My name is pretty much who I am. It is easier to share with people who don’t know you, harder to judge a person you can’t see.
whatever
How different am I IRL? Hmmm. Hard for me to say. I think I flirt more here, with people I don’t really know, than IRL, but then again, with the friends who know me well, I flirt quite a lot, they know how to take it. I’d like to think that I’m just as eloquent online as off, but I spend a lot of my time IRL taking one foot out of my mouth just long enough to change feet.<yes, I wash my feet a lot, can’t stand the taste>
And, Falcon, let me assure you, YES VB does flirt a lot more IRL than here! hehehehe! I should know, known him for about 23 years.
You sing in my consciousness like a counterpoint to my life.
L.L.
I forgot to add, IRL I tend to be more shy, just a bit, but it’s more of how I know I look, than anything else. Online I can pretend to be slim and goodlooking, IRL I know I’m not either of those.sigh
You sing in my consciousness like a counterpoint to my life.
L.L.
IRL, I am more shy. I’ve always been more of a listener, and can listen to people talk for hours while only saying a handful of words myself. But, I’m funnier IRL. I don’t think I’ve ever said one funny thing on the SD.
IRL, I will not initiate a conversation about God, but will glady talk about Him if you strike something up.
In short: I’m a very different person in real life…for the better.
Adam
“Life is hard…but God is good”
Ogre, don’t try so* hard *, and for goodness sakes, don’t give up so easily either!
Think of this place as a large room that you enter, and everyone is off in little circles talking. In RL you’d not just barge in and start talking, you’d hang out and listen, then comment when something appropriate to your area of knowledge comes up, right??
TSDMB is one bigggg room. Hang out and have fun ‘getting to know’ who you are going to be conversing with before jumping to conclusions.
<<<<<<<<<<<<Soap Box mode off>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Judy
“Um, according to who? Nothing more than a high brow troll, though occasionally the bi polar personality swung in a constructive direction on innocuous topics.” Omniscient
IRL I am shy, but I fake it well.
I am also funnier, I suppose. I’m very sarcastic and that seems to be hard to convey in here.
I don’t know, because I live too far away to get to go to any of those neat SD meetings and actually meet people in the flesh, and have people tell me “you’re jti?? really?”
:::Sigh:::
umm IRL: wittier, more sarcastic, cynical; self depreciating; more eloquant, fluid in my thoughts; more prone to laughing; 100x more outgoing, will talk to anyone IRL; smarter; insecure about my looks; “different;” will do things and say things purely for shock value(I’m very good at this); sadder, more introspective; my ignorance level is zero, and my naivite is an integer -10; sometimes too serious; I think all the time, about the little things in my life, and the big ones.
And wonder if everything will turn out okay.
Online: apparently militant and naive.
When he was ready, it was already far to late, to go back.
There will never be another.
He is lost to me, as surely as if he had died.
Standing alone, I stare into the flames trying
to remember what went wrong.
Let me put it this way. I have had three separate managers initially try to prevent me from meeting with management after seeing me leap to the top of my desk and, at the top of my lungs, hurl imprecations upon the heads of the fools in power and their progeny to the sixth generation, calling into question their sanity, their annelid-like intelligence, their obtuse and willful refusal to face reality, and the poor manner in which their wives (or mothers) dressed them that morning.
I dunno. Does that sound like me? I can’t tell.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(On the other hand, once my righteous anger had been vented and I had inveigled, tricked, or coerced each manager to actually allow me to attend those meetings, they discovered that I was actually rather persuasive when dealing with the aforementioned twits of power, often enticing those twits to join with us in the wars against their even more stupid superiors. Watching a management meeting in which I was in attendance, I suspect that 90% of the posters here would recognize my style of participation. Watching me in the privacy of my own office, I can guarantee that no one here would identify me without a scorecard–which would probably be dismissed as in error.)
Tom~
I’m roughly the same, although IRL I most certainly do not talk about my sex life as frequently and openly as I do online here. It’s not like I’d say, “So, what kind of oral sex techniques do you use?” over coffee.
Also, like Catrandom, I’ve a bit more opinionated and firm IRL…I just don’t bother expressing it online.
Teaching: The ultimate birth control method.
Interesting thought(s). I don’t know how I come off here, it’s hard to judge yourself. IRL, I tend to make friends easily, participate in conversations, get a hit from the gals, speak with a little color - things that I don’t think really come across in my written word.
For some reason, I just don’t wisecrack in this medium, although I do throughout my RL day. ?
There’s a difference - je ne sais pas.
Online, I too, am more eloquent, but I am much more confident irl. Other than that, I’d say there’s not much difference.
