Vitter

This is a question regard the ethics of using another personality in order to have a certain someone like you.

Let's say you have a personality that was unique, that many people liked to befriend, but did not want to have a relationship with; would it be wrong to change your personality in order to get a person to like you? Keep in mind I'm referring to a short-term relationship. I couldn't stand being in a long-term relationship if I didn't be myself.

If your argument is that one should not change their personality no matter who it is, so that there is no deception, then should a rude person not hide the fact that they are rude(keep it on his inside)? Wouldn't the rude person want to not have people egging/tp'ing his house?

I'm sure many of you would say there is hardly a comparison between being defensive of your house, and having a person like you. But consider the alternative of having a personality no one wants to be around. Would it be OK to do then?

I'm also fairly certain there will be a respondent who will argue that 'There is a certain 'type' for everybody, and that person should just keep looking'. And what of the person should he not find this 'type'? There are 6+ billion people on this planet, and most people only meet a few thousand, so please don't bother with that argument, as there are people that are obviously not perfect for each other together, but they make the best of it and just live their lives with each other.

Feel free to argue upon each point for its merit, as I want to know the general acceptability for each.

QuasiMondo

It's about as wrong as a chameleon changing his skin color to blend in with his environment.

We are social creatures. We need this flexibility to survive, whether it's an asshole who needs to display manners so his boorish behavior doesn't isolate him from everybody, or a meek individual who needs to display assertiveness so they're not eaten alive. I think it's only natural that one adapts themselves to fit the environment they're in.

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ratbastid

In life, we don't always get to say what we have or what we do. The only thing we EVER have complete and total, 100% say about is who we're going to be.

It's normal to be different ways with different people. That is--it's no more a lie than anything else a human being does, which is to say, a complete and total lie. But that's not wrong, considering you're doing it quite literally ALL the time.

Punk.of.Ages

Why would you want to be in any kind of relationship with somebody who can't appreciate you for who you are? Unless by "short-term relationship" you mean a one night stand. In any other sort of relationship deception will most likely lead to nothing but a bitter end and a burned bridge.

I can relate with this statement as I am not necessarily a rude person, but I do tend to be a very vulgar and obnoxious person. There are times in life, due to the society we live in, where you have to give off a different persona. eg. Chances are if I were to tell a girl I work with I would like to spit in her vagina, as I would a girl in my personal life (Yes, I am a smooth operator), I would be unemployed, to say the least.
Basically, in professional and casual interactions it is usually wise to remain polite and stick to the social norm of how people should act. When it comes to your personal life and the interactions therein, though, I believe you should always be the person you truly are. Otherwise, you will have false relationships with everybody you know, and who wants that?

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Ourcrazymodern?

I don't think any PERSON can IMPERSONATE any other PERSONALITY.

ratbastid, as is his wont, speaks the truth:

We are different PERSONS to everyPERSON we interact with because we come individually packaged.

Be yourself, whatever else you do. Love yourself.

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Martian

I think it's interesting that you talk about personalities as if they're fixed and unchanging things outside our control. You talk about your hypothetical 'rude person' as if being rude is something that happened to him, not something he is.

You are who you are. You choose how to act and that defines you as an individual. So far as I can figure it, that's really all there is to the discussion.

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Some were born to sing the blues
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Crompsin

We are very much who we think we are...

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Vitter

Thanks for the responses, much appreciated . I do believe that personalities can change, Martian, but for the most part I was attempting to allude to the people that seem to believe one shouldn't disguise their persona to anybody for any period of time. I've talked to a female that thought it was wrong to do, and I've thought of her as being the 'Average Jane', and for the most part I wanted to know if her belief was the general consensus. I'm glad most people on this board have more than the iota of intelligence this girl displayed.

Crompsin

I like to think we're more like the plasma membrane of cells.

Porous, throbbing, changing, letting certain things in, rejecting others.

The interstitial areas... where the differences in humans hide.

This isn't impersonating another personality. This is called tact.

__________________
C19H28O2 = C6H2(NO2)3CH3

All your base are belong to us.

tiger777

I would say, specifically trying to deceive someone is wrong, however i can understand if you really really like her and feel that you'll eventually reveal your personality and truly believe you can make her happy that you could feel justified in doing so. However if you have selfish reasons for doing so I thin it is wrong.

The_Jazz

Yup. Spot on.

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Seer666

If you really stop and think about it, we all do this all the time. Our interactions with different people all come with different expectations. If you really think about it, I'm sure you'll notice that they way you act around other changes, if even a little, from person to person. Do you act the same way around your boss as you do you best friend? What you are talking about is simply being human.

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analog

I have to strongly disagree.

If for nothing else but my own personal entertainment, I will somewhat frequently pretend to have another personality entirely. I have a "southern gentleman" personality, complete with voice and mannerisms (think along the lines of "Gone with the Wind" southern gentleman, with a slow drawl. If you've ever seen The Saint, with Val Kilmer, it's sort of modelled after his "southern gentleman" disguise).

I have an extreme OCD personality that has a tic (neck twitch) whenever someone says "the" (or any other word I might pick at the moment)... his voice is pretty much always a North Dakota/Minnesota accent... I have no idea why, but when I do that personality, that's the voice that seems to fit.

There's "guy with crappy depth perception"... not really a personality, but I completely unfocus my eyes so it effectively looks like i'm blind or can't focus on anything, and then when I reach out to take or give things, it's always way off and/or in the wrong general direction.

I also have several others that are more subtle or less developed, but they're fun.

