INTERNET ME VS. THE REAL ME

There are two me’s. The real me (the one you’d meet in person) is definitely opinionated, but pretty much keeps her opinions to herself, except with her closest friends. She loves a good discussion has never got in a real argument. Never screamed. Never shouted. Never stormed out of the room. Never turned bright red.

I HATE confrontation. Here’s an example. My new roommate who lives on the other side of the wall (we share the kitchen) keeps opening the kitchen window WIDE open. It’s not summer anymore! It’s bloody cold! In comes the freezing cold air and I get cold really easily so I start shivering anytime I go in there! She even opens it when it’s raining! So I’ll shut the window and she’ll just come into the kitchen and open it again. She will open the window and then leave for the day. Or open the window and then go to bed. There’s no rhyme or reason to this behavior other than she must be obsessive compulsive. She already admitted that she’s obsessively clean. Okay, I already got that. And I do know that if the landlady finds out that she’s keeping the window open all the time when it’s cold out she’ll throw a fit. So what do I do? I’m so fearful of confrontation that I close the window but when I hear her coming home I’ll run over and open the window so that she’ll think it was open the whole time! I know, I know, it’s nuts. But I hat arguments. Huh? That’s right, I hate them. In person ones anyway.

Then there’s internet me. Internet me isn’t fearful of arguments or confrontation at all. After all, I can’t see the person who I’m talking to! Perhaps this is a way of pushing back at all those bullies in junior high. Perhaps this is a way of dealing with the fact that all day at work the “customer is always right” and I have to be ABUSED by them nonstop! Customers can be so rude. You have no idea. And I can’t say anything back! They take out all their anger on us retail workers. It’s sad, really, that people have as much anger as I’ve seen. I’ll give you a quick example: a customer asked to have 4 of her gift cards put on one card. I told her that we couldn’t do that. She insisted that we could. I said that we couldn’t. She said that another cashier said that we could (this cashier never said this). The woman demanded to see a manager. The manager said that we couldn’t put the gift cards on one card. The woman said that she was never shopping in the store again and was going home to promptly cut up all of her gift cards. Ummm. Really? Because she can’t combine her gift cards she is going to be THAT angry that she is going to throw her own money away? She is going to throw a fit in the store and waste 15-20 min of hers and 4 employees’ time? And what do we get to say back? “Have a nice day.” This stuff is CONSTANT. So perhaps the internet is my chance to not fade away and run from people. It’s my chance to face confrontation head on.

But anyway, if you meet me I’m not like that. Not at all. So really if all you know of me is what you read on a blog then you are getting a very false impression of who I am. I think many people have problems with emails and various internet misunderstandings. I’ve seen it plenty. I don’t think there’s an easy fix to this problem but I do wonder if types like me tend to be misunderstood more than others. It’s funny, but even my photos were misunderstood by one (who thought I was taking photos of abused women, which I would never do!).

The internet and blogs and email are all both good and bad. I LOVE email! I don't know how I'd live without it (I hate using the phone). But blog posts and even people responding back--especially anonymously--can have its bad points. I must balance my need to show people that it's not all roses and rainbows and my hatred for self promotion with the fact that I can go too far and doing so will portray someone other than myself.