I’ve always wondered what it means to be known. Last time I talked about how our desire to be known has to be rooted in God’s knowledge of us. I looked at the song “Goner” by twenty one pilots (the final track off of their album, Blurryface). I think Tyler Joseph says some interesting things that help me think through where a desire to be known must begin.
In this post I want to extend the discussion to being known by others. As I mentioned last time, the social phenomenon of catfishing has always intrigued me. Typically this topic is reserved for behavior within the realm of social media and online dating profiles. Of course, this is where the term comes from, thanks to a fantastic documentary on the subject and a subsequent TV show that uncovers different catfishing scenarios in each episode. I find this phenomenon fascinating in part because it happened to me! I was catfished before catfishing was a thing.
So here’s the short version (and I’m typically not a long story short sort of person but rather a short story long sort of person). When I was a Junior in High School (so about 17) my band, Final Direction, had a website with all sorts of webpages and features, including a Guestbook page. This was before the days of Facebook and Myspace, so the Guestbook page was an opportunity for fans to leave comments and get in contact with us. We were great at self-promotion and had personal profile pages that introduced everything about each of us from our favorite bands to our favorite candy. We would typically get comments like “OMG the singer is so HOT!!!1” and “the drummer is SOOO amazing!” But one time there was this very thoughtful and interesting comment left by a certain “Willow” who spoke highly of my guitar playing, compared my style to another band’s guitar, and made some other nice connections. It stood out to me because it wasn’t as superficial as the Guestbook comments tended to be. This was back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger and naturally, as self-promoters, our personal screen names were available on our website (mine was Aintdunneyet; get it?).
Well one day I received an Instant Message from someone named XoXoWillowXoXo, or something along those lines, and and I realized it was the girl from the Guestbook. We got to talking and I thought she was super cool and very knowledgeable of music in general. She sent me a picture and then I got really excited because this cool girl who was interested in my music was also super cute. We continued talking for some time, even talking on the phone a few different times. Little by little things didn’t quite add up (this is where I skip over several important details). I started to completely question everything she ever told me after about a month of interaction. So I told her on AOL Instant Messenger that I didn’t want to talk to her again until she told me the truth. So I got off online at that point and by the next time I logged back in there was an email from Willow in my Inbox entitled, “The Truth.” I opened it and it contained a large favorite’s list (modeled after my band’s website). Most of the information was stuff she had told me before. But once I got towards the bottom some more interesting information started to emerge. For example, she hadn’t been completely honest about her favorite band or her favorite song, etc. But then at the very bottom I found out that her real name was Danielle and that her DOB was listed below. I forget the day and the month, but the year was 1991, which made her a 12 year old girl at the time! I FREEEEAKED out. Below that DOB was a picture of her. And I’m talking she was a little girl. Like, golden trinkets in her hair dancing in the living room in a onesie kind of little girl. It was so ridiculous. I felt so gross. I ended up writing a song about and so the story spread pretty quickly. Everyone would poke fun at me for the story. For Christmas that year my parents even bought me the film Willow on DVD.
So a few weeks ago I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. There’s an interesting episode in season 1 that really stood out to me in light of my Willow experience. In Episode 7, “I Robot, You Jane,” the character Willow(!) is catfished by Moloch (a deity from ancient Canaan to whom many children were sacrificed). I’m half-convinced that this episode of Buffy is the origin of my catfishing experience. The culprit’s pseudonym was Willow, and Buffy was one of the most popular shows of the late 90s and early 2000s. Also, this episode is all about deceitfully passing yourself off as someone else. I wonder if this is where she learned about it.
Regardless of where she learned it, that experience always stood out to me when I think about being known. Obviously Willow had completely lied to me, but it made me think a bit more about the subtle ways in which we deceive others, put our best foot forward, project images of ourselves onto others, etc. This experience really made me critically reflective on how I want to be honest, authentic, and real with everyone.
But then there’s the other side of the issue. Even if we intend to be real and authentic, we can still be misunderstood and misinterpreted. What strikes me personally is that these misunderstandings are not always negative. Sometimes they’re quite positive. But the question I ask myself is: do I care if it’s positive considering that it’s false?
For example, I once received an anonymous letter in my school mailbox while in graduate school. The letter was written like a secret admirer note, sort of letting me know that this anonymous person was interested in me, and it was intended to be encouraging. It was written with some poetic flare and in good penmanship. At first it was a nice confidence booster, but then it became incredibly disheartening to me. The more I re-read the letter the more I realized that this person couldn’t have known me much at all. When I realized that, I could no longer look at the letter as positive or encouraging. Instead I couldn’t shake the feeling that this letter wasn’t written to me but rather to some other person who happens to look like me. It was a version of me that was rooted in a misinterpretation, or a distortion rooted in only one aspect of me.
This episode in my life has often made me wonder about the futility of relationships. Does this person who presumably likes “me” even know me? Of course, the response might be that everything begins with impressions and as the relationship progresses there’s a deeper knowledge of that person. But then I often wonder, but would this person even like me if they got to know me better? There’s a song by the hardcore band Atreyu that often comes to mind when I reflect on this.
The song metaphorically describes the inner-self and that part of one’s self that one hides from others in terms of a vampire’s convicted feelings about falling in love with someone despite all that he’s done. This is graphically, though in my view beautifully, expressed in the chorus: “will you still kiss me the same, when you taste my victim’s blood?”
I wrestle with what it means to be known given the fact that people can misunderstand us (even in nice ways) and given the fat that we all have skeletons in our closet. I don’t want to believe that it’s a futile desire to be known, but I’m often discouraged about it. And Facebook doesn’t help. It’s easy to project a very one-sided version of yourself when you select and highlight certain things about you over others. Last week I talked about how our desire to be known needs to be rooted in God’s knowledge of us since he is the only one who knows us truly and fully. I wonder, then, what it would be like if God created our Facebook profiles. I wonder how different mine would be compared to his version of mine. It’s just something I think about a lot. I don’t have neat answers here, just a desire to be authentic, real, and genuine, and in so doing grow closer to being known by others.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.