Welcome to college, punk

So I've entrenched myself in college now, and I've reached the point of the year where I'm making essays and speeches left and right. I just wrapped up one for Expository writing about how mentally fragmented the internet's made me, and considering the depressed-hipster theme of my blog I thought I'd post it here.

We were playing an online strategy game called Starcraft 2. My opponent, the random person I had been paired up against online was charging my army with his horde of generic space marines. He was cocky-- he sent me a cliche'd taunt as the battle begun. I responded immediately. "I AM GOING TO POOP IN YOUR BUTT, SO THAT NEXT TIME YOU TAKE A SHIT, MINE WILL COME OUT FIRST. AND I WILL HAVE BEATEN YOU AGAIN." He didn't have any retort to that (and coincidentally lost the battle.)
Perhaps like most people, my online personality doesn't quite correspond with my real life personality. On Facebook and social sites in general, I'm sarcastic and cocky; more-so than in public, at least. In video games, however, I with resemble some kind of hybrid between the Joker and a rabid dog. I take an odd pleasure out of coming up with insane taunts, insults, and occasionally compliments to throw at random people in video games. I've never cared much for winning in itself, but I strive for it anyway; I enjoy any excuse to fling little slices of psychosis at my opponents. I consider it a small victory to see an enemy player pause for a moment after reading "I WILL BREAK YOU IN HALF AND KILL BOTH PIECES" in a game's chat box. After a few years of this shenanigans in video games, I've developed a kind of crazy persona online. Anyone who plays with me often has learned to expect Doc Walrus (my online name for everything) to babble like a lunatic all the time.

My friends get their fun out of the chaos, too. My roommates and I play as a team on Starcraft 2, and practice every other night or so. If I have a good line, I can hear them laughing in their rooms. Every once in a while, someone online takes my e-psychosis personally, and the 3 of us on our team compete to see who can make our opponent angrier. It isn't out of cruelty or ill will, we just enjoy the game-- sometimes at other people's expense. It's closer to trash talking between sports teams than an actual argument; nobody loses sleep over offending someone online. Despite our love of trash-talking, we aren't the best team in our league (which is coincidentally the lowest league in Starcraft 2's hierarchy) but whenever we win, we make sure the enemy noticed.
This is a sharp contrast to who I am in reality. I'm soft-spoken, polite, and intelligent with a strange sense of humor and no fashion sense to speak of. I might be a bit of an arrogant douche, but aside from that, I don't come off as "some kind of hybrid between the Joker and a rabid dog." I enjoy being nice to people, and try to avoid offending anyone. With my odd sense of humor, this makes my video game self seem even more hilarious to me. Humor seems to be the one thing connecting [real name] and Doc Walrus, and sometimes I think it's an interesting topic to think about. If I'm not busy threatening to punch all of someone's blood out online, that is.

While this pseudo-multiple-personality-insanity is my current identity-related situation, it's only been the case for a couple years. As a freshman in high school, I was a meek little stereotypical nerd through all mediums of communication. I was afraid of girls, overweight, lazy, the whole eight-and-a-half yards (I was too lazy for nine at the time.) I had no real sense of humor, just spouting out stupid quotes from Anime or "Invader Zim", and this obviously didn't help me socially. Things looked hopeless for me until I stumbled upon a great and terrible place on the internet-- 4chan.

Now, nobody rational would ever look into 4chan on their own time, and I discourage it. 4chan was an image-board on the corner of the internet where the only rule tying the place together was "Don't post anything illegal." this madhouse of random people--all forced to be nameless and faceless, as one big pile of anonymous posters-- introduced me to a different view of the world. They rambled about politics, made jokes, hacked other sites, and raised hell in general. The first major social experiences in my life were in this virtual maelstrom. I took on the charmingly twisted sense of humor that "Anonymous" shared, took advice from them and learned from their collective mistakes in life. I learned there to grow up and take care of myself. Both my Doc Walrus and [real name] were shaped by that chaotic place, and for all its faults it will remain a sacred place to me. Not exactly anyone else's idea of a 'sacred place,' but it suits me fine.