Phantom of the On-Liner

Phantom of the On-liner

by:  vneufeld

Recently I was asked my opinion of why individuals online often create elaborate fantasies and portray themselves and their lifestyle experiences as fiction.  I immediately rushed to a conclusion or two, but had to step back considering if my opinion was based upon reality or some fantasy that I had chosen to accept.

Clearly I decided that I should begin to explore my thoughts by comparing definitions.

fan·ta·sy (fàn¹te-sê, -zê) noun
plural fan·ta·sies
1. The creative imagination; unrestrained fancy. See Synonyms at IMAGINATION.
2. Something, such as an invention, that is a creation of the fancy.
3. A capricious or fantastic idea; a conceit.
4. a. Fiction characterized by highly fanciful or supernatural elements. b. An example of such fiction.
5. An imagined event or sequence of mental images, such as a daydream, usually fulfilling a wish or psychological need.
6. Music.See FANTASIA.
7. A coin issued especially by a questionable authority and not intended for use as currency.
8. Obsolete. A hallucination.

re·al·i·ty (rê-àl¹î-tê) noun
plural re·al·i·ties
1. The quality or state of being actual or true.
2. One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual: “the weight of history and political realities” (Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.).
3. The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
4. That which exists objectively and in fact: Your observations do not seem to be about reality.
5. Philosophy. That which has necessary existence and not contingent existence.

Obviously, it was my goal that my “observations…seem to be about reality.”

Psychiatric Definitions

In psychiatry, we often speak of the “reality principle” which is defined as:
Awareness of and adjustment to environmental demands in a manner that assures ultimate satisfaction of instinctual needs.

Authors and critics spoke out with theorists of science stating that reality was quite often a difficult burden to bear.  For example, quotes representing such sentiments are provided by Eliot and Rushdie.

“Human kind Cannot bear very much reality.”
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet, critic. Burnt Norton, pt. 1, in Four Quartets. The words also appeared in Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, pt. 2, spoken by Thomas.

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems-but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.”
Salman Rushdie (b. 1948), Indian-born British author. Midnight’s Children, bk. 2, “All-India Radio” (1981).

When an individual’s fantasy life has taken over one’s sense of reality, significant psychological disturbance(s) can exist.  Definitions of common terms used to conceptualize minor to more serious maladaptive thinking ensues:

defense mechanism – any of a variety of unconscious reactions used by individuals to protect themselves from feelings of ANXIETY or enable them to modify reality to make it more tolerable. Some common defense mechanisms accepted in PSYCHOANALYSES, are: denial, in which the person simply denies that the anxiety or anxiety-causing circumstance exists; repression, the prevention of unacceptable ideas from entering the conscious mind; and displacement, the release of dangerous impulses in a substitute situation or through disguised activity.

Defense mechanisms can actually be helpful from time to time and buffer a person from crises or shocks that would otherwise be too overwhelming at the time when the stress is encountered.  For example, the 9/11 tragedy placed the nation in shock.  Those more directly involved (e.g., residents of NYC; families and friends of those who lost their lives) needed time to adjust and accept the reality of what had occurred.  To immediately accept the realities of such an enormous horrific magnitude is an overwhelming task that can defeat the human mind and spirit.

When, however, an individual refuses or is unable to accept aspects of reality within an appropriate window of time, professional intervention may be needed to enable one to cope on a daily basis.  Examples of severe problems indicating that one has lost the ability to adjust to verisimilitudes of life follow:

Psychosis – broad category of psychological disturbance, encompassing the most serious emotional disturbances, often rendering the individual incapable of staying in contact with reality. Until fairly recently, the term was broadly employed in contrast with NEUROSIS, which denoted milder mental disturbances. Psychoses have traditionally included such symptoms as hallucinations and delusions, and such disorders as PARANOIA and SCHIZOPHRENIA. The symptoms can be classified as organic, i.e., those associated with actual damage to the brain caused by advanced syphilis, senility, and drug abuse; or functional, i.e., those in which there is no brain damage. Electro-convulsive therapy and drug therapy are used to treat people with serious psychological disorders. Refinement in diagnostic criteria led, in the 1980s, to the abandonment of the term psychosis in psychiatry, in favor of more precise nomenclature.

