At the same time, there is the much more unsettling opposite idea of the domination of my screen persona over my "real" self. Our social identity, the person we assume to be in our social intercourse, is already a "mask" that involves the repression of our inadmissible impulses. But it is precisely in the conditions of "just playing" - when the rules regulating our "real life" exchanges are temporarily suspended - that we can permit ourselves to display these repressed attitudes. Take the proverbial impotent shy person who, while participating in a cyberspace interactive game, adopts the identity of an irresistible seducer or sadistic murderer. It is all too simple to say that this identity is just an imaginary escape from real-life impotence. The point is rather that, since he knows that the cyberspace interactive game is "just a game," he can "show his true self" and do things he would never have done in real-life interactions. In the guise of a fiction, the truth about himself is articulated. The fact that I perceive my virtual self-image as mere play thus allows me to suspend the usual hindrances which prevent me from realising my "dark half" in real life. My electronic id is given wing.
