Jean Houston Quotes

If you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life.

Message boards are like going to a Halloween masquerade party. Everybody has a screen name.

Virtuality - connection without proximity - is a major attraction in both fandom and the Net. Nobody knows you're a dog through the U.S. mail, either. Fans could be utterly different in their fanzine persona, which may be why both fandom and the Net were invented by individualistic Americans.

I'm an independent game developer - there's not exactly an offline version of that. This is where my community is; everybody I'm close to I know because of the Internet.

On social media, I can hide behind the computer or the iPhone. Internet courage.

The same person who would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice. The same person who finds it difficult to introduce himself to strangers might establish a presence online and then extend these relationships into the real world.

The nature of the internet is that you don't know who is behind the screen.

We live in an age where anonymity is growing in magnitude like a bomb going off.

The web presents an opportunity to showcase any character your sick mind desires. Want to create a cross-dressing, deaf/mute, corrupt politician who has a soft spot for saving children? Go for it!

I don't really use YouTube that much. I am a very Internet-oriented person, but I'm more of a Twitter freak - I'm always on Twitter. Or chatting with friends.

The new freedom of expression brought by the Internet goes far beyond politics. People relate to each other in new ways, posing questions about how we should respond to people when all that we know about them is what we have learned through a medium that permits all kinds of anonymity and deception.

I play 'World of Warcraft,' which means I end up hanging out with teenage boys a lot.

On the Web, we can be whoever we wish to be, editing the face we show to others in ways that aren't possible in physical space. We can also fine-tune the complexity and depth of our interactions and relationships.

It's insane that people have these Internet identities. It has very little to do with who we really are. As a writer, who I'm friends with, how I spend my time, what I look like, what I wear, what I eat, what kind of music I like - it's totally not important to the work.

People reveal so much of their mental processes online, simply because the psychological effect of anonymity just means that a whole raft of inhibitions are left alone when people log on.

The Internet made fame wack and anonymity cool.

Approximating authenticity online is not such a tall order. In fact, it may be the very least we can do.

Reddit offers the opportunity for us as humans to connect on a much deeper, broader level because users have an alter ego and aren't tied to a social network of friends with whom they want to share how perfect their lives are.

I've played real people before, but I never knew them.

The problem of online identity is expressed best in an old 'New Yorker' cartoon with a picture of a dog next to a computer, and the dog says, 'No one online knows you're a dog.'

I like to chat either at my site or, sometimes, through MSN and ICQ. And even if I do reveal my identity, there are a lot of times when no one believes me.

Both multiplayer games and online forums have this property of virtual anonymity. Other people can't really see you; they don't really know who you are. And so the sort of social moderating mechanisms in real life, and your desire not to offend people around you, don't really adjust.

Most of the people I interact with on a daily basis don't even know what I do for a living, so the 'persona' thing doesn't amount to much.

The Internet is a seemingly unreal environment where we think we are anonymous. It's a potentially provocative place. As a result, we may not behave the way we would in the real world. Some of us are drawn into what could become a dangerous situation.

Through technology and social media, we're able to create an identity online that shows people the face that we want them to see and rather than who they really are.