Lately I have working over my mind the idea of identity and how it relates to the net.

As I see it the net is a completely new dimension. Kind of like the science fiction stories that deal with traveling to alternate planes of reality and the weird variations on reality that lies there. Read Heinlein's Number of the Beast for a good example.

But the net is a different type of alternate dimension. In science fiction the alternate dimension always is something that was always there running parallel to the reality we live in. But the net is a created reality, we can pinpoint when it was started, who came up with the machinery and software to make it go (not Al Gore).

The net has turned out to be a completely made-up universe and we the people are completely made-up also. Granted not all of us our liars and are trying to pass ourselves as something we are not, but haven't all of us said something in a chatroom that we honestly feel that we would never cop to in real life?

I feel this is one aspect of the net that we should embrace, maybe it will do us some good. A good example is once I played cribbage online a lot and I noticed a few things. More often than not if the person I was playing knew my gender their chatting changed. So I went with it I changed my online name to something that was completely genderless.

The reactions I got were interesting some people refused to play with me because I politely refused to let them know my gender. The chats I had were interesting also, at first people were nervous because they didn't have that frame of reference to hang there hat on but quickly I gained a nice group of regular opponents who agreed that not knowing each other lent itself to more interesting games and discussions. I also got a lot of females to play with me because they knew I wasn't there to score some cyber-nookie.

Of course, me being me, I had to use this to play with some minds. Once I played a nice Chinese college student who was studying in California. He was at first a little freaked because I wouldn't let him know who or what I was. And then he made the mistake. He said that I was a woman because only a woman would play such games. He then proceeded to try to entice me into some cyber sex, I let him think what he wanted and egged him on a bit. He was really trying to get hot and heavy so much so that I kicked his butt at the game. He continued to try to woo me with his Asian ways and then I dropped it on him. "I am a man".

Cyber silence fell and he was never heard from again, can you say Crying Game?

I think we should take a step beyond gender, race, religion, the whole smear is up for grabs. Play with your identity folks maybe we will finally learn how silly the distinctions and prejudices really are.

One day I will tell you about the week I was a poop throwing monkey.