Online identity

The oh so clever meez.com has begun to offer people a place where they can design their very own avatar to use, for example, on you Web site or blog, or in conjunction with your IM service. You get to choose from a variety of face shapes, eye colors, hair styles, clothes, shoes, and activities and backgrounds to try and create a digital you. (Or meez, as it were.) You do not get to choose butt size, however, and so my meez is less than true to form. But the general idea is the same.

It feels oddly safe. To create this digital representation of myself and show it to the world. As if I can bypass everything that is taught about personal online safety by simply not publishing my address, and publishing my countenance instead. You still don't know my phone number. You still don't know what city I live in, or what park my grandparents took me to when I was a child. Of course, some simple research would answer some of these questions if you were really interested. Or had some kind of strange fascination with the person I proclaim to be in this rented space.

I still don't think you'd be able to pick me out of a crowd simply because the meez.com people allowed me to choose freckles over make-up.

And if I really wanted to, I could cough up some extra cash to these people to purchase "beans", and through the purchase of beans be able to acquire clothes not in the standard offering. Or perhaps a virtual Versace bag to go with the Pluto shirt. (If they had a matching color, obviously.)

This strange fascination with making the private public in a virtual world can really catch you off guard. There is safety because I am sitting in my house, at my computer, with my cats and husband in the other room. I am not in a club, or a coffee shop, or at a presentation or show of some kind where the presence of others is immediately felt, where a "threat" or "risk" could be ascertained through eye contact, or squirrely movements. As far as I know you are all upstanding citizens, only here for a few minutes to rubber neck at meez. Not quite as interesting as a head-on collision on the highway, but enough for a temporary diversion.

How much have I truly let down my guard by displaying a virtual version of me? Is it enough to have someone call Clinton and Stacy from "What Not to Wear" because I chose a T-shirt and jeans? Am I a slob online as well as off?

Perhaps I really should have splurged on the Versace bag. Then you'd really never know.