[Redway]

Vis-à-vis as-in (in-case there’s any confusion) face-to-face. Are you the sort of person who comes across as pretty-much the same to everyone or is a lot of your outward social behaviour situationally or contextually modified, even if a certain core (e.g., a certain quietness/tendency to social introversion, which people then describe in the most varied of ways) cuts across presentations?

[Mystic Mock]

I normally am some variation of myself towards people that I talk to.

But for example if I'm around my Dad, Sister, Niece, or Nephew, then I'm not going to make crazy sexual remarks like I can do on here because it would be incredibly awkward for differing reasons imo.

Or if I'm talking to an older man, I'm not going to talk to him about the latest YouTube drama, because he most likely wouldn't understand what the heck I'm talking about.

I voted for the bottom choice on the poll.

[Oliver_W]

Interesting question.

I wouldn't necessary say I wear "masks" for different people, but "filters."

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

Interesting question.

I wouldn't necessary say I wear "masks" for different people, but "filters."

Sometimes people will project onto you what isn’t there when they see you, with their opinion about you, like with anyone, being filtered through their own personal internal frameworks to begin with, and that latter bit is never about you but them. Some people will see different but genuine sides of you and bring out that side in you. And those observations and opinions may-well be accurate enough as far as they go, but that’s just it. How far does it go when the person’s only seeing one side to you at-most?

Either way, I know what you mean when you say that people seeing different sides to you isn’t inherently masking, because the thing is you’re right. It doesn’t. But it’s still only one side. One fraction, even if it’s completely accurate within the context of that particular gaze on you. Modulating your transparency downwards so things are filtered out for people who aren’t that close to you is a fair boundary to have. We all need filters and containment.

[bots]

when you get to my age, you don't give a crap about masks

[Crimson Dynamo]

vis-à-vis

[Livia]

I wear a mask when I have to socialise for work. Not in the office with my colleagues, but when I have to hob-nob with people. I take a long time to make friends in the real world, I'm not naturally gregarious and I don't really enjoy socialising with people I have no interest in. So when I am compelled to do it, on goes the mask of someone who is at ease in that setting.

[thesheriff443]

I play many parts because I’m many things to many people

[Crimson Dynamo]

I have more faces than the Town Hall clock

[Redway]

Some people ignore the inherent richness of a deep, intellectual personality (part of the whole point and existential essence behind being, say, an INFJ, to bring a bit of Jungian/MBTI-lore into it) and are closer to framing it as a deficit based solely on what they see on the outside, so they might see you as just quiet and having very-few personality-traits other than that. And, sure, you might be quiet; that observation may be valid and accurate enough within its confines; but your very-quietness is also responsible for your deep, almost characteristic empathy, intellect, creativity, foresight, deep self-awareness and an uncannily accurate insight into what people’s motives are even before they know themselves. That’s part of what we’re talking about here.

And, sure, being seen and known for being quiet is no bad thing. It’s a neutral observation, and it doesn’t necessarily mean awkward. But it’s not necessarily the whole story, either. Having your strengths implicitly seen as in spite of your quietness rather-than more-so because of (or at-least facilitated by) it gets very unbecoming after a while. If you didn’t have quiet people/“overthinkers”/“over-analysers” (even-though in the context I’m talking about, even those layers of deep thinking aren’t apparent in a picture where someone just seems quiet and basically nothing more, positive or negative), you wouldn’t have many engineers, strategists, doctors, fierce advocates, system-improvers, writers, philosophers, artists or counsellors. And those people are needed just as much as simple brick-layers are who take life as it comes on the surface and don’t think deeply or process particularly internally.

[Maru]

My work is communications-related (information sharing) so I tend to fixate there. I also grew up around people with major disabilities and was a caretaker so I'm used to adjusting the way I need to think to the actual circumstances.

The internet I'd dare say I'm more filtered for practical reasons because sometimes it feels a lot like sitting in the lobby of a doctor's office. You want to have real conversations and find human connection, but you're all stuck in a room together forced to watch CNN/Fox/etc (+pharmaceutical ads) for what feels like forever. Meanwhile, that establishment is soliciting for all your personal/self-identifying/financial information that you're not quite sure is necessary for a 15 minute conversation. But there you are, back in the rat race... where increasingly everyday things are being made way more complicated than they should be.

[Redway]

For anyone who’s been made to feel like a ghost at various points over the years who just gets ignored by people who don’t know you because from surface-impressions, they’ve decided you’re not interesting enough to get to actually know in any significant capacity. If you’re also someone who likes to maintain that interpersonal integrity of not being fake whenever someone does usher a tangible trait beyond just being socially inconspicuous to the point of invisibility, I hear that, too. None of this is inherently about being fake. It’s about projection or at-most who brings out what in you, and how you feel like you have to then modify and filter to meet their expectations. Some people never get past the first-pass filtering stage cued from external signal. And, again, sure it’s better than being talked about for all the wrong reasons or being known as a weirdo but there’s a line between having tremendous depth as a person and actually having the boring lack of personality people with a very limited understanding of introversion/being a bit of a social chameleon often assume.