I grew up on the Internet. On the Internet, we can be whoever we want. Well, not really, but one can certainly pretend. Or, conversely, we may show our truest selves. Growing up, I was fairly shy, and I still get nervous meeting large groups of new people. On the internet, I have never been particularly shy. The Internet provides a safe haven for a lot of people who are afraid to show their true selves to the world. Online, you can usually find someone who agrees with you, perhaps easier than you can in the real world.I believe it’s important to have people to relate to, which sometimes isn’t possible with one’s immediate peer group. The current generation and the one below it find their identity online far more than the generations before. For me, online relationships and the identities I formed through them acted as a stepping stone towards the real life friendships and aspirations I have today.

My first internet obsession was Neopets, starting when I was 9. While Neopets’ main feature is taking care of virtual pets, the website also has a community side with chat boards available to those age 13 and up. I soon learned this and created an account with an exaggerated age in order to reach those portions of the website—my first online persona. I would talk online to other Neopet owners, pretending to be older than my age. I even remember stumbling across a thread that said it was immature to pretend to be older than you are. I strongly disagreed, considering myself to be quite mature. Of course, I wasn’t particularly mature, but being younger than most, I put a false version of myself online—an older, sophisticated 13 year old. In middle school, after I had turned 13, I returned to Neopets, spending most of my time on the “Neopian Writers” board (The NW, as we called ourselves), where I became a regular. The NW provided me a place of refuge in my years as an awkward and basically friendless middle schooler. The people there helped me feel less alone, and while the NW is no longer active or filled with the same people, it will always be close to my heart.

I’ve taken on a lot of different identities online over the years. Growing up, I was fairly lonely. I think a lot of lonely kids find solace online. The Internet sites I visited provided me with a place to feel at home with myself. One of my favorite things to do online, that I still occasionally do to this day, is roleplay (RP for short). Usually, I would be joining a Harry Potter roleplay message board and writing out plots and stories under the identity of a character, sometimes created by me, and sometimes one of the book’s characters. As the years have moved on, I’ve actually created accounts for different characters on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. There’s a whole RP community on each site. A lot of the times, people will talk out of character as well and get to know the person behind the character. When I was 10, I made friends with the girl who played Luna Lovegood on a particular RP, and we started emailing back and forth and even became friends on Bebo (an old social media website that I don’t think anyone uses anymore). Eventually, we lost touch, and although I tried looking her up on Facebook years later, I could never find her. It still makes me a little sad sometimes. I wonder how much of her true self she showed to me, and if she still interacts with the online world like we used to. I know I wasn’t honest with her about my age, but I was honest in every other way, as far as I can remember.

I’ve made a number of friendships online, most of which didn’t last. One girl I met on Neopets in middle school and eventually became friends with on Facebook used to chat with me all the time, but one day she randomly deleted me and stopped replying to any of my messages. It hurt, but not like it would hurt for someone I know in real life to totally disappear on me. While I’ve heard of people being friends with others online for years and years, I don’t think this is the usual case. The online world is fickle, and as I have grown, I find my identity more with people I know in real life. Regardless, those temporary online friendships can be quite beneficial. Since I had trouble making friends for so long, having that online support from people I had never technically met really kept me going. I think about a number of my old online friends frequently, and while I don’t talk to most of them like I used to, I see a few of them on my Facebook wall, and I celebrate their victories. For example, one girl I met online published a book, and while I haven’t had the time to read it yet, it’s sitting on my bookshelf at home. I think that my online friends partially helped me to form my identity as it is today. I was able to connect with people unlike myself, people who opened my mind to other ways of life in the world. The NW was where I heard about NaNoWriMo, an event every November in which people try to write a book in one month. While I’ve never won, this has helped inspire me as a writer and has shown me how much I want to write and publish books some day. The NW was the first place I heard the voice of peoples with quite different ideals and beliefs than mine. I learned a lot from these different perspectives. I was raised in a small town, but through these interactions, I know a little more about life in other states and other nations and other frames of mind.

I still interact with people I’ve met online and consider a few of them my friends. I don’t show them every part of my life, but I’m not afraid to show them anything either. I feel like we’ve made significant impact on one another’s lives through our conversations and simply being there for one another. While I may not know them forever, I will most certainly remember them forever.