Nina25 is between boyfriends, 22boldandthebeautiful is single and ready to mingle, 33wildandwilling is a bored housewife looking for some fun.
None of them is for real.
They're all products of 20-year-old Arti's hyperactive imagination.
Like Arti, countless chatters are reinventing themselves everyday. They are giving full rein to their imagination and fantasies and living uninhibited lives, cloaked in anonymity and alien skins.
An elderly person may not find the elixir of youth in the real world, but, in a matter of minutes, he can become a handsome young hunk in a chat room. A depressed 40-year-old could turn into an outgoing pretty young thing, before transforming into a cranky old coot.
Age, sex, location, names, physical attributes…they are all changeable. No one will ever call the bluff. If they do, another personality is just a few clicks away.
But why do people take on multiple personalities? Different people have different reasons.
Rediff Guide to the Net got confessions from three users who have donned multiple personalities.
Roopa T
I hate the fact that I am a shy person offline. Which is what I like about my online avatars: The women I play are very in-control, very aggressive, and can talk to any man they like in a chat room. Online I have an infectious wit, am articulate and self-assured. I think it's a habit that I'm in no hurry to break. I don't know when I picked it up… Now, that I look back, I have more friends online in chat rooms and bulletin boards than I have offline.
I keep different identities. Say on IRC, I will be like this crazed, wild woman who has tried everything from bungee jumping to suicide. That's what draws the attention, though I have never tried something like that before. Soon, I'm the centre of attention and have all the guys in the room talking to me. But my biggest high was talking to a 24-year-old in a Yahoo chat room as two different girls of different age groups for two months… It was nerve wracking. And wondering whether I would get caught in the next hour was a huge thrill.
On bulletin boards like freshlimesoda.com that I frequent, I am usually very eloquent and others know me as having strong opinions on political issues, poetry styles and fiction. On bad days when I want to lie low, I usually pretend to be my normal self. Boring. 2plaits - that's my nick, a student whom probably no one wants to talk to.
I think online personalities are notoriously easy to manipulate and manufacture. You can choose more or less exactly how you wish to appear on the Net - from some better or innate aspect of your true self to a full-blown fabrication.
There are times when I feel guilty about fooling someone who thinks he knows me very well. But on other days, I get a huge high making up new tales about my personas. Sometimes, they feel more my 'real' self than me.
Shailesh K
It all began when I couldn't log in to a chat room because someone had stolen my username. So I entered my regular chat room on rediff.com with a different nickname. It was strange to chat with a new identity, as I had to convince one of my chat friends that I was the same Shailesh she had encountered a few days before.
Suddenly I found myself changing my nickname and my preferences according to the chat rooms and sites I visited. I also assume a different persona when I'm doubtful of a person I'm chatting with.
Essentially, I think it's all a mind game, mental chess sort of a thing where I'm putting on a garb and convincing my audience about my different persona. I feel like a cyber actor. And the whole thrill of chatting with 20 people in different guises is mentally very stimulating. It's almost like being on a mental roller coaster. There are times, when I've been caught, when I mixed my stories and interchanged my lives. Also, changing my style of replying became essential, otherwise regulars in the room would know that I'm actually that 30-year-old journo and not the 22-year-old college student I am pretending to be.
But it's most funny when I don the mantle of a lady and get all the guys swooning over me. And I think I've been a better chatter as a girl than most girls themselves!
Ronita R
I gave it up… It was nice while it lasted but when the different personalities I played began to rule my life, it hampered me.
As an addiction, it began slowly. First different email ids. Then different chat ids. Some place I was 22. At others I registered as my 18-year-old sister. In fact, for a while I would even chat on my sister's ICQ as her. I'd chat with her friends on the sly. It was a game of cat and mouse, not to get caught by her friends.
After a while, the challenge wore off. So I took on a new younger identity - a 16-year old college student who was hated by her peers, and whose parents were divorced. Everyone I met lent his shoulder to cry on… A few months later, I tried another… In fact, that made me realise that on the Net, everybody is pretending because even my friends would give me a different version of themselves when I chatted with them in disguise.
Three months ago, when I looked at myself. I was shocked. My notepad was full of different identities in different chat rooms and also had a different list of friends. I had even put down my hobbies, my essential details and the different stories so that I wouldn't get confused - and I kept record of most of my chat transcripts.
When I re-read the transcripts, it freaked me out. For a minute, I didn't know the real me… Did I enjoy watching 'American Sweethearts'? Did I actually like pasta? In some conversations, I did and sometime I didn't. And looking back, I wasn't sure what I liked anymore. That freaked me… Not knowing the real me. I've given up playing other personas ever since.