Several years ago, I was taking a class where I constantly disagreed with the course Instructor. It was really stressful. Couple that with the fact that I was enrolled in three courses, and had then just taken on a demanding new full-time position at work, and you get ‘power-trip Carolyn’: the girl who gets a sick pleasure from pointing out all of the ways that her superiors and peers (but never subordinates) are incompetent. She appears mostly in electronic form (i.e. in email, IM, message board posts), but she has been known to appear in person, impatiently ‘telling it like it is’. Anyway, that term, she appeared as an online bully to the course Instructor and TA’s, nit-picking all of their incorrect facts, lack of familiarity with pertinent information, and inconsistent arguments from class. Through online discussion, she rallied the troops in revolt, fueling dozens of students with the courage [i.e. arguments] to properly defend themselves and file real complaints with the department regarding the Instructor and his TA’s performance. At the time she thought she was an articulate leader who guided the actions of her peers through thought-provoking wording in her posts. In retrospect I see that I was just under a lot of pressure, taking it out on the next most available target. I insult under the guise of concern. I still do. When I used to write on Misfortunate, I did this as Nylorac, and with strangers I used various other pseudonyms.
I started out this post with the intention of discussing the large discrepancy that exists between one’s online persona and his/her face-to-face one, but instead managed to veer off into the ugly world of regret, where some of my most shameful moments reside.
