Welcome to Gaia! ::

I can honestly say that I act on the internet as I do offline. I don't lie about things like you mentioned, but I do sometimes use mule accounts for anonymity. For example, it is interesting to view people's reactions to a female account of mine.

Anonymity is great in my opinion. Why? It nullifies peer pressure.

its impossable, once i made a mule, (differnt site) and a damn mod who was my freind said "oh its just foxboy"
in like 30 seconds, damn ip address

An interesting quote, but wouldn't "A wise man has nothing to hide" be better? Yours speaks more of a cautious man than a wise one, after all, most secrets are eventually discovered.

Now, on to the topic. I admit I make great use of the anonymous nature allowed online. Most of the time I'll lie about several things. Age, gender, assorted life experiences, name, location, family, things like that. But I don't do those things for cheap thrills, and I'll generally come clean about things. Instead, I use it for psychological experiments. They may not be ones that can be used anywhere to prove things, but that's fine since I do them to educate myself. I recently had an account on here where I went so far as to claim to be a submissive 18 year old girl who was a daily victim of abuse and had such low self esteem that she willingly did things she'd rather not. I went quite in-depth with the background story, family life, even the types of people "I" encountered in day to day life so as to become the most convincing in order to obtain the "purest" of results. Probably not the most honorable of things, but sexuality is still important for one to study in order to completely understand human nature, and I'm pleased with the results. I encountered several who obviously lied about themselves as well and passed them up, but I encountered a few who, while also lying slightly about themselves, seemed to be quite sadistic. From them I learned that even those who seem extremely cold and heartless, uncaring for others except what they can get from them, are capable of regretting their selfish ways. Of course, this meant abandoning the experiment for a month and returning with fabricated news of a trip to jail, but it did give me enough data to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately, my morals got too much in the way to continue on the experiment any longer when I could see that the subject honestly did regret having me do what I supposedly did.

Outside of my own personal psychological experiments (almost all of which are limited to human sexuality, as it's a very broad topic to explore and, despite studying it for years people continue to surprise me and show just how little I truly know), I still make some use of the ability to remain anonymous online. I may give someone my honest location, age, gender, and if they're truly lucky they might get my real first name. Outside of things that can reveal my identity though, I lie about nothing online. All stories I tell are surprisingly true despite my previous claims of deception, even stories of my own experiences that sound entirely fabricated.

I will admit to having shown my face via webcam to people from websites that I've been a member of for quite some time though. Those individuals which I did have proven themselves trustworthy to the degree of removing at least that mask of anonymity and providing a face to go with my various online names, as well as validating or disproving any claims to age, gender, appearance, or race that I may have previously made. There are even a few people who's personalities I'm so sure of that, should they be in my area or should I visit theirs, I'd be more than happy to arrange a meeting of some sort with them. But even with many of those people, I still keep myself somewhat anonymous, giving them a false name or making them unsure that my given name is true. Should I ever meet one of them in person though, I'd be more than happy to show my driver's license as proof and remove all anonymity from myself.

And though it may seem hypocritical, I'm not entirely supportive of bending truths online. I can understand doing it to protect your identity or for the pursuit of knowledge, but not for pleasure. Now, I don't entirely include roleplay in the previous scenario. It's acceptable in cases where everyone is aware that that isn't the real you, but people shouldn't abuse the ability to remain anonymous by going around and telling people they should kill themselves or for getting some type of sadistic pleasure from harassing others. Also, I'm against lying about yourself to make you appear special. It's an insult to those who are truly as you claim to be. If you honestly have the ability to speak with ghosts or teleport objects a few meters, that's fine. But if you can't, don't waste your time and ours with your lies. Such things only serve to further distort truth, something unneeded in the paranormal fields. (Quick note. It appears that the American, Russian, and Chinese governments all believe in psychic teleportation, as seen in a report here. That serves as enough proof for me to believe that some individuals truly have such abilities.)