this is a lovely way to say it: "I thank you for either your continued attention or for honouring your desire to focus it elsewhere." so thanks for that line ◡̈
and thanks for sharing these distinctions between sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity. so interesting.
i think that in the last 2-3 years i have released my death grip on my profilic identity, and have been exploring the others/seeing how to integrate. i found myself excited while reading this, because they feel quite integrated right now!! but i will continue to explore this.
To be honest, I don’t think about it a lot which is an advantage to creating online I think. I noticed it most when others project identities on to me that don’t feel resonant. Like when family notices that I am not doing something they expect like owning a house. If there’s anything, I have a habit centric identity. Like dude who does these things consistently. I’m always assuming I’ll keep changing too so authentic “true” me seems a bit too ambiguous for me.
This question of identity feels stifling at times, and I notice how it prevents me from fully expressing my seemingly disconnected interests. Because when these interests are roughly glued together, I'm concerned that they would be "hard to understand."
Being early in the journey of sharing online, I'm trying to shed thoughts about how my profile presents itself to that "general audience." This piece gives solid language to some of the swirling thoughts in my head, thank you for writing it!
I found the distinction between sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity (and the concept of this) really helpful. It articulated something I’ve also been feeling for the past few years, as I built my social profiles around a certain identity when I was much younger, when I thought would stay the same forever. But I’ve since evolved from that and have felt trapped by the construct of my social profiles. At the same time, I’ve felt resistance to scrapping it all and starting over again or to introducing the ways in which I’d changed. Quite a stark illustration of the past having a hold on a person, freezing them so they cannot move forward, even in “real” life. It always felt like it was in my head so I’m grateful for your acknowledgment that these identities are real. Profiles are such a tangible expression of the narratives we tell of ourselves.
Just wanted to ask, are you feeling any apprehension around making changes to your profile and the identity that comes with it? And how do you anticipate that unblocking things in your offline life / identities?
I've been grappling with something very similar lately. I'm not known as the Complice/Intend/intentionality/TO-DOs guy as much as you're known as the AT guy, but it's still somewhat there and it continues to be the answer to "how do I make my money?" even while it's not per se the answer to "what's my life's work?" But it's also not totally irrelevant to my life's work, which puts it in this weird limbo space: neither irrelevant enough to just be a cash project, nor central enough to feel like where I want to invest my public profile/identity. Confusing and stressful.
Related to [Sasha's recent post on it being okay to want to look good](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/theres-nothing-wrong-with-doing-things), I've been finding it helpful to decouple my motivations. Oh, sometimes I want to build a new feature for philosophical integrity, okay that's why. Oh, maybe I want to run this promotion to make more money, okay that's why. Not confusing my desire to make more money with my desire to make a beautiful meaningful offering to the world. Ideally they synergize, but they're not identical. Huh, interesting to land on the word "identical" in the context of the title of your post!
this is a lovely way to say it: "I thank you for either your continued attention or for honouring your desire to focus it elsewhere." so thanks for that line ◡̈
and thanks for sharing these distinctions between sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity. so interesting.
i think that in the last 2-3 years i have released my death grip on my profilic identity, and have been exploring the others/seeing how to integrate. i found myself excited while reading this, because they feel quite integrated right now!! but i will continue to explore this.
To be honest, I don’t think about it a lot which is an advantage to creating online I think. I noticed it most when others project identities on to me that don’t feel resonant. Like when family notices that I am not doing something they expect like owning a house. If there’s anything, I have a habit centric identity. Like dude who does these things consistently. I’m always assuming I’ll keep changing too so authentic “true” me seems a bit too ambiguous for me.
This question of identity feels stifling at times, and I notice how it prevents me from fully expressing my seemingly disconnected interests. Because when these interests are roughly glued together, I'm concerned that they would be "hard to understand."
Being early in the journey of sharing online, I'm trying to shed thoughts about how my profile presents itself to that "general audience." This piece gives solid language to some of the swirling thoughts in my head, thank you for writing it!
Thanks so much for sharing this!
I found the distinction between sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity (and the concept of this) really helpful. It articulated something I’ve also been feeling for the past few years, as I built my social profiles around a certain identity when I was much younger, when I thought would stay the same forever. But I’ve since evolved from that and have felt trapped by the construct of my social profiles. At the same time, I’ve felt resistance to scrapping it all and starting over again or to introducing the ways in which I’d changed. Quite a stark illustration of the past having a hold on a person, freezing them so they cannot move forward, even in “real” life. It always felt like it was in my head so I’m grateful for your acknowledgment that these identities are real. Profiles are such a tangible expression of the narratives we tell of ourselves.
Just wanted to ask, are you feeling any apprehension around making changes to your profile and the identity that comes with it? And how do you anticipate that unblocking things in your offline life / identities?
I've been grappling with something very similar lately. I'm not known as the Complice/Intend/intentionality/TO-DOs guy as much as you're known as the AT guy, but it's still somewhat there and it continues to be the answer to "how do I make my money?" even while it's not per se the answer to "what's my life's work?" But it's also not totally irrelevant to my life's work, which puts it in this weird limbo space: neither irrelevant enough to just be a cash project, nor central enough to feel like where I want to invest my public profile/identity. Confusing and stressful.
Related to [Sasha's recent post on it being okay to want to look good](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/theres-nothing-wrong-with-doing-things), I've been finding it helpful to decouple my motivations. Oh, sometimes I want to build a new feature for philosophical integrity, okay that's why. Oh, maybe I want to run this promotion to make more money, okay that's why. Not confusing my desire to make more money with my desire to make a beautiful meaningful offering to the world. Ideally they synergize, but they're not identical. Huh, interesting to land on the word "identical" in the context of the title of your post!