protein -vs- electron

Matt-Man had the pleasure of meeting one of his bloggees in meatspace(*). This got me gears grinding about the whole virtual persona issue. No matter how true-to-ourselves we write our blogs, there are always various nuances that do not translate. Can our blogs accurately reflect our personality?

Unfortunately, my experiences with such encounters are limited. Disregarding family (Sherry, Lori, and Kathryn), I've met only two fellow bloggers… Neko and Rach-.

Neko

I've known neko for over a decade. I could make a decent case for categorizing her as family… like "sister". But, if I dub her family then I only have one experience to write about and that's a tad on the lame side. Us bloggers all have a story about how and why we started blogging; neko is my "how and why".

Is there a difference between protein neko and electron neko? A couple years ago, I would've said "no". What she wrote was representative of her thought process and personality. Perceptive. Poetic. Descriptive. Ironic. Balanced. Of course, having known her for forever I had the proper context and voice for enjoying her musings.

Recently, however, electron neko has become increasingly rare and this infrequency of posts paints an imbalanced picture. Her sly sense of humor and cynical perceptions of society are missing. When she does post, she is forced to succinctly recap a month or two at a time and that's not neko. Neko is more about the subtle details in life, the details that I tend to overlook. I think neko, herself, nails the issue in one of her more recent posts (yeah, March is recent for her these days):

i really wish i had more ops to post here, since i think of a million things during the day that never find their way to print.

Rach-

I've known Rach- through her various blogs (she likes to jump from one blog to another) for almost two years and I spent a kick-ass week with Rachel (and her Matthew) last summer.

Rach- is a trip. The first time I read her blog, I was dazed by her unstoppable train of thought. A single entry spanned topics from personal issues (positive and negative), to ethics, to the spiritual, to the practical, and back to the personal. The energy emitted from her writing tasted like an Altoid; it was overwhelming yet refreshingly cool.

Rachel, in person, is the same trip as Rach-. After hanging out with Rachel for a week, I'd say that Rach- is as pure a translation as digitally possible (not a perfect translation, but close). She is one hella bundle of energy. Open, honest, and philosophical… just like her blog. Anybody can know Rachel through Rach-. Perhaps the clarity of the Rachel/Rach- conversion has a lot to do with her train-of-thought writing style that mirrors her speaking patterns.

Unfortunately, Rach-'s posting frequency has diminished a bit, although not to the extreme extent that neko's has. Between work, school, and whatnot, Rachel's life is busier these days and Rach- is seen less often. Consequently, reading recent posts by Rach- only illustrates limited facets of Rachel.

Shenry

As for myself, I'd like to say that shenry is an accurate portrait of Stephen, but I honestly don't have the perspective to judge. I will hazard a couple guesses, though.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Stephen and shenry is that Stephen can be incredibly inarticulate at times. I'm not saying that shenry is eloquent, but he has the luxury of mulling over every word and proofreading his shit three or four times before posting. Stephen is actually more of a "dude-like-so-man-ya'know-whatever" speaker. As a communicator, I (the shenry/Stephen collective) am much better writing than talking.

As a whole The Book of Shenry probably reflects most aspects of Stephen's personality, boring at times, hilarious occasionally (at least to himself), a wee bit sarcastic, generally unobservant, and always happy to incorporate base potty humor. Stephen is also a very easygoing dude. I wouldn't necessarily call him antisocial, but definitely independent. Stephen does, indeed, seek comfort and stability (there's a reason beyond laziness for me being a government employee). …You know, that damn Enneagram Personality Test posted last month (results here) sums Stephen up fairly concisely, but I can't tell which hues come across via shenry. Another aspect I'm not sure about is how shenry's subtle and sarcastic humor is perceived. Stephen has the luxury of reading facial expressions and body language, thus he has the ability to retract/defuse remarks that might be taken the wrong way. Shenry, on the other hand, has no such mechanism at his disposal, which makes me wonder if he is ever misinterpreted as crass and hurtful. It would sure make things easier if that damn shenry would use smilies from time to time.

Shenry is the face that my friends know… know and tolerate. I can show that face here, at The Book, because I'm basically shouting into an e-void through various dehumanizing filters such as keyboards, monitors, wires, and written words. Those random visitors who find shenry disagreeable are welcome to do so, the various dehumanizing filters diminish the effect upon Stephen. Such filters are not in place during a face-to-face encounter. I learned, through meeting Rachel, that even though shenry and Rach- were the greatest of on-line buds Stephen and Rachel still needed to be introduced and allowed to jell. In hindsight, Rachel took about 30-seconds to jell while it took Stephen quite a bit longer to fully come out of his shell.

in closing

I guess this post has turned into a preemptive disclaimer. I may meet one of you dudes or dudettes some day. We have fun bouncing around each other's blogs leaving witty comments or half-assed advice. We click like frozen fishsticks on a metal cookie sheet. The rapport we've built is a brick house of luv. …but… When we meet in meatspace, how will it pan out? Just in case our protein paths cross I want to lower your expectations of Stephen, so I'll tell you the same thing I told Matt:

I is Shenry. I like nifes. I eat poptarts. I put them in mikerowave becas mommy told me the tost maker is danjeris.



…

(*)meatspace… thanks to manda for introducing me to the term.
...and so it was written, shenry at 6/29/2004 02:09:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .