There is an inherent disconnect between people’s online personas and who they are in real life, creating a divide between their IRL (in real life) and URL (online) identities. The way we represent ourselves online-through curation and manipulation-creates a discrepancy between the expectations we have of ourselves and our actual experiences, leading to feelings of inadequacy and making it difficult to perceive and connect to others in real life. This week I’m exploring the idea of the real vs. ideal self and investigating how, in the age of the internet, we might reconcile the two.

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