As Tom correctly says, "They are the version of themselves they wish to show you." The schtick that anyone can be whatever they purport to be online is so hackneyed, it's even been used in cop shows on TV. Sometimes I think it is like everyone is an attenuated character from some online game, you know?
But in my own case, what you see is what you get. I confine my character creation to my writing, not to my online self. And what I have discovered is that the friends I have met online treat me with substantially more respect than most people I meet in real life, some of whom have known me for many years.
I suspect this has to do with the fact that online, you can put whatever face and voice to somebody that you choose. My own voice has been described as irritating, and people don't hear what I say. But when I write, they "listen" to the words and not the tone of voice delivering them. This lets folks get to know me without judging me on my voice, my "flat affect," or my awkwardness.
For instance, I spend a fair bit of time on a firearms forum where we talk about everything, not just firearms. (The owner & creator of the forum has it organized and compartmented very well; you just go where you want and discuss what's in each sub-forum.) I occasionally get twitted by some of the other members over my loathing of the Stoner-actioned rifles, the US GI M-16, M-4 Carbine, and their civilian cousins the AR-15 sporting rifles; to say that I think the Army adopting them was a mistake is to be very polite. I simply hate rifles that are likely to jam when you need them most, and that's the Poodle Shooter in a nutshell. Once a fellow member accused me of never having fired one. I retorted, politely, with the story of the time I was at the range zeroing my pet Mosin Nagant and came to the aid of a new shooter who had built a "Frankenrifle," an AR-15 assembled out of pieces parts he had bought at gun shows and from online dealers. Perfectly legal, it lets you customize your gun for the kind of shooting you do, and it makes the rifle YOURS, a metaphysical thing you have to experience to understand.
He was trying to zero it and was all over the paper at 100 yards; the thing would not group its shots. After fixing his sights (there are these things called "screws" that you need to lock down, dummy!), I tried a couple of shots. The rifle promptly jammed. I went through the ritual of clearing the jam, and it then jammed again with the next round. He'd put maybe 40 rounds through it, and the Jam-A-Matic was living up to its name. I had him field-strip it, give it a quick clean -- just as our soldiers in the field have to do at every rest break even if they haven't fired a shot, because the Stoner action attracts dust, dirt, and grime even worse than a Luger, and THAT is saying something -- reassemble it, and try again. It jammed about every fifth shot, usually failing to fully extract. As changing magazines didn't help, I finally concluded and told the newbie that either he had a bad extractor, didn't have the extractor installed properly, or had a bad recoil spring. He needed to detail-strip the rifle, examine the spring and extractor carefully, and reassemble the rifle with the manual in front of him, making sure everything was in the right place with the right tolerances. Take it back to the range, and if it still misbehaved, start by replacing the suspect parts. If it still misbehaved after that, it would be time for a trip to the gunsmith.
By the way, I let him try my scoped Mosin. He was mightily impressed by the fact an 80 year old rifle would put five shots into a 1 inch group at 100 yards. Newer isn't always better.
My point was that just because I won't own an unreliable POS doesn't mean I don't know the rifle. My hatred of unreliable firearms is known on that site and isn't confined to ARs. But my opinions are respected there because I back up all I say with facts. I think the other members, who know I write, visualize me as a college professor with a goatee in a shooting jacket with a tweed tie, an Indian Jones-style fedora, well worn cowboy boots, and a web belt around my middle with a Yugoslav Model 57 Tokarev pistol on the right, mag pouches with spare ammo on the left, and my pet Mosin Natasha in my hands. Not what I look like at all, but hey, it's not a bad mental image, is it?