./Identity

On identity on the net

I've confined with various people throughout the years on my personal dilema with online identity, which I took the liberty of calling online d.i.d, but I don't think they really got what I was trying to say - to no fault of their own, I'm just really bad at explaining things. My goal with this page is to try and rationalise and understand for myself my issues with how I present myself on the net.

I'll start with an easy one: I don't like how easy it would be for somebody who knows me irl to find this website, yet my dumbass decides to set my username to the same thing on each site? Recently I've been going through all of my social media accounts and changing the names on all of them to something completely unrelated. This has helped, since now I know that if somebody I work with asks for my Instagram they won't be able to find my absolute yapfest of a website.

But now I've hit the issue of: assuming they know me as crystepsi, what if I want them to find the rest of my online stuffs? I think my friend put it best when he said that we are from the generation that grew up watching youtubers who had a set username on everything, a perfectly curated and tracable digital footprint, but is this really the way to go? If you've read this as if it were gospel, do I really need you seeing my instagram uploads? No, no I do not. This is why I've promptly taken the "stalk me" tab off of my homepage, because

  1. that was a stupid title
  2. i need to get my own head out of my pretentious little ass and realise that just because somebody sees my neocities page and thinks "wow, this is really cool" doesnt mean theyre gonna be interested in everything i do
I do think my whole issue here comes from the desire to be seen and to have what I want to say heard, but I've let that consume me in part. Besides, I've been saying I'm gonna leave social media in favour for that sweet, sweet decentralised net life, but lemme level with ya: I probably aint gonna do that. Why? Because my friends are on there and I quite enjoy being a social species.

See also: Rant about apps

While disconnecting my irl-based accounts from the good crystepsi name, I thought about stepping away from crystepsi in favour of a shiny new internet alias - one which I would use for this site and other corners of the web. This is where the d.i.d of online d.i.d steps in: whenever I leave behind an alias, it feels like I have left behind aspects of my identity as a whole. This, my friends, is fucking stupid. I know this is stupid due to the fact that I act the exact same way no matter what I'm called, but it still feels like leaving a ghost behind, and then when I inevitably see parts of that "dead" persona seeping back into the current, I am left questioning myself all over again.

Just for funsies, here's a list of aliases which I can remember going by: and probably some more idfk

It hit me that the reason I think about changing my screen name as frequently as I do is because I have it in my head that I need to build up the perfect online persona - and that's the problem, it's a persona. I believe that the majority of my issues surrounding this could be solved if I just get over myself and realise that this doesn't have to be perfect, you're still gonna read it anyway for some reason (thanks btw).

Really funny story about why I abandonned the volta name...
So it was maybe 2021 and I was playing some hide and seek on worlds, and it was my turn to seek. I was in vc at the time with some others who were playing and first of all I messed up by not turning nametags off, which basically gives away where people are hiding. So I quickly fixed that and got back to seeking. I did not find a single person. I was so embarrassed by this that I did not go on Worlds again for a few months, and when I did it was under a new name. Recently I've gone back onto worlds under volta since that's what the friends I made on there knew me as, but it doesnt make much of a differences really considering how dead it has gone back to being.

I've matured since then and, while it's still pretty embarrassing, they likely don't even remember

but i do

A thought which I can' shift from my mind is that this is all self inflicted, that nobody else - or a very limited few - would ever think this way. I mean, it's just a screen name, right. Right. I'm having some doubts about even publishing this (not that that would mean nobody will ever see it, since neocities graciously published it onto the timeline for my followers to see (thanks for the like madukamagica)) solely based on the fact that even I know this is stupid and irrational. Oh well, if I have anything else to say I'll update this page; last update was on July 31 2024. Signing off.

Go Back To Blogs