Your Personality Is Not Who You Are - Benedict's Newsletter 006
Hey there!
It’s easy to get wrapped up in self-identity. How you introduce yourself becomes who you are. How you present yourself in a conversation slowly becomes more and more calcified.
I always hated “social deduction” games like The Resistance and Werewolf (I googled to see what the official term is, I was going to write “social manipulation” originally). They require you to lie, connive, and coerce your friends. Those qualities always felt extremely outside my self-perceived personality, so I never enjoyed them or wanted to play.
But moving outside your normal personality is the entire point of the genre.
Halloween is the same impulse. We all have an aspect of monstrosity, but how we deal with it varies. Having socially sanctioned times to express that monstrosity is exciting. I love David Chapmans take on this idea: We Are All Monsters.
This week’s piece explores a similar idea:
The Dead End of Nuance: Playing With Positivity and Negativity
This year I played The Resistance, and actually loved it. I finally allowed my “personality” to fall to the background, and gave myself permission to play a character. This character was still “me”, but an aspect that I hadn’t given myself permission to embody before.
A similar thing helps conversations. Attempting to be “truthful” in a conversation doesn’t make you interesting, it just makes you difficult to talk to. The same way trying to be a “nice person” while playing The Resistance makes you not fun to play with.
I’m afraid that either the spirit of Halloween has carried me away, or this stuff is blindingly obvious to people, but that’s always the risk with writing. Either way, I hope you had a good Halloween and I’ll see you soon!
Benedict