I, Dr. Wesker, am a caricature of a real person.

I am more myself than myself, yet also exaggerated.

I am an experiment in personality and expression.

I am craving poutine.

I don’t do well with lying. Because of childhood trauma. I am an open book. Even online. A boring open book though.

But I am sometimes a bit confused. Might say stuff I later realize I should have done a second thinking about. But I don’t call it misrepresentation when I believed it myself, even if I later realize my mistake.

I don’t go out of my way to lie or hide things, but I don’t spread too much either.

On the other hand, I’ve stopped correcting people who default to everyone online being male.

Me on Lemmy. But it’s not intentional, my username has a long back story and i use Daria as my pfp, just because i liked how annoyed she looks in it.

So, i suppose most would assume a woman behind my account, but I’m a man. I don’t want to misrepresent myself, but I have used this username for decades, never really thought it could be a problem, other than using it on a dating site. That would just be dumb, for obvious reasons. It depends on the context. If i were to participate in a discussion where it matters, i obviously would make it clear, from the beginning, that I’m a man. Like commenting in a community aimed at women, where you expect mainly women.

So, i usually don’t start every comment explaining my username, just to avoid misunderstandings from the beginning.

I do generally relate more to women. I don’t like cars, i envy the excessive fashion options women have, I’ve been told to have a very feminine view on things, for example. It’s very natural for me, since my parents raised me very open and tolerant to everything different or new. All things that may have contributed to me choosing my username and pfp so naturally, that i really never shed any thought on it. I wasn’t thinking “hehe, i’m now femanon online, let’s troll”.

Your question made me think about it and now I’m really not sure …

AIAA?

Am i behaving in a deceiving way? Should i take it more seriously, like really care if I’m being perceived as a woman or a man by others, in conversations, where it’s completely irrelevant if I’m an woman or a man?

Does it matter? Anyone will draw whatever conclusion they want from written words.
Any post made represents a train of thought created in that moment, for that moment.

We like to overanalyze stuff and inferr suppositions, create entire lifetimes based on fragments of text. But more often than not, there is no hidden meaning, no greater link to map out. Though it's fun to imagine there is.

The online medium is fantasy. A separate dimension from reality. A glimpse into past moments that most of us rarely even think of while out there actually living. Shitposts, trolls, memes, bots, insights into the human psyche and so on, all mushed up together where you can't even tell the true from the false.
A simple truth is that everyone online is a lie. Whether spurred by anonymity or cowed by social expectations, the online persona is a default mask we craft for ourselves, perhaps even unknowingly.

Some say it's who they truly are, free or the debts and responsibilities of real life. But it's not completely true. Hiding this inner self is part of who we are, though we like to reject it. These posts, these thoughts are pieces of what we need to express, a lashing out at the norms that bound us we do not agree with. Yet they do not represent us, not fully.
Just as in a sudden moment of pain, we express the emotion through a verbal release of vulgarities, so too are these written declarations the release of that painful constriction society holds over our words and deeds.

....

TL;DR: Always.

Obviously I hide my identity but that means not telling everything about myself. I don’t need to lie about it.

I don’t think I misrepresent anything. I comment as myself. Only thing that comes to mind is that I like defending positions that are ethically correct but have bad optics so for example defending Elon Musk when people here spread misinformation about him despite the fact that I don’t particularly even like the guy. It’s understandable that people make false assumptions about me because of it but I don’t really care. That’s on them.

Hmmm, I’d say I always IRL and online Try to be a decent person so by that, never. However there are plenty of things I say to create a persona online simply because it’s fun, goofy and harmless. If I’m feeling goofy or want to commit to a bit, such as my earlier comments on this profile fitting in bugles anywhere I could because I thought of a funny username.

Is that misrepresenting myself? Probably by technicality. Although I can be goofy IRL too so bit of yes, bit of no, depending on how close you wanna define it

I’m not actually some pixelated anthro wolf thing. Sorry for ruining the magic.

Saying dumb shit that I regret later through? Yeah, that’s me irl as well.