The other nomenclature used today include:

de·per·son·al·i·za·tion (dê-pûr´se-ne-lî-zâ¹shen) noun
1. a. The act of depersonalizing. b. The state of being depersonalized.
2. Psychology. A state in which the normal sense of personal identity and reality is lost, characterized by feelings that one’s actions and speech cannot be controlled.

hal·lu·ci·na·tion (he-l¡´se-nâ¹shen) noun
1. a. False or distorted perception of objects or events with a compelling sense of their reality, usually resulting from a mental disorder or as a response to a drug. b. The objects or events so perceived.
2. A false or mistaken idea; a delusion.
– hal·lu´ci·na¹tion·al or hal·lu¹ci·na´tive adjective

par·am·ne·sia (pàr´àm-nê¹zhe) noun
1. A distortion of memory in which fantasy and objective experience are confused.
2. An inability to recall the meanings of common words.

While it is true that delusional episodes can be categorized specifically, the mental health profession still relies upon the term “psychosis” and its general definition to indicate the most severe of reality losses a person can experience.

psy·cho·sis (sì-ko¹sîs) noun
plural psy·cho·ses (-sêz)
A severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.

I will leave this academic segment by presenting one other term that appears in some of the early psychoanalytic literature:

wish fulfillment noun
1. Gratification of a desire.
2. In psychoanalytic theory, the satisfaction of a desire, a need, or an impulse through a dream, a fantasy, or other exercise of the imagination.

It is a very normal condition to experience desires and wishes.  For example, an individual who has not eaten for two days may dream about sitting down to a nice steak dinner.
A prisoner of war may use his/her imagination to remove his or herself from the repugnance and fear of surroundings in order to be able to endure the physical and emotional deprivation.

The point to be made is that our imagination and fantasies are normal and enable us to become creative in everyday work and social situations.

Online creativity

The Internet is a wonderful medium in which creativity is limited only by the limitations of the technician.  We have been enabled to correspond with others across the world in a matter of seconds.  Further, we can explore the web for resources of information that formerly took hours and days to access.

Information acquired through searches can be tested or proven when compared to other literary standards.  The same holds true for formal correspondence.  For example, the reader can assess the veracity of what I have written by checking other sources and references.  As a writer, the reader can also get an idea about my sincerity, knowledge and integrity in presentation of the subject matter.

Contrariwise, the reader will know little about me as a person in general no matter how much sincerity, knowledge or integrity I may display about my topic.  Herein lies the haunting truth about our correspondences with others via email and chat rooms.

The person with whom I correspond is a “phantom” – an invisible portrayal of whomever he/she so desires to be perceived.  The greater the imagination and creativity, the greater the fantasies and illusions that can be transmitted.  Authors, poets and philosophers have known about this process of the human mind since the early 1800’s.  To follow are quotes by such individuals:

“Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.”
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1941), U.S. author, publicist. “Talking Dirty,” in Ms. (New York, Oct. 1973).

“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author. “Rose-Leaf and Apple-Leaf: Envoi”.

“The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.”                                           Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet. “The Dream”, sct. 1.

“The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.”
G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms, “Notebook C,” aph. 38 (written 1765-99; tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990)

The “real thing”

It is at this point that we can ask ourselves why would a person who is not psychologically dysfunctional portray her/himself online as someone other than authentic.  What inclines one to present fanciful, capricious and/or outright opposite personas to the individual on the “other side of the screen?”

Is it possible that the online phantom despises whom he/she is in reality?  Has a history of interpersonal rejection led to compliance to a different way to present oneself?  Instead of choosing to present as authentic, does one just gravitate towards phantom fantasy?

“Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one’s taste for choosing.”
Jean Rostand (1894-1977), French biologist, writer. Pensées d’un Biologiste, ch. 10, “A Biologist’s Thoughts” (1939; repr. in The Substance of Man, 1962).

When such a “performance” takes place online, the desire is to be perceived in such a manner that the other will provide approval and acceptance.  Unfortunately, such a wish for interpersonal satisfaction will never be fulfilled because it is selfish and full of greed.  It does not consider the welfare of the other and attempts to exploit in order to gain recognition.
Failure is certain because no strong base has been acquired from which one can progress and further an emotional bond.
A person can grow to love a figment of their imagination.  That love can turn to hate when it is revealed to one that they have been a victim of deceit.

“From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.”
Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), French sociologist. “Suicide”, bk. 2, ch. 5, sct. 3 (1897; tr. 1951).

It is not just the other who is pulled into a fantasy encounter.  The creator of the fantasy rejects reality.  He/she refuses to accept self as authentic…and human.  Perspective is lost about who a person is including strengths and weaknesses.

When the truth does surface (as it always will) those involved in the performance are faced with disappointment.  Transaction has taken place between two or more individuals and the interaction is disingenuous because one (or all) have hidden reality-based aspects about themselves.
The fantasies presented may include age, occupation, lifestyle preferences or general demeanor through written elements that provide tone.

“I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.”
Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English author, lexicographer. Letter, 27 June 1758 (published in James Boswell, “Life of Samuel Johnson”, 1791).

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”
James Baldwin (1924-87), U.S. author. “Stranger in the Village,” in Harper’s (New York, Oct. 1953; repr. in Notes of a Native Son, pt. 2, 1955).

The danger

When “meeting” and corresponding with others online, the experience can provide a great deal of satisfaction.  For some, they are connected to others as opposed to feeling alone or isolated.  This is especially true when individuals who share similar interests do not live near each other.  Such online connection can lead to friendships and intimate encounters.  While some of these interactions remain in the realm of fantasy exchange, others lead to face-to-face encounters.

Any face-to-face encounter with someone met online takes us a step away from fantasy and brings us closer to reality.  That reality may be delightful as the person is exactly as we have registered them in our minds.  Contrariwise, that reality may cause us confusion, disappointment and/or devastation – depending upon our overall expectations.

How far will an online phantom go to manipulate, exploit or endanger another?  How far will his/her innate greed and grandeur imagination take control of his/her every thought and action?

“To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.”
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. The Necessary Angel, “Imagination as Value” (1949; repr. 1951).

“It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved … This hypothesis… would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images.”
Ezra Pound (1885-1972), U.S. poet, critic. “Translator’s Postscript” to Pound’s translation of Remy de Gourmont, Physique de l’Amour (1922).

“How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.”
Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), French author. Belmor, in L’Histoire de Juliette, ou les Prospérités du Vice, pt. 3 (1797).

I invite the reader to pause for a moment and reflect over de Sade’s words, “The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.”

There is little complexity involved in the message of the above-mentioned statement though it may come across with more clarity to those of us who have experienced the effects of another’s deception and evil.

The phantom’s crime

A “crime” perhaps needs definition as well.

crime (krìm) noun
1. An act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction.
2. Unlawful activity: statistics relating to violent crime.
3. A serious offense, especially one in violation of morality. See Synonyms at OFFENSE.
4. An unjust, senseless, or disgraceful act or condition: It’s a crime to squander our country’s natural resources.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin crìmen.]

