It’s because, for those of us who exist in these realms - be it WoW, EQ, furries, whatever - we get very, very good at being discrete. There’s that initial excitement when we desperately want to share our joy with our parents or siblings, but all too often that joy is dashed by popular misconceptions, media sensationalism, and flat-out fabrications about “strangers online” and the like. I found solace in online communities as an introvert traumatized by repeated cross-country moves growing up, and when I tried sharing my online friends with my parents, they deleted my social messenger accounts at the time.

So that’s why this stuff often pops up as a “surprise” to those left behind, or comes across as a “double-life”. We often tried to open up and share ourselves, but were shut down for the unorthodox ways we found happiness or identity, and realized the best approach was hard segregation of the two.

Heck, it’s why I still don’t tie my meatspace and authentic selves together. The meatspace me is this reserved but honest engineer who just wants to make good systems that customers like using and be left alone, but the online dinosaur is…_starkly different_, more open and authentic, exuding more confidence and more empathy as well.

We’re unique creatures who adapt to our surroundings, but make no mistake: we always want to share our found happiness with others. Unfortunately, experience often dictates that sharing ourselves so completely is more likely than not to end up causing us great harm, and so we just don’t do it.