Secrets in a Word--Translucency

I think of a Law & Order episode. The suspect sits in an unforgiving chair set before a metal table with two detectives in the room that are even more unforgiving than the chair. There's a single lamp dangling above the interrogation table, the buzz of the electricity audible as it courses through the inner tubing of the bulb. The disdain for the suspect and the saturating light shining down on him concoct to form a haze. It's eerie. We know the confession will come. We know that secrets of unthinkably devious crimes will spill forth from his lips.

The aforementioned haze isn't a great example of translucency, but that's what I thought of. So, let's run with it. Since the early days of all of our education, we have been conditioned to understand the importance of light in books, movies and other art forms. For me, it was reading The Allegory of the Cave that pounded these notions into my head. It is the ultimate, and perhaps most common, motif. Even the famous short story I am currently reading in my Hispanic Literature course deals with the importance of light. "Las tinieblas" (the darkness), "la lucidez (the light) and "la penumbra" (the semi-darkness) are the three levels of light this work deals with. I was most intrigued by the role "la penumbra" played in this work, and I soon leapt to the concept of translucency. A filter for light (light representative of truth) which distorts the image on the other side. Who would have thought that the filtering of truth would have the same effect on our lives?

On the other side of the spectrum, translucency is very different from opaqueness--the complete filter of light. Whereas opaquenss completely hides the image on the other side, translucency only makes it challenging to see the whole image. To be translucent is to keep secrets, and we can all agree that we have some of those. Those are the dark spots, the spots inside of us people can't see because we don't let the truth light brings shine there.

Not only is the filtration of light, secrets, and how the intensity of the filter plays a role in the way people see us, but the same concepts apply to the way we see ourselves. Almost all of last year, particularly in the spring, was one of the most sad periods in my life. It was borderline depression. I couldn't perform at all at the same level in any aspect of my life that I had previously been able to do. Coincidentally, or not so, it was also the period where I was much closer to opaque--darkness, "las tinieblas"--than I was to translucent, never mind transparency. After having gritted my teeth through such a tough time, I realized that I needed to open up for my own sake. Although keeping things "bottled up" that will eventually spill over, to use another metaphor, is somewhat trite and cliche, it still rang true for me. When they finally did spill over, I decided to go with the grain and let more than just the overflow out. What I needed was a release, to let more light shine on various parts of me. Thank goodness that's what I allowed happen with the help of important people in my life. I am a far healthier and more stable person, for appearances sake and internally, than I ever could have been living in "la penumbra".

Filtering Secrets in Identity Fracturing

It was just last weekend when I saw the TV show known as Criminal Minds. This particular episode was about a man who had been creating many identities for himself and defrauding wealthy couples. His MO was to sleep with the wife, have the wife introduce him to the husband, swindle the wealthy couple out of a large sum, and then kill the husband. This man had done this in multiple city with multiple couples in each city, and the detectives were only able to catch this near-perfect criminal because of the way he started breaking down and getting “sloppy”. This resulted from a process known as “identity fracturing” (read more about multiple personality disorder here); all of these identities that he had created for himself—despite having the same man behind them—had led him to start blending fictitious traitss with real qualities. 

As much as I’d love to delve further into the criminal psychology of this character’s patterns, I thought it would be better to bring it home. It has become clear to me that we have all been fracturing our identities more than past generations. If you haven’t already guessed, I believe this is almost entirely attributed to technology—more specifically social media.

In considering my own online presence, I went to the most visual and surface-level analysis first: my home screen. In the “Social” applications folder on my smartphone, it appears that I have nineteen photo-sharing, messaging, and social media apps. What was even scarier is that, on most of these apps, I am different people! Combined, my followers, friends, message recipients, etc. experience almost twenty different Aarons! This is in addition to the multiple selves I have in real life. (Here is a blog that helped me consider this personality division on social media.) Is this okay?

Even though there is certainly overlap between many of the online and web personas I have created, I wanted to better understand what part of myself I was channeling through each outlet. With this blog as an important one of those twenty different selves, I was fairly confident that secrets had a fair amount to do with it. The secrets I kept in order to make the main voice of that outlet, whichever one 

of the many it was, m

ore prominent and unique were exactly what gained me followers and likes. For example, taking the lot of emotional baggage I have to Twitter would be totally damaging to the comedic presence I have established on it. Taking the more obscene thoughts I have to the oh-so-monitored Facebook would be catastrophic to my superiors’ perceptions of me later on down the road during, say, a job application.

Once again, I stress that I have almost twenty of these personalities. In the same episode of Criminal Minds, it was noted that the CIA assigns approximately two or three aliases/false identities to its operatives. The number is very intentional so as to prevent the fracturing that occurred to the serial scammer and killer in this Criminal Minds episode from happening to those responsible for this nation’s security. Can we fracture healthily? The most trivial question to ask is: are losing followers on each of our social media outlets by keeping secrets to convey a particular personality on each? The much more important question to ask is: are we losing a part of our actual self and interpersonal relationships in real life at too fast of a rate to recover?

I want to explore this further, so I’m going to follow up on this topic in a couple of posts. In the meantime, let this be some food for thought regarding your use of technology as an enabler to convey a more filtered, refined you. I know I will be doing the same.