While the magnitude of a “crime” can be place on a continuum, any offense against another is in essence a “crime” derived from one’s imagination and greed.

of·fense (e-fèns¹) noun
1. a. The act of causing anger, resentment, displeasure, or affront. b. The state of being offended.
2. a. A violation or an infraction of a moral or social code; a transgression or a sin. b. A transgression of law; a crime.
3. Something that outrages moral sensibilities: Genocide is an offense to all civilized human beings.
4. (òf¹èns´). The act of attacking or assaulting.
5. (òf¹èns´) Sports. a. A team in possession of the ball or puck. b. Scoring ability or potential. c. The means or tactics used in an attempt to score points.
[Middle English, from Old French ofense, from Latin offênsa, from feminine past participle of offendere, to offend. See OFFEND.]
Synonyms: offense, crime, sin, error. These nouns are related in denoting a violation or an infraction of a moral, social, or legal code. Offense applies most broadly: The phrase between you and I is often considered an offense against proper usage. Juveniles convicted of criminal offenses are sent to reformatories. Crime refers both to an act committed or omitted in violation of-and punishable by-law and to a serious or grave offense: “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” (U.S. Constitution, Article II) “Is it . . . a crime to love too well?” (Alexander Pope). A sin is a transgression of religious or moral law; more loosely it applies to something regarded as being utterly wrong: “The sins of the fathers are to be laid upon the children” (Shakespeare). “The only deadly sin I know is cynicism” (Henry L. Stimson). Error is departure from what is morally right; the term often suggests bad judgment or lack of awareness rather than willful violation: “All men are liable to error; and most men are . . . under temptation to it” (John Locke).

As Locke states above, all of us are subject to human error.  We may have omitted important information about ourselves online.  It is, however, the willful act of deception that offends and causes damage.  The extent of that damage is, of course, relative to the nature of the offense and impact upon those involved.

One thing is crystal clear.  When fantasy (willful deception) is an element of our online correspondence with another, the potential is for the “horror” to be multiplied a “hundredfold.”
Simply put, the damage – be it emotional and/or physical – has a ripple effect.  It touches not just the life of the one with whom we have offended.  Rather, it branches out and affects those associated with the victim.  Often the greater the crime, the more powerful the ripple effect of tragedy.  We have been made aware of such tragedy and its effects in recent days and months.

Conclusion

This topic has not been to address the motives of a sociopath nor to provide safety measures for online correspondence.  Such topics are potentially necessary and have their place.

The questions to be answered include “why” do we correspond and “what” do we hope to gain from it?

From an interpersonal standpoint, is it not for satisfaction and ongoing pleasure that comes from interaction with another that we seek them?  Is not friendship and love the only elements of life that offer joy in the midst of heartache and comfort throughout the distress of life?  Is it not true that seasons come and go and constancy in life is found in change?  Yet even in death we find that we hold onto the love and memory of those we have known in intimate ways.  It is love or its opposite that lingers on as our reality.

“What is meant by “reality”? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable-now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech-and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates.”
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), British novelist. “A Room Of One’s Own”, ch. 6 (1929).

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Philip K. Dick (1928-82), U.S. science fiction writer. Definition given in 1972. Quoted by Dick in: I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” Introduction (1986)

<P2>“A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.”
Simone Weil (1909-43), French philosopher, mystic. Gravity and Grace, “Illusions” (1947; tr. 1952).

“Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.”
Georges Bataille (1897-1962), French novelist, critic. “The Sacred Conspiracy,” in Acéphale, no. 1 (Paris, 1 June 1936; repr. in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. by Allan Stoekl, 1985).

To be ones self – to portray honestly – be it online or in person takes courage.  When one lets down the facade he/she risks potential rejection, scrutiny and/or ultimate disappointment.
On the other hand, the rewards of being authentic outweigh the results of willful deceptive misrepresentation.  The latter provides no foundation or cornerstone for the structuring of real intimate reciprocity.  Further, it can lead to resentment and hate.

Who among us has the courage to be true to self and others?  Who among us can correspond online without a sense of greed, but willingness to give?  In addition, perhaps we should ask – in the overall scheme of reality, just how important is such courage?

I will not attempt to answer such a question.  I will however, in closing, allow the reader to reflect on the words of another.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality”.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British author. Quoted in: Cyril Connoly, The Unquiet Grave, pt. 3 (1944; rev. 1951).