Identity, Duality, Schizophrenia

Ah, what a joy it is, to see an inexperienced amateur at the game of online identity substitution roundly defeated by a past master of the game, without having ever realised that he was being played.

There are, and long have been, two entirely different schools of online tricksterhood. The long-game subtle variety, played with care and attention to detail, with due consideration given to the convincing development of backstory and internal continuity is one, often played by those who long ago graduated from the other, altogether less admirable school.

The other school is generally accompanied by a naive, arrogant and entirely misguided assumption of the player's own ability and skill, and to the seasoned eye of a practitioner of the more accomplished form of the game is, to put it mildly, as transparent as good old glass. When their childishly obvious activities are discussed publicly by those who have seen through their pathetic charade, it is not unusual for these failures to descend into wildly improbably paranoid fantasies and aggressive bluster to try to explain their failure, rather than to face up to their own hopeless incompetence at the game.