I laugh when they tell me to find myself. (Because when you're looking for yourself, who do you ask for help?)

As the Batman comics have reliably reminded us, two-facedness is not considered an admirable quality among humans. Or at the very least, people don't like it. Your friends and family will generally become bothered if they discover that there are aspects of your personality about which they were unaware. (Unless, of course, those aspects are actually positive things, like someone who covertly scrubs oil off baby seals in his spare time. Although in this case, instead of anger, you risk people reacting with uncomfortable confusion about why your now-seemingly-suspicious seal-love was kept under wraps.)

As someone who, for most of her life, tried with varying degrees of enthusiasm to win the World's Goodiest Two-Shoes award, I've made it one of my many goals in life to be a consistent person, to always present more or less the same Linda to all the Not-Lindas I meet. And I've never really thought it to be a difficult goal to maintain. I tend to be honest with everyone, given that I've rarely seen the logic or value in lying, and my personality is laughably unobjectionable, meaning that I practically never need to censor myself. I don't even have to pretend to have a cleaner mouth in front of elderly relatives or dignified guests, because swearing isn't part of my vernacular, anyway.

Flanders-esque as I may be, I still acknowledge the fact that its outright impossible to be the exact same person everywhere. Human behavior is highly predicated on the behavior of surrounding humans. Try as he might, if you drop a man in a room full of 20 flighty cast members from The Real Housewives of Orange Country, you will see a slightly different person emerge than if you dropped the same man in on a physics lecture. As Virginia Woolf put it: "it depends so much upon the room." Context-dependent behavior is also, frankly, practical. If everyone were the same person at work as they are on a night out with friends, many would get fired on the spot.

Despite this, I'm left wondering if this Fundamental Truth of Human Interactions is in the process of changing, thanks to The Internet. Recently, I attended a business marketing meeting in which the speaker vehemently promoted using every resource available (from Facebook to Twitter to blogs to your actual life) to create, shape, and promote your "personal brand"--the professional version of "you" that you want your employers and clients to see. He emphasized that it is essential that you present the same, business-ready, squeaky-clean version of yourself at all times.

Even more recently, a round of Wikileaks was released in which U.S. diplomats were quoted as being irreverently frank in their personal conversations about other political leaders. While there are many people who oppose Wikileaks, there are many others who feel justified and comfortable with having this information distributed, presumably because people are supposed to be consistent. These diplomats, they might argue, shouldn't say anything if it isn't suitable for worldwide ears.

Personally, this trend disturbs me. I'm a person who considers consistency a personal credo, and even I feel uncomfortable with the suggestion that I absolutely have to be the exact same person on Facebook, at work, with friends, and on my blog. While I haven't decided where my opinion falls about Wikileaks at large, I do know that I believe that diplomats need to be able to have honest, private conversations with their peers back home. I'm uncomfortable with the fact members of the media and public are actually against this.

As a well-homogenized Linda to all Not-Lindas, I know as well as anyone that there is freedom in consistency. I am comfortable with myself, and I am comfortable being myself, generally, in front of any new face I meet. The second that this consistency becomes a requirement, however--a rigid, inflexible standard that comes with penalties for contextual deviation--the freedom is instantly gone.

At this point, one can argue that this standard of superhuman consistency is only expected of politicians, so it's not a real or pressing concern for plain ol' folks such as myself. Still, I think Orwell would raise an eyebrow.