In a new social situation, we are judged by the other person within seconds, before we even have the chance to introduce ourselves. When we pass through the world of space and faces, our power and identity is negotiated for us. For those who don’t hold positions of power, or whose bodies don’t automatically entitle them to privilege – of course the online world is preferable. I can’t help but compare myself to Becca, and sympathise what I imagine may have been her original intent, however fucked up things got. “If she can’t be what she wants to be as herself, she channels that insecurity and hopelessness into her persona” – Dr. “If she can’t be what she wants to be as herself, she channels that insecurity and hopelessness into her persona and treats women the way she knows she would be treated if her identity were revealed”. “This probably stems from Becca’s own feelings of powerlessness”, she replies. Consulting Kathrin over email, I ask how this young woman could act with the creepiness of a sleazy man on the internet. Kathrin Kottemann tells me, “she realised a dream and then descended into a nightmare”. “In Becca’s case,” professor and researcher of catfishing, Dr. ![]() Maybe it was the thrill of anonymity, or maybe it was the intoxicating lack of reticence what cyber-psychologist John Suler calls the ‘online disinhibition effect’. There have been no records to suggest that Becca enacted similar behaviour offline. He became abusive, manipulative, a drunk – and he forced women on the internet to send him nudes. As Ryan, Becca fell in love, and after a series of tempestuous relationships with women, Ryan got his first big character development. But Becca isn’t George Eliot, and things quickly became sinister. Becca was only following the thousand-year-long tradition of using a male alias to publish her work. The original intent was innocent, admirable even. Becca was right – her identity as a teenage girl would have prevented her from being taken seriously. She logged on as Ryan for the first time at 13, wanting only to use his name as a byline. For eight years, Ryan Schultz existed as an online presence and Becca Schultz was behind it all. Ryan was a somewhat well-known baseball writer, he dated women on Twitter, and Ryan wasn’t actually Ryan at all. I hadn’t really thought about this time in my life until I read the story of Ryan Schultz about a fortnight ago. Habbo gave us pixels, we moulded our ideal bodies out of them and explored the nascent desires within us. We were all there, roaming in our rooms, pixel-dancing on the dancefloor, enacting our own personal and impossible fantasies. I didn’t care to know who was behind the screen, and I didn’t want to think of these 2D characters as avatars for people with 3D faces and 3D lives. Through the words I typed, I could construct a narrative online that I couldn’t play out offline. ![]() I was then blonde, spikey-haired, sensitive ‘Matt’. I became my my fantasised self, the one who could pass through the world and love girls without reproach. Like any MUD (multi-user domain), which were at their most popular from the early to mid 2000s, Habbo Hotel allowed me to choose my own identity and body. In the summer before I started secondary school, I signed up to Habbo Hotel. ![]() I wanted to be with girls, but my body and my shame prohibited it. I’ve wanted to kiss girls for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t want short hair, I didn’t want to be angry and I didn’t want the world to look at me like they did those Russian girls in the “ All The Things She Said” video. In a world where lesbians were depicted as the angry outsiders of society, and were always the first to be voted out of Big Brother, I was terrified when I thought I might be one. I went to a religious school in a homophobic town, and I had a feeling from an early age that I liked girls. Back then, pretending to be someone else on the internet felt like the only way to be who I really was. It started when I was 10, long before I came to terms with my lesbianism. ![]() Long before I came out as a lesbian, I catfished. I say that largely because it’s true, but also to save some face. Contrary to popular belief, the desire to deceive others on the internet sometimes starts with an innocent rather than a sinister intention. Sometimes, our identities alone can prohibit us from fulfilling our desires.
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