Maskbook

We all wear masks. It’s human nature. We smile and “put on a happy face,” as the saying goes. We project an image of ourselves that we want others to see.
Insecure? Smile harder. Vulnerable? Don’t let it show. Starved for attention? Lots of ways to attract it. But is the appearance really who we are?
Sometimes the masks are digital, without the physical constraint of our actual bodies. Dungeons & Dragons was an early role-playing game, and we understand that considerable time is spent today with solitary computer games like The Sims or interactive games with chosen “avatars” on Web sites such as Roonscape, World of Warcraft, Free Realms or Club Penguin.
In those false realities, the mask is the game, as we define our digital selves and interact with other players in a virtual society.
Perish the thought that others might see us as we really are, especially for those who use match.com and the like as dating sites. “Pale underachiever seeks hot girl for good time with no commitments.” Not a winning entry in any competition. “Divorcee with body issues seeks rich white knight for marriage.” Also not a winner – that game is definitely played with masks.
We don’t quite understand the Facebook craze. It seems hardly to fulfill its overt purpose of networking with friends. Instead, it and numerous imitators are highly social settings where we put up more masks.
For whom do we reserve our true faces? It’s a short list. A spouse? A parent? Perhaps a sibling. Maybe a close friend or spiritual advisor. Certainly not hundreds of acquaintances on Facebook or untold numbers of strangers on MySpace. What they get is the mask we choose to show.
And we need to be wary of that mask, lest we ourselves come to believe that it’s real.
The white face mask worn by hockey goalies has become a part of horror lore, thanks to Jason in the Friday the 13th movies. But what’s really so scary isn’t the mask itself, or the evil that it concealed on film. No, what’s truly scary about that mask is the rigid blank stare. The lack of emotion. The isolation. The mask is frightening to encounter, but it should also be frightening to us from the inside when our own mask becomes a blank stare, dulled by the thousands of images we absorb of violence, cruelty and hate.
It’s ironic that in this era of instant, mass communication, it seems we have less of it, at least less of it that’s meaningful. When we can reach scores of “friends” but speak only superficially, that’s not real communication. Less than half the U.S. population reports now having even one close friend. Words we got, even if it’s just 140 characters on Twitter, but do we still have intimate friends, in whom we can confide? Apparently not; many people don’t have true friends at all.
Maybe Facebook should be called Acquaintancebook, as it’s just a way of putting yourself on display, using a mask to create your own image, both literally and figuratively.
Even more accurate, Facebook should be called Maskbook, since it’s nothing more than a book full of digital masks created to show the image we want others to have of us.
Funny, empathetic, heroic, powerful, alluring – those are the masks we show. It’s so much healthier to acknowledge our true images, as flawed as they actually are, and to share them with the true friends we might still have. In our view, wearing our masks too long and too often ultimately keeps us from getting the validation and love we all need.