@yuki2501 I agree with this entirely, and thank you for saying it so brilliantly.

I think as a pre-transition trans guy, I always struggled to make an online persona that felt like "me". I think part of that was that I came from a geographical region where being really into computers wasn't for-girls, and as a "girl", I felt uneasy about being into the internet "too much". So I'd take one step in, and then another step back out.

I also had my second big commit-to-the-internet phase in the late 2000s (the first had been in the anonymous 90s), when the whole thing was about putting your real name and face out there and building your "personal brand" (ugh x1000). I never felt comfortable with doing this as a pre-transition person, obviously, as it was like enforcing that false persona that you mentioned on myself. So again, ambivalence.

But I can look back on the personas I did create in the 90s and 00s that reflected me, even if I only let myself dive into them briefly. They bear a strong energetic resemblance to what I know I truly am today, on here. Mastodon in 2018 was the first time I really let myself go online, and be both fully who I am, and as into this as I always have been. And it's been life changing for my transition, as much as any other aspect of my life.