Ok- ever notice on news shows when they're doing a live broadcast from somewhere, "via satellite", and the person on the other end is always standing there for a couple of seconds after the first person finishes speaking, because of the delay? Sometimes I do that... continue to stand there with the same look on my face, give it several seconds, and then finally answer as though I was working on some sort of delay. That's a fun one, because people tend to get weirded out pretty quickly, and yet it's so innocent.

Oh, and of course I adopt a professional persona while at work which is just an extension of my natural personality. Maybe that's closer to what you were talking about.

Crompsin

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qoIvd3zzu4Y&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qoIvd3zzu4Y&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

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C19H28O2 = C6H2(NO2)3CH3

All your base are belong to us.

analog

Oh, my God... it even has a watermark...

Btw, for youtube videos, all you need to do to embed them here is type this:

[*youtube] crazy combo of letters and numbers for the video [*/youtube]

Without the *'s, obviously...

[*youtube]qoIvd3zzu4Y[*/youtube] yields:



(For some reason, you're less likely to get erroneous "video no longer available" messages. Plus, it's easier.

Also: I don't have any fully developed serial killer personalities, though I do have 2 voices I use for stalker/serial killer/generic-creepy-guy purposes, for fun.

Crompsin

Work on it. Your profession demands it! Just as my new profession will require excessive drinking and multiple divorces.

...

Copy and paste "embed" is faster. I'm keyboard lazy. Clip works fine for me.

__________________
C19H28O2 = C6H2(NO2)3CH3

All your base are belong to us.

Ourcrazymodern?

Aw, y'all are speaking Greek, goddammit!

It works for me.

So does myself.

Your "personality" is unbound to be changed.

Live with yourself and enjoy.

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

Yakk

If it is in your personality to pretend to have another personality in order to make social interaction better, then isn't the pretending to have another personality just part of your personality?

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

CoolestPerson

I'm fairly sure it has to be all about perception. The phrase "Life is what you make of it", is just that, a thought, a point of view. You can't just ask if someone can impersonate another personality because everyone is going to have a different perception of what a personality is and what constitutes impersonating. I mean, someone can be a grocery clerk while at the same time becomming an inspiring artist...

jewels

How'd it go? Inquiring minds and all that.

I don't know if "disguise" is the word you meant or not. Disguise would imply deception. Analog's other personalities are not deceptions, they're facets of his personality. We all have different aspects of ourselves. But when one deliberately tries to pretend what he's not, that's where the difference lies. People can be hurt.

Hiding who you are versus showing another side of one's self - those are two completely different scenarios.

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Ourcrazymodern?

My soon-to-be ex-wife "fucking hates me". Most of the people I meet do the opposite.

What I mean to say is, the honesty you get is equal to the honesty you give. Or vice-versa. Your mind is the only thing you have to go on riding until the trip is over.

I kind-of wish I had fallen off a bull once or twice so I could explain this strange dementia, but I didn't, so can't.

Can I now pretend that I think impersonating another personality can possibly be right, beyond what everyone has said?

No, I won't. So I can't.

The 6 billion provide enough options.

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

twistedmosaic

Some good advice on the subject...

At the same time, I wouldn't call changing your personality an impersonation, unless you're trying to duplicate or become a specific person. Just having different personas is totally normal. I would never swear, smoke, or drink around my mother...does this mean I have a different persona when I am around her than around my friends? Slightly, but it's more like the same me with a different filter applied. I am not a different person, I just put up different filters.

Another example: I love board games, working on cars, and magic the gathering. When I was single and out at the bars, would I discuss any of those three things with the ladies I was buying drinks for? Of course not. I'd talk about work, or school, or maybe if I had a race coming up I'd talk about that, but I wasn't going to tell them how excited I was about my new exhaust, or how I hoped I won the bid on the Darksteel Collosus playset on ebay that night. I wouldn't lie about it if it came up, but you have to know how to present yourself.

Take a good long introspective look, and be sure that all your 'personas' reflect a facet of your true self. There's a difference between being well rounded and socially adept, and being two faced.

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belezabaub

You own personality is not something you control. IMHO your perceived reflection of yourself is very much controlled by the reactions of others around you. Does a beautiful woman know she is beautiful through just by looking at herself in the mirror? I don't think that she does. She judges herself on the reaction of others. If men approach her and if women compliement her appearance she thinks she is beautiful, if they don't she does not.

Our perceived personality of ourselves is merely a construct of people's favourable or unfavourable reactions to our actions and in reality very few of even our closest friends take the time to meaningfully form any rational view on our personality. Instead we devote well over 90% of our time rationalizing about ourselves and peoples reaction towards us rather than thinking about how we perceive them.

Maybe I'm just an egomaniac but whenever I think about people I know, I can tell you stories about things they done, I can tell what makes them angry or sad but when you ask me about personality or what type of person I percieve them to be, I can usually sum it up up in a sentence. Ask me about my own personality or how I percieve myself, all I can say is, I hope your sitting comfortably because this is going to take a while.

Our own personality is far more important to ourselves than anyone else. No one gives a shit. People in my experience are much more self concious than they are concious of the world around them.

MirrorsrorriM

all culture is copying. All civilizations, all cultures, passed on from generation to generation is the result of everyone copying the smart, cool, people.

P.S. Eating chicken wings is not culture, it is anti-culture. Pauly Shore is not culture, he is anti-culture. What I mean is, there is culture and there is anti-culture, anti-culture is the poison ner-do wells spread to inflict pain and confusion on others around them, culture is the passing on of useful or artistic, inspiring information, techniques, proverbs to one's children or friends.

When an alien, hostile population is spreading anti-culture, it is because they want to kill and destroy that culture so that it's own indigenous culture can take over, it's like weeds spreading into the surrounding area, slowly, dropping their seeds, graduation sucking the nutrients out of the ground, killing the pretty flowers around them.

Master_Shake