Can people recognize online personalities?

sometimes, but you need to have spent a lot of time with the person.

i have had friends of mine try and play tricks on me on msn, and i could tell it was them as soon as they said a certain something or used a certain emote.

Here it is fairly easy since erasing one’s core personality is very difficult. He or she may try, initially, but eventually will revert to type. That’s been my experience, at least.

Yes, it has happened here. Someone who is a regular will leave and then come back under a new identity. They often have “tells” that are quite recognizable to those who have known them long.

I’ve actually tried this and I’m very easy to spot. I can change my avatar, my user name but, I feel what I feel, I think what I think and I say it in my very recognizable language.

I deleted my account here and made a new one. PnL caught me in a few days. My style is cute, clumsy, and unique.

Yes, especially since some people tell the same story only use slightly different words but the tone is still the same.
I know of one person who came from AB. They changed their name but I was able to identify who they were and later comfirmed it. Funny thing is, either they didn’t remember my avatar or thought I was so oblivious that I wouldn’t know who they were.
I think a lot has to do with how observant one is of other personalities. Some personalities do stick out more than others. Like its easy to remember aggressive people with a chip on their shoulder, or anyone with a extreme personality type.

@Pandora

Good point. I think the racists, biggots, and people at the extereme ends of the personality spectrum can be picked out. But can you recognize the average JoeUser (expecially never meeting them in person)? The guy who falls right in the middle of the bell curve?

There have been a couple users to change their names on here. I generally tend to catch on.

@FlutherMe it depends how well you knew average JoeUser before the changing of his name.

If someone has grammatical or spelling peculiarities and I have seen enough of their writing, I will pick it up. Usually they have to have either annoyed me or impressed me enough for it to register.

It may take me awhile to put the writing to the person but I do.

Depends. Many people could have the same similarities to posses/lack of something that people suggest as a prove. It’s their right anyway.

People tell me that I am easily detectable in anonymous notes. People use language in idiosyncratic ways, and supposedly mine is easy to spot. I don’t know.

I’ve failed to detect people under different nicknames here, though. However, once it was brought to my attention that Person B was really Person A in disguise, I could see it.

I think so. That’s what our avatar and profile’s are for. It’s harder to recognize it though because you can’t hear the expression in their voice or see it on their face when they’re typing instead of talking.

I think it’s possible, but you would have to have known the former person for quite a while I think, and then be directly involved with the “newcomer” to spot it.

I wonder who has less life; the person coming back under new identities or the one trying to spot them lol.

I’m not talking about Fluther specifically, just about anonymity in general. From what I gather here you are never anonymous, not even online, because people will be able to spot your true self (unless you change your style completely, but if you do that how can you continue your “agenda” whatever it may be).

I would say yes but for the most part I meet and read about hundreds of different personalities every week that for me I have little ability to retain the nuances of specific forum members. There are though a few how I have pegged when they attempted to change aliases.

People would absolutely be able to tell that it’s me, unless I took a lot of energy to change the way I write.

I know that my friends and family would recognise me :)

My style, vocabulary and opinions have made me fairly obvious regardless of my cyber-incarnations.

Milo here: I am, of course, sui generis.

If I knew that person well enough and had talked to them regularly, or at least long enough to have noticed their personality characteristics, then I think I would be able to recognize them other places.

Not to be contrary, but I think there is a really long gap between “X sure reminds me of Y” and “X is Y.”

I am not sure most of us pay such close attention to one another that we would recognize those personalities anywhere. If someone here disappears, that alone is a huge clue. It sets up an expectation: “Maybe X will be back under another name.” And if X comes back with a similar name and mentions familiar personal data (marital status, occupation, age of children, pet themes, etc.), it’s an easy guess if you really paid a lot of attention to X in the first place.

That is altogether different from, say, noticing someone’s favorite phrases, manner of expression, and personality traits in e-mails at work and thinking, “Hey, I bet M.J. over there in the cube by the printers is really X from fluther!”

If X has been a very visible presence (not all of us are) and has a very distinctive style (and not all of us have) and doesn’t consciously conceal telling characteristics, then some of us will probably pick up on the identity. But I imagine it would be easy to maintain a disguise. I bet I could come on here under a separate account and masquerade as a newbie and not one person would pick me out unless they had a way of seeing my account registration and IP address. I even think I could do this without lying—i.e., without adopting a manufactured persona, such as pretending to be a young male college student.

I think a lot of us imagine that we are really more conspicuous than we are. In truth our monuments to ourselves may be the largest things on our own horizons but not on anyone else’s.

Having conducted a few natural experiments in this, I find that people really do know your writing signature, so to speak. Not everyone. Some figure it out faster than others. Some with a day, and then others might be realizing it weeks or even months later.

I think that, on some occasions when I did this, I tried to be different to see if people could still recognize me. While I did seem to be effective at hiding, the effort to hide rapidly became exhausting, and I gave it up.

It’s amusing to me. The most recent time, I thought I’d try to never write more than a paragraph. I thought @gailcalled would appreciate it. Alas, I was unable to remain parsimonious with my words for more than a day. Well, one thing has survived: I am using fewer topics to tag my questions.

I have fun figuring who is writing which board certification questions by their choice of wording.

I think it’s cheesy to pose for real, but it’s fun to change the avatar to adopt a different persona under the same name.

Really there are so many fewer cues that the risk of the above hinted at shenanigans is much greater.

I agree the ends of the bell curve are going to stand out, but never underestimate the diabolical.

I don’t even look at avatars very often. I think the regulars here know each others’ style and prose and could guess pretty quickly if someone just changed nicknames.

Yes, they can. I’ve done it :)

I get to recognize people’s writing styles after a while.

Even mine is apparent. I begin a lot sentences with “and” and “but”, I use a lot of semicolons, I begin a ton of sentences with “well”; it’s just the way I write. I also insert words like “though” and “however” in the middle of sentences.