Things are random only insofar as we don’t understand them.
Offline, I babble incessantly.
That, and I’m a bit taller.
“The true founder of civil society was the first man who fenced in a piece
of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine,’ and came across people simple
enough to believe him.”
–“Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Oh my. Oh, my my. Well, Falc, let’s hope some of Springfield’s more suggestable women agree with you this weekend.
Battles are won in nuance.
I’m just as big an a****le in real life as I am here.
I gather rain…
No, dahling - all you need to do is be gay (cite: Oscar Wilde). I’m just as wry and pithy IRL as I am here, and I have several people who can attest to it. 
Esprix, who knows how hard it is to be the queen…
[de-cloaking]
I’ve only read like the first five responses to this OP, but I’d predict that EVERYONE is more personally open, confident and comfortable when they’ve the time to contemplate what they are attempting to say rather than having to justify misspoken ideas in real-time.
Shirley: Janeane Garafalo is cool and cute. If she would have my baby I sure wouldn’t mind. Who’s Daria?
SkySlash: “…otherwise they’re cheating themselves or someone else out of seeing who they really are.” I agree with you, but would like to point out that for someone who holds an unpopular opinion it isn’t always a great idea to express it whenever the opportunity presents itself. I don’t criticize my mother when she insists on doing something the wrong way because I know she won’t listen to me anyway. I’m not 100% forthcoming when my coworkers go on about how great God is because no one is going to leave convinced and additional unneeded stress will have been interjected into the workplace. My point? I know who I really am and chose not to let some people (most?) see me.
inertia IRL: I’ve got absolutely no social skills (at least I realize it) and I’m grateful that I don’t think it bleeds through too much. To clarify, I don’t belch and fart in public and I know which fork is the salad fork and which spoon is the dessert spoon, but I’m no good with interpersonal relationships. I’m very grounded in the black and white extremes of “if you like something go for it and if you don’t don’t.” I’m very impulsive and it makes me uncomfortable to curb that impulsivity. Also, I often fail to see mitigating circumstances or if I do see them I usually don’t consider them valid. When I meet someone who is all about nuances it confuses the hell out of me. It kind of irritates me too because these people are often very fickle if they don’t outright lack the ability to make a decision. Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s just that sort of opinion that makes people not like me IRL so the opinion might not get expressed until I was at my wits end. Here I can type away and people can ignore me with abandon and I don’t even know it.
I also subject everyone to much more of what can be liberally considered as flirting, but that might be because I don’t have anyone to flirt AT IRL.
neuro-trash grrrl: Occasionnally I’ll oscillate between self-confident, know-it-all daredevil and shy, self-deprecating fly on the wall. I hate it when that happens.
Anti Pro: Is TSDMB a big room or a big circle? I’d have to characterize TSDMB as a big circle due to the number of participants at any one time. Then again, there are so many threads and so little time. But don’t a lot of people get to a lot of the threads? I’m rambling again which I do do [he said, “doodoo”] IRL, uuuuhhhhh.
Ruffian: I went to high school with the guys who started and own Hecklers Online, Mike Ragsdale and the other guy (Mark, Brian? My mom knows.) I’ve never been to their site though. It’s supposed to be funny. Is it?
[re-cloaking]
Tom, HA! I guess we’re more alike than I thought IRL. I’ve been known to fly into mad fits of condesension and abuse from time to time. I don’t, however, abuse my furniture: you are clearly out of control.
My co-workers tend to enjoy my company and think I am THE man, except those who are under me (who toil daily in constant fear they will be demeaned and fired and then demeaned some more) and those who are above me (who think I’m positively crazy and let me get away with anything out of fear that I’ll show up one day with an F-250 chock full 'o fertilizer and kill everyone [in reality I always chicken out and take the truck back home, not even halfway to the office]).
On this board I like to think I come across as a neat-o guy that everybody likes and just wants to chuck my chin and say, “You sure have a big heart, Sake Samurai!”
I think I’d get along with most of you, except for that Ogre guy, he just doesn’t fit in.
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
I think if anything Im shyer here than IRL. Im so unused to being around so many other intelligent people. Plus, by the time Ive read a post at least five people have posted a hilarious reply, and I think, “geez, Id never be able to come up with anything that clever.” IRL I just say what pops into my head without worrying about whether I sound like a dork. And I dont care if people disagree with me - online Im afraid of getting flamed. Actually, I enjoy reading the posts, and laughing at other people’s funnies, and not being the class clown.
I’m pretty mucht the same I think, but like Chris said, there are many different sides to me, it all depends on the day and the mood. But the moods and the attitude and the words are the same here as they are with people in my ‘real’ world.