Persona Attatchment

It is easy enough to say that people who experience life through their avatars really just need to get a real life. This kind of simplistic dismissive thinking is not unusual in complex ethical situations where people would rather avoid having to think about the complexity of the issue by dismissing it as silly. And, to be fair, there are probably a lot of people who experience life through their avatars who really do need to get a life. But, the extreme cases are easy and don't get us anywhere. At the other extreme, someone who does not have any kind of an alter ego, whatsoever, might be colorless and boring. We might say, about that person as well, that they really need to get a life. The hard part is that vast territory between the extremes. So, in order to make avatar attachment seem a little less bizarre, I am going to compare with another similar kind of attachment that we are all comfortable with. That is persona attachment.

Everybody has a persona. It is the version of yourself that you present to the world. You may even have different persona that you present in different situations. You may, for example, have one persona on dates while another persona at work. You may not think you have a persona, but when is the last time you got out of bed and went straight to work? When is the last time you farted, picked your nose, or belched loudly in front of other people? When is the last time you talked to a friend the same way you talk to your cat? Yes, like it not, you have a persona.

Your persona is not real. It is a construct you created through which you interact with the world.... not unlike an avatar. And if somebody injures your persona in some way, you probably take it very seriously. Some public figures have very highly developed persona. For example, celebrities and politicians often have a public presence that may be quite different from their private presence. You often see this dichotomy in behind the scenes stories that attempt to tell what a given person is really like. And if you damage someone's public persona they may be quite hurt or offended. In fact, you may even get sued.

We consider harm to the persona as seriously as we consider harm to the person. In fact, in many cases it is only the persona that is harmed and the person is not really harmed at all. In other cases causing harm to the persona causes harm to the person as well. So, we are comfortable with the idea of having a fantasy construct representing us in the world. And we are comfortable with the fact that, if you attack the construct, the person behind it may very well attack back.

My question is - how is this any different from an avatar? People say that an avatar is just pixels on a screen. And, as some level, that is true. However, pixels on a screen have a more real presence than the persona we present to the world. At lease you can point to or recognize an avatar. A persona has an entirely ethereal existence and yet we are comfortable being attached to a persona while we think avatar attachment is a little weird. Go figure. Maybe we are used to one so it doesn't seem bizarre, while we are not used to the other so it does.