Our lives function like a blockchain, where our experiences and interactions build upon each other to create who we are. Each day, we draw upon our past experiences, history, and emotional investments to create new 'blocks' in our personal development.
We maintain a mental blockchain of balances - tracking people who were kind to us, those who wronged us, favors owed and given. This personal ledger accumulates daily through our lived experiences.
Social media represents a Layer 2 version of ourselves - an abstraction of our base layer (real-life) identity. Similar to how blockchain Layer 2 solutions aim to improve upon their underlying chain, our social media presence often presents an idealized version of who we are or aspire to be. We carefully curate and present selected aspects of ourselves, creating a derivative of our authentic selves.
image created with DALL-E from ChatGPT
However, only significant or aggregate parts of our social media identities eventually get incorporated into our personal blockchain - our true self. Even internet trolls often display vastly different personalities in real life compared to their online personas. Their Layer 2 personality does not often connect with their base layer.
While most people maintain this separation between their real and online selves, there may be rare individuals who achieve true authenticity in their online presence. This typically occurs when someone has already aligned their real-life identity with their ideals, making it unnecessary to create a separate online persona. They always present their personal blockchain without having to enhance it on a side chain.