etc

but I think the immediacy of response - validating or challenging - is more important than scale

pre-Internet writers could reach huge and/or influential audiences but there was no immediate response

 

[luka]

I like those moments when I'm in a certain social situation and everything is lovely and pleasant - because I'm acting according to the expectations of the immediate context - and then I start letting seep in some horribly weird or disgusting opinion and feel the mood change. If that moment of inappropriate excess can be integrated back into the situation as a whole or if it spurs others on to letting their guard down, it can feel like something real has happened.

corspey said this is how he operates socially too. drop a necrophiliac joke in the middle of the group like a horrible eggy fart.

 

[version]

It was midapril, Carnevale had been over for weeks, and Lent was coming to a close, skies too drawn and pallid to weep for the fate of the cyclic Christ, the city having slowly regained a maskless condition, with a strange dull shine on the paving of the Piazza, less a reflection of the sky than a soft glow from regions below. But the silent communion of masks was not quite done here.

On one of the outer islands in the Lagoon, which had belonged to the Spongiatosta family for centuries, over an hour away even by motor craft, stood a slowly drowning palazzo. Here at midnight between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday began the secret counter-Carnevale known as Carnesalve, not a farewell but an enthusiastic welcome to flesh in all its promise. As object of desire, as food, as temple, as gateway to conditions beyond immediate knowledge.

With no interference from authority, church or civic, all this bounded world here succumbed to a masked imperative, all hold on verbatim identities loosening until lost altogether in the delirium. Eventually, after a day or two, there would emerge the certainty that there had always existed separately a world in which masks were the real, everyday faces, faces with their own rules of expression, which knew and understand one another—a secret life of Masks. It was not quite the same as during Carnevale, when civilians were allowed to pretend to be members of the Maskworld, to borrow some of that hieratic distance, that deeper intimacy with the unexpressed dreams of Masks. At Carnevale, masks had suggested a privileged indifference to the world of flesh, which one was after all bidding farewell to. But here at Carnesalve, as in espionage, or some revolutionary project, the Mask’s desire was to be invisible, unthreatening, transparent yet mercilessly deceptive, as beneath its dark authority danger ruled and all was transgressed.

 

[woops]

@EskimoKush says he has grown to find the mask'd visage enticing and enigmatic - what are you hiding behind that mask sweet stranger

 

[mixed_biscuits]

corspey said this is how he operates socially too. drop a necrophiliac joke in the middle of the group like a horrible eggy fart.

It works especially well if I've been on most personable form, dotting every i and crossing every t before opining as the main arrives, 'That Trump's a top lad isn't he?' - they've already decided they like me so any damage incurred will be to their own self-image.

 

[shiels]

I agree about amplification etc

but I think the immediacy of response - validating or challenging - is more important than scale

pre-Internet writers could reach huge and/or influential audiences but there was no immediate response

i was about to add a lot of the difference discussed here is actually about the written self vs the spoken self so we could go pre internet

I don't think it'll do anymore to lump things into online and offline persona because we'll have the twitter self, the IG self, the dissensus self, the work intranet self, the work 5 a side whatsapp self, the dating app self, the 4chan self, the lagers in greenwich with friends off the internet self. Varying degrees of onlineess and audience size and demographic and expectation across different platforms.

 

[sufi]

@EskimoKush says he has grown to find the mask'd visage enticing and enigmatic - what are you hiding behind that mask sweet stranger

i get this too

 

[sus]

I'm not really able to dissolve into masks. Maybe I haven't had enough opportunities. But a lot of online friends of mine run alt accounts with distinct personalities, and I just can't. Who I am here is who I am everywhere, for the most part. This makes me sad. It would be interesting to see another side to how I could be/am. Anyone have ideas for opportunities?

 

[sufi]

i get this too

maybe its a weed thing