Here is an interview done in Spring of 1996. Originally it was done for a special issue of GRAND STREET, on 'diguise', or something like that. They never wound up running it, so I thought I'd put it here.Stacy Horn is my friend and President of Echo Communications.

Stacy Horn:

Who are you when you are on Echo, The Well and America Online?

Theresa Senft:

When I am on Echo, my handle is Jane Doe. I originally came up with that name while working as a phone sex operator! Every guy I spoke dirty to told me he was 190 pounds had a 9 inch penis, so I told every guy that I was a 5'7" ex-ballerina with green eyes and a 38 inch chest (luckily, most men don't ask how anyone with a 38 inch boobs was ballet dancing; its the first question I would ask, if I were having phone sex with a woman.) I was doing phone work while my mother was ill-it was something I could do that had very flexible hours.

Then, when my mother died, I found it difficult to talk to people-on the phone, in person, anywhere. That was when I got introduced to a cybersex bbs called Cyberoticom. Jane Doe, on Cyberoticom, was this spoiled little rich girl, something I never was. She would do any kind of wild thing sexually, as long as there were yummy gifts at the end. A famous phrase was, "Anyone who comes on my face buys me new towels!"

It wasn't until I joined Echo that people started asking me why I was using a handle that stood for an anonymous dead woman. I never made the connection to my mother's death until that time (paging Dr. Freud...) On Echo (and later, on The WELL), I was advised to be "myself," and I couldn't really figure out what on earth that was. Was I supposed to be a graduate student, a sex worker, a bisexual woman, a family cancer survivor, a person who suffered from depression, or what? In time, I have learned to "be" all of those things online, but much like life, there is a time and a place for each of these manifestations of personality.

On Echo, the Lambda Conference has been an extremely supportive place for me to discuss being the lover of a transgendered man. On the other hand, The Music Conference may or may not be the appropriate forum to announce the status of one's Prozac prescription. But this is not different from the way identity works, offline, I think. For example, in my department at school, people think of me as a technical person, a geek of sorts, because I can make the printer work. On Echo I have been roped into explaining postmodernism. You find yourself responding to the needs of your community, and offline or off, groups define individual identity to a pretty eerie degree, it seems to me.

I actually joined AOL after I found a "home" at Echo. After approximately two years at Echo, I found myself craving anonymity again! I go back to Echo to report my AOL sex antics, but I never tell anyone what handles I use. My favorite part of the experience is when I climax on line, typing "yessssssss" and everyone claps. I have no desire to be in a real-life orgy, but I think I'd really like it if after my real-life orgasms, I got an applause track played.

Stacy Horn:

When you're online, what do you reveal? What do you conceal?

Theresa Senft:

I am one of those people who gets homicidal when people "drop by" my house without calling. Once, someone who knew me from Echo decided to dial up my home because we had been having a disagreement online, and he thought we should "talk it out." Even though we were still in a mediated space (ie, the phone line), I felt intruded upon. These feelings are not coming out of thin air; many of them have been with me before I got online. I was physically abused as child, and to function like a "normal" adult, I still need to keep most people at a comfortable physical distance. Where other people might view an unsolcitted phone call or a drop-in visitor as a welcome relief to a busy day, I simply do not experience them this way. So, in a fundamental way, I think one thing I conceal online is my physical presence: my body, my home, my voice, my health.

On the other hand, because I am physically separated from other people online, I have no trouble revealing all kinds of other things about myself, within the text, or as we call them, the "posts." I have posted lots of personal essays on Echo, which has been consistent with a "reveal all, but only in a text" mentality I have had for a long time. I have always written in a memoir style, and I am also drawn to performance art. It's not as though I am especially secretive about being naked, in the physical or the literary sense of that term. I am all for revelation, as long as I control the performance parameters of the disclosures. This has been a problem in therapy, because although Echo might lend itself to this type of control freakery (ie you can turn on and off your computer) life doesn't seem to want to work on my schedule.

Because I can always turn off my computer, I have no trouble being "available" to other people online. For instance, on Echo, I find myself leaving my instant message function on all the time. Because I have spent a big portion of my life training as an academic, people online often use me as an ATM of arcane intellectual junk. I once received instant message from a friend saying, "Please explain the categorical imperative to me in three sentences. I am in the middle of a pitch meeting and someone needs to know." Truthfully, I love dealing with this kind of stuff. It makes me feel like I am on Final Jeopardy, or something.

Stacy Horn:

Who gets the most resistance; the virtual you or you in person? Who are you more comfortable with?

Theresa Senft:

I get much more resistance in person, than I do online. This is mostly my own doing. Unfortunately, I still struggle with the fact that I don't have a "delete" key in real life!

Two months ago, I would have answered that I am most comfortable with the virtual version of me. Now, I am realizing that (and I only speak for myself here) when I am more comfortable with myself online than off, this is a sign that I am retreating from the flesh, if that makes any sense. In some ways, online life is too comfortable for me. This is not necessarily a bad thing: online life has taught me all kinds of new ways to re-imagine myself in the physical world. Talk about a cognitive therapy tool! But now, I am trying to use my physical experiences (vulnerability, sexuality, mortality and the like) to broaden my online persona, and I have to say that it is a much more difficult project, at least for me. Who the hell wants to give up control, to grieve, to be human, to take chances and lose at things?