Why Fake Social Media Avatars Suck – My Experiment

Shortly before Marty caused a ruckus with his avatar theory post, I had embarked upon an experiment of my own. I'd been taking careful note of the "popularity" of the hot chick avatars/personas that had been sweeping the social networks. I wanted to test that out for myself and see just how difficult it would be to blog as someone else. I figured I'd only be someone else up to a point - in other words, I was going to be my former self. I would assume the persona of myself at a younger age - mid-20's or so. I would be reliving my youth, so to speak, which I thought might be fun for me, and would make for an interesting experiment as well. I would use an avatar that was attractive, but would not be identifiable as a particular person. I would create profiles under her name, and traverse the web as my new persona.

Thus began my life as WebChicklet. Let me give you the down-and-dirty cut-to-the-chase bottom line right now. Creating and maintaining a fake persona, even one that is based upon your own persona, is hard. So hard in fact, that I don't recommend it to anyone but the extremely talented, or the extremely crazy. 😉 Just try twittering as more than one person. I flat out couldn't do it. Plus, without being able to rely upon your existing network of social media friends, it's starting from scratch. That might be ok if you're a complete beginner to the whole process anyway, but for anyone else, it sucks. Leveraging existing social network friends is important, folks. It's more important than you realize until you try to start fresh. If you don't have to - don't do it. Simple as that. (I do think there were a few typical males who followed WebChicklet simply because of the avatar/name, but not enough to justify the whole process).

So, WebChicklet is now coming out of the closet - er, so to speak. She is me. I am she. And together, we will continue the journey of blogging as one. You probably recognize that avatar from your MyBlogLog widget, if you use one. For anyone who feels deceived, I apologize. Still, it was an experiment, and I would not have been able to run the experiment without the deception. If it makes you feel any better, I haven't made one cent of money from the WebChicklet blog since it began, so you haven't contributed any of your hard-earned cash in any way to my little deception.

So if any of you were wondering, I strongly recommend against trying to "legitimately" run a fake social media avatar/persona. It's just too hard. Well, at least it was for me.