Do you?

I don’t think you do — I’m saying that it’s not, too. Unless you’re so un-self-aware that you don’t even acknowledge your own capacity for anger or know the situations that will provoke it. THEN — if it takes you by surprise, IF you lose control, it may seem like a beast. IF you’ve hidden it so well that no one else knows you have that capacity for anger inside of you, and you lose it at an inopportune moment, you hurt and frighten people.

I know people like this. I know people who so carefully craft an “image” — a “mask” — over parts of themselves they never let others see, and it rarely works for long. But those people would not know how “just be yourself” works. As you said, it would be terrible advice. Because they’ve separated and compartmentalized so much.

People often think that the Internet leads nice people to do terrible things, online. That they forget there are “real people” on the other side of the screen. I disagree. It’s like the old adage, if you want to know what kind of a person someone is, watch how they treat their waiter. If people are “trolls” online, they’re just trolls. The mask is them hiding it for the rest of the world, when people can look them in the eye.

Now, that said, I think most of us have a little “troll” in us that likes to come out to play, at times. But what provokes it? Someone who is uninformed or naive, or someone who is bullying others? Someone kind, or someone mean?

We ARE all the “masks” we wear.