Whats worse than a catfish?

Is the online self more authentic or is it easier to craft who we want to be? I am authentically being the person I WANT to be.

What is authenticity? I think of it as honesty. You are being authentic when you are living your life for you, and doing what you want to do.

In this quarantine I find myself being the least authentic version of myself. I have this enormous guilt of having to wake up at a certain time, to prove to my friends, family, and myself that I am not being lazy. Because society has taught me that laziness is bad. To exercise and diet, to make sure I don't gain weight. Because being fat is unhealthy. To get a certain amount of work done a day. To prove that I am being productive. 

But is that being authentic... no the truth is I want to sleep till 1pm, order McDonalds and not feel guilty about it. I would be authentic if I did just that...but I never do. Being authentic is hard. In my opinion the online world only makes it easier to fake the hard thing.

I understand the base question, the simple answer is yes, being authentic online is easier than being authentic in person because we can't see the judgmental eyes or expressions and it is easier to be honest when those are taken out of consideration. But in my opinion it's even easier to lie about your thoughts, intentions, and persona without physical eye contact. You loose a sense of guiltiness. So yes I lie about what time I wake up, how many assignments I finished, and if I worked out or not... not too authentic huh.

My boyfriend always says "why do you care so much about what others think of you," and I guess it's a disease to care. It's a disease to be unauthentic. It is addiction and a job to fit a mold. I look at my boyfriend and wonder how he does what he wants and doesn't feel guilty. He is authentic, and when I first met him I never thought of him as that because when you meet individuals you take all the collective interactions and use them as definitions of what they truly are. But if I study all of the first couple of interactions we had, he may have fell in love with someone who isn't me at all...rather a projection of who I want to be. But you can only keep up an act for so long, and I wanted to know if I was unauthentic with him. So i did an experiment.

Danielle: Flashback to the beginning of our relationship and before we started dating. Based on your first impressions and interactions with me how would you describe my personality and character versus how I actually am?

Nick: "You were less obnoxious. *laughs* No, don't use that word.  You were who you are. You didn't try to hide that, you were a normal amount of shyness. You may have dimmed things down, but I think the person I met is the same person I am with today. You were going to therapy when we first met, and you were feeling really confident in talking about yourself and expressing your inner thoughts and emotions. I think I may have met you during a really pivotal time in your self growth where you were fed up with saying the conventional so you felt liberated in saying and being authentic."

I thought to myself "I really thought I was being more conservative and put together than I was putting off", this experiment didn't prove my point. But maybe it proved another one. Being authentic in person is unavoidable. There are too many give aways to try to be unauthentic. Your facial expressions, your inability to lie, your tone and attitude, underlying thoughts and opinions, and the inability to craft a thoughtful response because you are on the spot. Therefore it takes less thinking, energy and time to be authentic. Maybe I am just a bad liar, maybe I am not clever enough to be inauthentic in person. But I think that it is much easier to be inauthentic online.  

Online where you can create any storyline, refer to past texts, and decorate your lengthy paragraphs with emojis, it has never been easier to be someone else.