Why do People Create Fake Identities Online?

There are so many ways to connect with people online these days and it is extremely easy to do. Just look at how many different social media sites there are where you can make friends, share information about yourself and learn about others. Unfortunately, you don’t always know that what you’re being told is the complete truth. If all you have to go by is a picture and the other person’s word, then how do you know what you’re being told is accurate? Some people seem to get a perverse pleasure out of creating alter-egos where they can lead the kind of lives that others are likely to envy, despite the fact that everything they say is fabricated.

Although the Internet has made it easier for people to connect, these connections are often tenuous and transient. You pick up an online pal, chat a few times using instant messenger, and then never hear from them again. You soon get used to it, but sometimes you feel as though you’ve really clicked with someone. You find that you have similar interests and a similar outlook on the world and you want to get to know them better. However, usually these are the very people who live too far away for you to just meet, and so you may have to talk on the phone or continue communicating online for a period of time, which can be fulfilling to a certain degree, but it’s not quite the same as having an actual face-to-face conversation.

Nowadays, most people have access to a webcam and so you can see for yourself if the person you’ve been talking to is who they purport to be, but even then you don’t know whether they’re hiding something. It could be that they are married or have children or that they have something in their past that they’ve decided to keep hidden. They may have told you that they have a better job than they do or that they live somewhere they don’t. Of course, people lie in their day-to-day lives as well, so you can never really be certain of how truthful the individuals you meet are being. The trouble is that it is much easier to keep up the pretence and to continue lying online than it is in person.

So, why do people create fake identities online? It gives them a certain degree of anonymity – they can say what they want without worrying it might come back to haunt them; it enables them to portray themselves as the individuals they’d like to be rather than who they are; they may simply get enjoyment out of attracting people with their lies, luring them in then letting them down. It may be that they’re insecure about the way they look or some other aspect of their life and so want to be able to attract someone, regardless of how they do so. In the end, though, this is hardly likely to end on a positive note. Clearly, if you build a relationship online with someone that’s based on a pack of lies it is hard to imagine that anything is going to come of it in the real, offline world.