Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
OSCAR WILDE
When you are speaking from behind a mask, are you more likely to be truthful?
Social media has empowered everybody to begin to experience this phenomenon in which we are empowered to speak our respective minds behind the guise of an anonymous identification in social media.
This new chapter of humanity, further unleashed the monstrous process of which Oscar Wilde spoke, decades earlier, prior to there being social media of any kind. In this new phenomenon, people are far more apt to vocalize their true feelings, and thereby risk the prospect of being offensive to others.
When we are liberated from the consequences of our perspectives, we are often times quick to unleash a deeper sentiment than we are remotely comfortable expressing in person.
The anonymity creates the illusion of a protective barrier which presumably shields our being associated with or suffering the consequences of believing in any particular manner on any particular issue.
It is not surprising that bullying escalated considerably when the opportunity to vocalize disapproval escalated with the birth of the Internet.
There are moments in which we are confronted by others who are now empowered to challenge our beliefs or to specifically express controversial perspectives, which ultimately take the freedom of speech we still readily take for granted, to its ultimate extreme.
Is there an upside to the discovery of the freedom of truth being released behind a fake profile or persona?
If so, we would have to start with the freedom giving way to parties who might otherwise be too ashamed or shy to vocalize how they honestly feel, and, as a direct consequence, live in a continuous state of suppressed feelings, and perspectives, which had they’ve been shared, might have liberated them from circumstances which they are currently finding intolerable.
As we head off into Halloween, there is a concerted value in understanding the true power of hiding behind a mask.
Happy Halloween!
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