In my opinion your online persona has a huge effect on the way people view you and also shows your viewers who you are or who you claim to be. The down side on this point is that sometimes what you post, say or do online isn’t really who YOU are. It can just be something you thought others might like to see or laugh at. Sometimes people post or share things for the entertainment to the followers and not themselves. So is online authenticity dead? I personally think authenticity is dead. An online identity can be as permanent as an offline one: pseudonymous users often identify themselves in different social networks using the same account name. But because their handles aren’t based on real names, they can deliberately delineate their identity accordingly, and reassert anonymity if they wish – and can be very hard to change once set in stone.”Online personas rarely match real-life behavior” is what Mark Milan and this in my personal experience is true. “I don’t think that you could have any type of accurate or even semi-accurate personality analysis based on what people are writing in their Twitter streams. Probably the same case goes for Facebook statuses as well,” said John Grohol, an online mental health expert and founder of PsychCentral.com
https://phys.org/news/2010-05-online-personas-rarely-real-life-behavior.html#jCp
Another example of how online authenticity is questioned can be seen by looking at Instagram user and Australian model, Essena O’Neill, who was quick to correct the trending term of ‘goals’ by saying that there should be no such thing – especially online – as everything can be edited and manipulated with a computer screen and the right equipment. She then went to further prove her point by releasing a short series of makeup-free videos explaining how much work goes into planning the “perfect” Instagram post by stating that “Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. It’s contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation, in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated self-absorbed judgment.”
So with saying this, online personas can be made into a person you wish to be OR it can be someone you USE to be.
J's World 