How much about your online life do your family & friends know?

[GeceAzrak]

All my friends are in the virtual world and I share everything I do with my family. Just the other day I was telling my mom the details of things I was going to add to my site! He doesn't really understand these things, but he likes to see me happy!
 

[bugfeli]

i like being an open person, especially with friends and close family, but my online life is almost like a little break from everything. not to say i'm a completely different person online (i honestly cant help but let my personality peek through in most cases) but i like keeping my more "embarrassing" interests online.

living in a majority offline community, i'm especially lucky to have been on the internet as long as i have been, its kinda difficult to gush about online phenomena and or topics that are commonplace on the net when everyone you know only uses one social media or none at all. but for people my age, at least people i can trust, i dont mind inducting them into some online culture by showing my website and works. some of my friends really take an interest in my projects, so i grant them access to my online space so they can check through backlogs of work and honestly just see into a small window of my personal life.

some of my friends actually check my profile on here, so if you're reading this, hi!

[shapezncolourz]

not many people in real life know about my online stuff at all - only one person i know could know this stuff, and even then they don't know as much as they could as they only follow my public instagram, which i don't use anymore. i think i'd like to keep it that way to be honest ':3

[wygolvillage]

My parents used to follow all my accounts, stalk my fanfiction profiles, etc. It made me very uncomfortable especially when I started wanting to share more with my followers and mutuals on Tumblr- even when I softblocked them they'd just refollow me. This was obviously not great as a teenager finding itself online.

Nowadays I don't share anything with them. If you're related to me you don't get to see my website, full stop.

[Paprika]

I do not share it with my family because they wouldn't understand. I know them well they"re not bad people but they would label me as super weirdo and some of 'em would probably have concerns when they shouldn't.

I have shared it with my closest friends that I trust and they thought it was really neat. I also don't want my family ti get involved so there's no doxxing or anything like this. My website is my small garden that can be opened to some close people but not to all my acquaintances and family.

[ajazz]

my family know i have a youtube channel but that's about it. my friends, however, hear about my indie web exploits quite frequently, and there's a channel in our discord called "#girlblogging" where i post cool stuff i found while surfing around. many of them have actively taken an interest in web revival stuff - melonking's site really blew them away lmao

[Fisher Moon]

I try to keep my Internet life and my IRL life separate, so none of my friends or family follow me or even know my usernames, except for my Snapchat/Discord, which are kept very separate from, say, Neocities (just for the record, yes Snapchat sucks but I don't think I'd be able to convince my friends to move).
On the other hand, most people know I use a lot of smaller platforms, and I talk about my Neocities site in the abstract a lot, I just don't intentionally show it off or try to get others to join.
Honestly I think if an IRL friend somehow realised who I was I would probably purge half my online presence. I'm not even that weird of a person in my friend group but the idea of someone just seeing my weird interests feels wrong.

[candycanearter07]

I try to keep my Internet life and my IRL life separate, so none of my friends or family follow me or even know my usernames, except for my Snapchat/Discord, which are kept very separate from, say, Neocities (just for the record, yes Snapchat sucks but I don't think I'd be able to convince my friends to move).
On the other hand, most people know I use a lot of smaller platforms, and I talk about my Neocities site in the abstract a lot, I just don't intentionally show it off or try to get others to join.
Honestly I think if an IRL friend somehow realised who I was I would probably purge half my online presence. I'm not even that weird of a person in my friend group but the idea of someone just seeing my weird interests feels wrong.

I get that, I try to keep my internet and irl stuff seperate (excluding the school servers I'm in and sometimes sharing my neocities). I get pretty embarrased by some of my interests and avoid those though..

I really wish my brother would get that though, kinda dealing with them at the moment which is very stressful

[ayn_sweeet]

How do you feel about sharing your online personas with people in your everyday life?

I feel very uncomfortable about things like this- especially when it comes to my parents because we don't have a very good relationship with each other. The only way I'd share something apart of my online life to anyone is if they were my best-friend... and even then, I'd still be cautious.

It's not like I do anything bad on the internet, its more about the fact that I talk about personal things (sometimes) and share somewhat "uncool" or "lame" interests that I do not want other people knowing about.

I do have a best-friend right now, and she knows that I frequent on forums a lot... but that's about the extent of what she knows. Sometimes she asks to see what I'm writing, and I usually show her, but I never share anything I post or write voluntarily... and I plan to keep it that way.

My internet life is my own business. I dislike it when other people interfere too much in it. 

[eezstreet]

I showed my wife the homepage of Melonland and explained it to her. She seemed a bit confused and thought it was an art project or something. I explained it a lot more in-depth and I didn’t really get a response other than “oh, that’s cool.” Sometimes I wish that things that I care about (even in other areas like music) would present opportunities for bonding conversations, but they rarely do. I think part of the reason that they don’t is simply because I don’t bring them up. There’s some innate fear that holds me back from doing it. Probably bullying.

I haven’t started my webpage(s) yet. But I hope thst when I do, she will help me collaborate or at least be willing to let me put recipes on it. As morbid and as depressing as it sounds, I hope that my online presence doesn’t disappear from the internet when I die. I would love for her to stumble upon some new little Easter egg that I’ve left for her.

[mike]

For the longest time I felt like I had to hide everything I did online. I've been on the internet since I was a young kid; I had to hide my online activity from my mother so she wouldn't find out that I was talking to strangers online and swearing like a sailor at the age of nine. Even as I grew up I always felt like I was doing something wrong online, even though I was mostly just posting stupid stuff on social media and playing petsims.

The internet allowed me to present myself in a way I felt like I couldn't in real life. I could shamelessly be myself, as queer and autistic as I wanted to be without the need to mask and pretend to be "normal" in front of other people. This was celebrated in most of the online communities I joined, and a lot of my online friends were in similar situations as me. I fit in online, but was terrified of expressing myself IRL. I couldn't let anyone find out about what I was actually like, I couldn't let them find my accounts.

It felt like I was two people at once; the person I was online was entirely different to the person I was offline. Which one was real? Who am I when I'm not on the internet? Would I be the person I am if I hadn't grown up with the internet?

After a lot of frustration and identity crises, I eventually decided that none of it really matters anyway. I am the person I am, and nobody but me can change that. So I fully unmasked IRL and allowed myself to be as shamelessly Me offline as I am online.

I still haven't really told anyone what I do online; my family and friends know that I like coding and building websites and they're very supportive of that, but I still don't want to link them my accounts or websites. There are some things that I'm willing to plaster online for strangers to see under the guise of general anonymity, but never my family or friends LOL. Maybe one day I'll feel more comfortable with it.

[JINSBEK]

“Family” is an interesting one, because I’m not even sure if my brothers know their older sister has been a man for several years now. I haven’t much spoken to any relative since I transitioned from Female to Male, and I’ve completely changed my name, so even anyone looking would have a hard time finding me. My parents have a peripheral awareness that I exist as a man. It’s always been that way: my family has never been close whatsoever, we were always just strangers related by blood who lived under the same roof. There is no chance for either recognition or surprise at any aspect of my personality, nor facet of my life, simply because they don’t know me.

My co-workers closest to me know I have at least one website; I’ve even showed some to them, they’ve liked what they’ve seen and browsed. None of them think it’s “odd” that I’m into that sort of thing, I daily come into work dressed in streetwear ready for a rave at a moment’s notice. I think they’d be surprised if I didn’t have a creative outlet…

I actually have my art website advertised on 5 of the city’s bus stops, so we’re& not exactly shy about it.