About CLBA

Computer Literate Bouncers Association's mission statement is:

• To express the views and aid social acceptance of its members
• To protect the right of bouncers to be educated
• To bring together computer literate bouncers of the world
• To provide technical information and free computer training courses to bouncers *
• To help CLBs find jobs in either one of the bouncer and developer markets or both.
• More to come, as the essence of our mission is redefined by member (and new member) views.
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  * (proof you were or are a bouncer is required)

Please direct all enquiries to fotios@altavista.net

Fotios and Chad McComsey are the founding CLBs.

CLBA Photos

Some Computer Literate Bouncer Thoughts

On the presumption that our personality should be single and coherent in its expressions

There is a widespread if not universal presumption that requires our personality to be coherent with a few rules that constitute what we call our character. Fotios is like this and like that and this is what he usually does, etc. Our outlook of the world and the way we react to everyday events is expected to be fairly standard and relevant to our categorized personality, by others and ourselves.

Yet within us there are tendencies and expression potentialities that fail to materialize only because they are incongruent to our assumed social persona. We are identified by our name and face and then expected to act according to the persona that we have developed up to then and people and us know well. But is persona and personality the same thing? I think not. Persona is artificial, a socially necessary construct that is highly idealized and unrealistic. Personality is who we really are, and that is indefinable, measureless and totally chaotic; moods change, concepts change, perceptions change, we forget things, we remember things, we randomly feel and we occasionally dream. Therefore we should act accordingly, which in this case means unpredictably. Unpredictable behaviour is not socially viable behaviour, hence personas are born.

The modern digital computer revolution offers a unique chance for our personality to be liberated and be freely expressed in all its unpredictability, incongruence and instability that characterises our world and therefore us. We decide on faces and names and therefore we are not bound by contracts before we even say our first words as humans. We enter the digital world in our pristine, unspecified states. Whether we assume the same roles as we do in "normal" society is totally up to us.

So, how can our personality be liberated? The way people can do that is via assuming a set of distinct personalities (or rather personas) that are usually conflicting yet complementing to the whole of our real personality. A good persona, a bad persona, the default persona (our usual and expected self) and more that can react to the same situation in totally different ways.

The illusion that there should be and usually is just one correct way out of a situation is just that: an illusion. The correct way is defined by the assumed persona, which can be one of many. This should not feel odd, as it is the usual way with how things work in the world. The car may break down or it may not, it may rain but it may also snow, and we may be the next lotto winners or we may not. Thus Fotios may be Fotios and he may not. Wanna play?