Brad Paisley and the "Online" Persona

The main character of the video for Brad Paisley's "Online" is a pizza delivery boy who lives in his parents' basement and concocts an elaborate online persona that is almost completely antithetical to himself. His online identity is tall, handsome, rich, drives a fancy car, models for GQ, and is completely comfortable with women in a way that pizza boy is obviously not (judging by his inability to interact with his female neighbor until the end of the video).

It's a bit of a cliché in the internet age but, like many clichés, it is based on truth. Personally, I know a guy who has a completely different personality online than he does in reality. He definitely represents himself differently in cyberspace. I think everyone does it to some degree. What overweight person hasn't described themselves as "average" on a website? How many people exaggerate their education level or job position on myspace, or purposefully select photos that make them look their best while discarding those that do not portray them favorably? How many people on personals sites have years-old pictures of themselves instead of current ones? Practically everyone fibs a little when it comes to representing themselves online.

It's no wonder this occurs. Given a chance to describe ourselves in any way we wish, in an anonymous, consequence-free environment, the temptation to lie is just too great. Much like movies or television can give a biased view of an issue by accentuating one side while downplaying the other, we can promote our positive features (or invent new ones entirely) while completely omitting our faults.

There are those who take this to extremes, like middle-aged men pretending to be teenage boys so they can chat with middle-aged men pretending to be teenage girls. The Dateline NBC "To Catch a Predator" reports are another enlightening example. Many of the men they catch soliciting sex from underage girls are semi-respectable members of society. It's doubtful that many of these men would risk acting on their inappropriate thoughts were it not for the anonymity provided by the internet. The risk would be far too great.

Not all examples are this extreme, of course. Our pizza boy protagonist is simply trying to reach out to a world that he feels cut off from. Our celebrity-obsessed, beauty-conscious culture has created an expectation of attractiveness that he feels he cannot live up to and he consequently has almost no self-esteem. So, he creates what he feels is the ideal man and acts within that persona on the internet. It's no more than a fantasy, he cannot possibly hope to meet any of his online friends in real life and have them accept him, especially when he's based their relationship entirely on deception.

At least for him the ending is a happy one. He seems to realize the folly and pointless nature of his online façade and instead decides to take his life into his own hands and take a chance on the girl next door. Though, honestly, it amazes me that he even had trouble with women in the first place. His father is William Shatner, after all. The ending in the video is a happy one, though the lyrics make no allusion to his realization. It's ironic that a song about misrepresenting oneself online has to be subtly altered in order to achieve larger acceptance when translated to a visual medium. I seriously doubt that kind of meta-fictional meaning was intended by the video's director, but it does give us something to think about.