Originally by: Vaerah Vahrokha
Complete freedom allows to show yourself for who you are.
Fear of discovering yourself?
I disagree and agree at the same time. I do think that a lot of people are conditioned to do what they do in their real lives by social environments and enforcement laws, rewards or punishments, that same people may behave otherwise if their environment were different, showing their "true face", so to speak. There you are right, but only sometimes.
There are also people who behave very differently in different social groups (people they know, people they don't know, people they love, etc), you have said or implied previously that people can only be bad or good, truth is that people are complex.
There are people that are free to chose who they want to be (more or less, let's just say that they are at least conscious and don't follow a reward/punishment system (or at least not without knowing)). This people may choose to change what they do based on the moment, like choosing to do things in a game differently because it is a game and decide that it is alright to play it differently.
Lastly there is this acting thing that you seem to be so confused about. When you act you do different things that you'd do yourself, and how can you do it? Because you are not being yourself.
The best acting (from my personal experience) comes when you become the character, like if it were a suit you put on. This has a few dangers as you can see in some actors and actresses being broken after a very intense act (every actor should really put a few failsafes there). If you don't do it that way you are just faking it, is not real.
So acting has nothing to do with who you are in real life, although I concede that some people may use this as an excuse to unleash who they really would be if given the chance, I think you can differentiate those by their behavior after the scam most of the time.
Are you religious or have been indoctrinated in some form of thought? I ask because those are the ones that tend to simplify the world to such degree so it can be classified and explained in simple terms for the people to do what they want them to do.
In resume: world and people are complex, you can not dogmatize judgement on people, you can judge the actions, but you must be the actual person to have the lightest insight on what's going on inside, and even then you may not understand yourself sometimes.
Just to clarify my position, I'll say that I'm free or under the illusion of being so, I'm mostly aware of the doctrines that were inculcated in me when child, I'm capable of the best and worst, free from dogmas. I chose to do what you would label as good most of the time, I like being nice to others although sometimes rough with my words when I think something is not right. I'm also an actor sometimes, although I chose not to act when not on an scenery or under the camera. That said, I chose not to act on this character (or any in the account, the only one I have) since this is being mostly me in the game.
I do believe too that scamming is very different than any other mechanic (except maybe thieving) in the game since here you take a compromise yourself to do something knowing that you wont. I would have to change radically my current being in order to scam since being honest is very important to me, I would need a very strong reason to do it, a reason that I believe is impossible to find in a game.