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I realized I had no true self when I was 13, and over my life this has developed into a theme. I feel as though I'm a series of masks, or personalities, all the way down into the abyss; if you try to uncover the truth of me, you'll find nothing there at all.

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

This leaves me grasping when I read people talk about being more authentic or taking off the masks we wear; to make sense of it, I parse these sayings as "remove the mask you're wearing now to find out what mask is underneath."

9:59 PM · Jul 31, 2019

Uʀsɪɴᴀᴇ Vᴇsᴘᴇʀᴀ ʕ'ᴥ'ʔ

@heyursinae

Aug 1, 2019

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@Aella_Girl

ok ransom question but : are you a gemini?

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If you believe that most traits are genetically determined then there is in a sense a core authentic self, but it has little to do with the things that most people imagine constitute their “unmasked” self, which tend to be either delusions of grandeur or apotheosized self-pity.

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and

i was thinking the same thing; there's probably a bunch of neural correlates to what your 'authentic self' is re: behavior but it's not really going to be what most people think it is

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On the one hand, most metaphors around "masks" are broken and there isn't a simple out/in 1-dimensional depth to personality. But, it's also a mistake to assume this means there is no "true" self. There absolutely is. In fact, the Twitter avatar "fakes" we animate are its dual.