By MARC WOLLIN
The dystopian mystery black-comedy psychological thriller science fiction drama series, “Severance,” revolves around a company whose employees agree to have their work brain severed from their personal one. Their “Innie” and “Outie” have no knowledge of what the other is doing, even as they live and react to their respective worlds in a similar manner. While we may all have wished at one time or another we could leave the cares and responsibilities of our jobs at the office, this takes that to a whole other level.
That said, our lives are indeed bifurcated, but the dividing line isn’t work and play. Rather it’s online in the digital world vs. offline in the physical world. And flipping the contrivance of the show, while we have complete awareness of that other side of our personality when we move from sphere to sphere, the two sides are often distinct and different beings. We use aliases, pseudonyms and avatars to represent ourselves in the online world specifically to mask who we are in the real one. On top of that, at times our digital selves act and react in ways that not only run counter to how our IRL selves might behave, but do so in ways that would cause those physical beings to be embarrassed or even horrified.
At its most extreme we adopt a completely different personage when playing a game, leaving a review or commenting on an article, one that can be more honest, more aggressive or more downright mean than anything we would demonstrate if the audience could see us. It goes the other way as well: Online we can be quieter or more suspicious than we might be in similar situations were we standing next to a person. There we generally don’t stare, we give someone the benefit of the doubt, and go out of our way to assume they mean no harm. But behave that way online? Are you crazy?
Case in point (and with apologies to Rod Serling) for your consideration. We were having dinner at a friend’s house on a Saturday night. My watch vibrated, indicating a message. A quick glance confirmed it was neither my mother nor our kids, so I ignored it. Then it quickly happened again, again, again and again, five times in total. Curious now, I apologized to our hosts and pulled out my phone to take a look.
The first message was notice of a payment via Venmo for $20 from a name that meant nothing. The next one was a friend request from that same name, followed by two messages from that person. In the first, he/she/it commented on the payment: “Bro I sent it to the wrong person please give me that back please.” The next message was an apology for the trouble. The last was from the service itself, an actual request for payment.
And here’s where the divide between the two worlds is painfully obvious. Had I been standing in a store and a guy in front of me dropped a $20, I would not have hesitated to pick it up and give it back. Had he left his money clip sitting at a bar, I would have picked it up and run after him to return it. Indeed, one time I was getting off the train and saw a wallet on the seat. I found the owner’s name inside, called him and when I returned home after work that day drove it over to his house. As an aside, he gave me a bottle of wine for my trouble; it was appreciated but unnecessary.
In each case it would never have crossed my mind that I was being played. But because this was the online world, that was the first thing I thought of. Sure, it could have been an innocent mistake, an Occam’s razor approach where the simplest explanation is probably correct. But could it also have been a nefarious plot by some crime syndicate to get me to cough up twenty bucks AND gain access to my banking information and all my accounts? Perhaps I’ve seen too many movies or TV shows with a twist (like “Severance”), but that second scenario seemed just as plausible.
I wrestled with just writing “Here you go!” and sending the twenty bucks back to him/her/it. That’s what my “real-lifey” self would have done if we were at a party or a store or a restaurant. But my “on-liney” self wasn’t that trusting. I contacted the fraud department at Venmo and sent them screenshots of this possible shakedown. It only took a day or so for them to conclude from their investigation that, to put it in Freudian terms, sometimes a mistaken payment is just a mistaken payment. They reversed the transaction and the universe went back to level.
I prefer my IRL self, and like being with people who I hope are also trusting of me and my motives. But stick a screen between us, and all bets are off. With apologies to Peter Steiner and his famous cartoon with two pooches — on the internet, nobody knows you’re a solicitous friend. You might actually be an international cybercriminal. And who’s to know?
Marc Wollin of Bedford tries not to click on any link he doesn’t know. His column appears weekly via email and online on Blogspot and Substack as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.