On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog Ariann Barker + Alexandra Abrams

Ariann Barker is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in Writing for Screen and Television.

Alexandra Abrams is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation.

In my bookish childhood, my favorite series was Harry Potter. I finished the books and the movies, then discovered the idea of ‘fanfiction’— interpretations of the universe that weren’t JK Rowling’s. Fanfiction stoked the compulsion I felt towards reading to the point where it competed with books for my attention. I read fanfiction written about literally anything, whether I was familiar with the source material or not, and from this came my desire to write. That desire quickly transmuted into love, propelling me to scamper through the Internet for more ways of demonstrating my appreciation for storytelling.

At around eleven years old, I found forum-based online roleplay in the woodworks of a game website I frequented. The premise of these roleplays was for members to create characters that were part of a world created by a user, these characters would go on to interact with each other in a myriad of ways as directed by their creators. This all took place over simple text and image based communication. I began as an amateur, growing accustomed to the platform’s netiquette and shyly integrating myself into existing roleplays. As my time on the site increased, I became more comfortable with the community, building relationships with users I shared common interests with or felt had visions compatible to mine. It wasn’t long before I started making my own worlds within which members could roleplay, and this proliferation of content helped push the narrative that I was a figure on the site to be known. When my creations received more traction, I received more attention. People who

gravitated towards my concepts and characters started to communicate with me about my IRL business: how old I was, where I was from, what I did, etc. I wasn’t too keen about how my childhood computer literacy would be perceived by people online, so I opted to do what children do: lie.

I distilled myself into a character just like the ones I had been playing in the forums. I gave myself a new name, a new story, a new age, a new appearance, all of these vastly different than those afforded to me in my physical reality (and vaguely aspirational). I became a college student majoring in English with a pet cat and a loving boyfriend. I talked to people on the Internet and became involved with their personal lives as well, operating as a confidante in many cases. They never knew who I was, and I had no idea who they were either (no matter what I believed at the time), yet the bond forged by our joint appreciation for the art of words was palpable enough that I remained on the forum for years even after the game that hosted it fell out of favor with me.

Through a few of the people I met on the website I became a mod of a branch forum that they hosted independently, where some aspects of our roleplay carried on over to Twitter. I made around 5 accounts for 5 different characters, switching between their lives with fluency. They had style, confidence, wit, and intelligence. In them, I became everything I ever wanted to be. The visual references (actors or models that represented how your character looked) that I used were of the coolest looking people I found on Pinterest or Tumblr. My preadolescence meant insecurity and trepidation within how I saw myself, worrying that I wouldn’t be attractive or talented or smart enough to enjoy being alive. This lit the fire under my ass for me to sample socializations way beyond the leagues of my experience and live the life I wanted (without waiting for it to find me.) That’s what roleplay was.

Now a college student, I remember those moments spent glued to my mother’s computer as fundamental to the development of my imagination. The abilities I now have fleshing out characters or writing dialogue or styling a good outfit got their start on these forums. After a few years and increasing demand in school, I weaned off the forums (though retained my love for writing). In the real world, I often think about the parallels between some of the people I used to be and who I actually am. I visit the roleplay sites every once in a while to lurk, as I’m not exactly sure how to wrap up the ruse I constructed all those years ago. I’m finally at a place where I don’t need to contrive anything, I feel secure in who I am and I owe this kinship with myself to the years I spent avoiding it.