So I am sitting in front of the TV tonight, and watching You’ve Got Mail. An overly cheesey ‘chick-flick’ starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Where two people fall in love as they email each other, but they are natural enemies in real life, and hate each other.

It started me thinking about whether people show themselves honestly online. I mean, people have the ability to create this online persona of perfection, why include your flaws in that. Through a site, you can pretend you are they person that you wish you could be. You can filter out all the undesirable rubbish, and make your more favourable traits, be major features of your personality.

But then, is it our immediate surroundings that make use behave in a certain way? Is it only when we are confronted with people and situations, our personalities change into something completely different?

When we are alone, typing responses into a computer, we have time to organise our thoughts. We can respond to questions, without panicking and our brains rushing out some idle, idiotic response. We can spell check, and re-read responses, and carefully tweak them, to get the desired effect.

When actually involved in a conversation with someone, we don’t have the luxury to think of a perfect response, the thought process and the words come out quickly. And, although you may say something accidental, it really does show who a person is more. And you see a person for who they are, online there is always the chance of someone holding themselves back.

So where is a person most honest to themselves, online or IRL? Does it matter? As long as you truthful to yourself and your views, it shouldn’t matter where you encounter people.