MegBurns

Online personality vs. Real life

Rhymes with Emma made an excellent point about my blog friends post: “I only think it’s weird if a person has nothing BUT online friends. Get some fresh air!”

When I first started working with social media professionally, I went to Pod Camp Boston. I was SO excited to meet ALL of my awesome Twitter friends that I’d been in engaging with for months. To put it nicely, it was very disappointing.

They were weird. Like really weird. Like couldn’t even hold a conversation in the elevator.*

My coworker and I were STUNNED! No WAY could these be the same people! We’re friends! Come on, don’t you remember me? Those funny little stories we swapped?! Who ARE you?!

Once these people didn’t have their computer screens as a barrier, they lost all of the whit, confidence, and personality that I had grown to associate with them online. It was, honestly, annoying. These supposed “social media superstars” were beyond socially awkward and really unfriendly. Online ego’s don’t do so well in the real world if you don’t have the true personality to match (ala Gary V- who I’ve heard is just as incredible in real life as he is online!).

I took a 6 month hiatus from Twitter because the whole thing just wierded me out.

So, basically, I completely agree with you Emma. Blog and social media friendships can be FABULOUS, if your online personality is transparent to your real life one. I promise, I’m the same in person-form that I am online!

*They were not all wierd. I’m not generalizing- we met some awesome, really smart people. But many, many, of the relationships we thought we’d built through online channels were completely nontransferrable to real life.