Around 10 PM last night, I left the lobby of Sogang University's Graduate School of Virtual Convergence. It was after class by Professor Lee Su-young on Virtual Convergence User Theory.
The outside air felt somewhat humid. It was weather that you couldn't quite call rainy, but also couldn't call clear. Clouds hung thinly in the middle of the sky, and the fading light before night set in remained faintly on the campus building windows.
I stopped my steps briefly in front of the school gate.
"What is identity?"
Words I had heard during class slowly rewound in my head.
Empiricism. Virtuality within reality. A fake world. Avatars. Descartes. Mind and body.
At first it felt somewhat unfamiliar. The idea that virtuality exists within reality. The question of what a fake world is.
We commonly think of virtual space as a world separate from reality. We think real life is offline and online is merely a fabricated image. But as I listened to the class, I began to think that distinction was not as solid as I had thought.
In reality too, we always live wearing some image. At work we wear a professional-employee-like attitude, at school a student-like attitude, and at gatherings we choose expressions appropriate to those relationships. It is not only photos posted on Instagram that are staged. We in reality also constantly construct and display ourselves according to situations and relationships.
Thinking about it, reality is not always just reality as it is either. We consume a certain atmosphere at travel destinations, stage a taste at cafes, and select scenes worth showing someone. The moment we enter a certain space, we take on slightly different expressions and attitudes.
Then can we call only virtual space 'fake'?
Rather, virtual space is closer to a space where the self-expression and identity construction already occurring in reality are revealed more clearly, rather than a completely separate fictional world from reality. An avatar is not fictional disconnected from the real me, but could be another me — the way I want to be, the way I want to be recognized by others, and another me rebuilt within social standards.
The professor mentioned avatars during class.
"An avatar can be seen as the spirit appearing in the form of a body."
I lingered long on that statement. Descartes' distinction between mind and body. The thinking me, the existing me. An avatar may be another form created by a mind without a body wanting a body again.
The face I chose. The clothes I chose. The name I chose. The place I decided to stay.
My wishes are clearly within that.
The me I couldn't fully reveal in reality. The me I want to be. The me I want to show others.
So I agree to some extent with the explanation that an avatar is a result of my spirit being projected. Avatars are not created randomly. We choose. We choose a hairstyle, choose an expression, dress it, and give it a name.
At each moment of those choices, we confess a little.
"I want to be this kind of person."
"I want to look this way."
"In this world at least, I want to exist in this kind of way."
But the class did not stop there.
Identity was not merely a matter of how I think about myself. No matter how much I think of myself as a wonderful person, if the people around me do not recognize me as wonderful, that wonderfulness does not become social identity.
That statement was somewhat chilling.
I am me, but saying I am me is not sufficient in itself. The being called me is not completed alone but is remade within interactions with others.
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
"Ultimately I am both the me I chose and the me others have responded to."
At that thought, online space looked different.
Virtual space commonly seems like a free space. It feels like a place where rank, title, age, and social position in reality can be set aside for a while. But is that really true?
Where avatars gather, there are also norms. That world also has standards of coolness, standards of popularity, and ways of fitting in. Someone receives more attention, someone is passed by. Some ways of speaking are welcomed, some attitudes are rejected. The social standards of reality have not disappeared. They have simply appeared again wearing different clothes.
Then Brunch suddenly came to mind.
I live as 'Gwanghwamunduk' in the online space Brunch.
That name is not just a nickname. It is a name with a slightly different texture from my name in reality. But it is not a false name. Rather, thoughts and emotions that the real me hadn't fully expressed become a little clearer under that name.
I write here, in this space called Brunch. I write about wine, life, technology, and some day's sense of being at a loss. Words that I couldn't easily bring out in reality somehow flow out more naturally in that space.
Sometimes I get confused about whether I created Gwanghwamunduk, or whether Gwanghwamunduk is gradually remaking me.
At first I chose that name. But as time passed, that name began to demand a certain attitude from me.
To think more deeply. Not to let things flow by easily. To catch emotions in sentences. Not to just pass by the world, but to look at it one more time.
Then is Gwanghwamunduk fake?
No. He is a part of me. Sometimes he may be a more honest me than the real me.
But simultaneously he is also the me made within interactions with readers. When someone reads my writing and empathizes, when they leave a comment, when they share — in those moments, Gwanghwamunduk is not completed by me alone but is rebuilt within relationships.
Identity is not something I determine unilaterally. It is something formed in the interaction between me and others. And this applies equally in virtual space.
So the question the professor posed in class extends even further.
Does identity change, or is it revealed? Is the me in virtual space a 'new me created' or a 'me that was hidden being revealed'?
I don't know the answer clearly. But I think this much is certain. The me in virtual space is also the real me. It is just a version of me in a different context, in a different form.
And that is why virtual space is not simply a fake world. It is a space where the complexity of our identity is revealed more honestly than in reality.
