[Ron]
I understand what you are trying to say Arlo, Jimmy, whoever you are...
[Arlo]
I "am" who you think I am. By the way, the only person who calls me
"Jimmy" is my fiance. Let me give you some background on that. My
father's name was "Arlo", and so since I was a baby to differentiate
us I was referred to as "Jim". All my life, all through high school,
I knew my legal name was "Arlo" but I never used it. Never. It was
like if you found out today that all this time your legal name was
actually "Harry". It was that alien to me. When I entered college, it
was just easier to let my professors call me "Arlo", and so people I
met in classes there knew me as "Arlo". I mostly had them call me Jim
until one particular "friend" told me she thought "Arlo" was a much
more unique and exciting name (really!). So I gave it a test run. And
it took. But what has happened is that everyone who knew me prior to
1990 calls me "Jim". Everyone who knows me since calls me "Arlo". My
biker friends I met while with a friend from the "Jim" days, and so
that was the name that stuck there. Try as I might, I can no more get
my colleagues at work to think of me as "Jim" as I can get my biker
friends to think of me as "Arlo". Legally my birth certificate says
"Arlo", but is that any more "my real name" than "Jim"?
[Ron]
but it's those few who really are who they say they are
[Arlo]
I'd say here what you are pointing to is "continuity over time", and
not that any aspect of identity is "real" or "false".
Let me problematize this further with two studies.
A few years back, a study was done where university kids were told
they had to participate in an online forum, but that the "avatar" of
them would be randomly assigned and unchangeable. Leaving aside
gender revelations, what this study was that kids who were given an
avatar they felt "was better looking" than them did nothing in the
forum to dispute this. But kids who were given an avatar they felt
was "uglier" were very vocal about saying "that's not me".
Another study took one female student and had her inteact in three
different forums, each with a different avatar. One was very
attractive by social standards. One "plain". And one quite obese. She
was told to not reveal how she really looked. What they found was
that others in the forum treated her very, very differently based on
her avatar. The "ugly" girl's opinions were dismissed, she
encountered often outright hostility, while the "personae" associated
with the attractive avatar was treated more kindly and her opinions
given more respect (if not maybe overly so).
So my question is, would an overweight woman who uses an "attractive"
avatar be being dishonest? What is "the real her"? The overweight
body? Or the attractive "self"?
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