The Adventures of SuperBitch: How to become an online superhero

Online, you get to be a golden God. It's true. Online you get to shed your fears and insecurities. Online you get to be the superhero, rock star, diva etc. you were always meant to be. How else can you explain the phenomena of the early 90s web where every beautiful young girl seeking love on a dating site was an old fat furry man living in his mama's basement? Online you get to have a secret identity that can fight crime and still fry dinner up by 5. Now, I am not suggesting that all you old fat men try to be young beautiful girls. I can't see that one panning out in business, but there are ways to use a "persona" to create an identifiable brand for yourself. What I am suggesting is that you be bold enough to wear a cape and tights, wise enough to go with your gut, confident enough to persuade others what you are doing is the right course of action and most of all powerful enough to leap tall buildings and social networks in a single bound. Find your super hero persona and run with it. Even if it gets you into trouble. And believe me- it will get you into trouble, because every superhero has to go through an awkward adolescence to discover the limits and uses of his/her powers.

How to come out of your alter ego shell and become the superhero you were meant to be.

In order to turn yourself into a super hero, you need to exaggerate all your natural assets, gifts and skills. Make yourself almost cartoonish and completely invincible. Commit to your opinions and shed the fear of offending people with your comments. BE OUTRAGEOUS. Now, there are certain traits all super heros share and you need to bring them out in yourself to become this all powerful figure.

The Alter Ego

Every super hero has a secret identity or alter ego that walks among mortal men unnoticed. The use of secret identities dates back to early 20th century with characters such as The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro. This basically means, you have two personalities. When online you are the all powerful super hero you should be fighting online banalties and crime with the daring only the invincible can pull off. Conversely, in the office you can be the mild mannered secretary or executive. Online, I almost never go by my real name, I often use a pseudonym. For example in real estate Mary McKnight is REBlogGirl. In marketing, I am SuperBitch. I also have other pseudonyms in the other industries I work in. It helps me to create a persona and very clearly separate my industry specific pieces from one another and create a super hero mystique that is easily recognizable in the industry.

Though the reasons characters have for having a secret identity vary, some common reasons include:

• Allowing the character to live a normal life when not fighting crime
• Preventing the hero's enemies from seeking revenge on his alter ego or loved ones
• Giving the hero an advantage in crime fighting (e.g. Batman, striking fear into his enemies)
• Gaining insight into stopping crime (e.g. Clark Kent as a reporter hears immediately about crimes for Superman to stop)

The Back Story

All good super heroes have a complex back story. A backstory that explains the circumstances by which the character acquired his or her abilities as well as his or her motivation for becoming a superhero. Many origin stories involve tragic elements and/or freak accidents that result in the development of the hero's abilities. Some are born from aliens or spit out from the center of the earth like Superman and Vulcan while others began as mortal men that were transformed into superheroes by a cataclysmic event like Spider Man and the Hulk. You need to determine your back story before you can know your strengths because you back story could affect your online personality. So come up with how your super hero identity came to be. The psychology of the super hero is almost as important as his/her powers.

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Motivation and Calling

Now you need to find our motivation. A motivation, such as a sense of responsibility (e.g. Spider-Man), a formal calling (e.g., Wonder Woman), a personal vendetta against criminals (e.g. Batman), or a strong belief in justice and humanitarian service (e.g. Superman) is essential. For me, my code and motivation is to rid the Internet of boring content. To fight back with lively, luscious media and content. Find your motivation and cartoonishly fight for it with every exaggerated strength you can muster. Protect innocents and rescue damsels in distress. Find other like-minded people caught in the net and make them your cheering fans.

Costume

All good superheroes have recognizable branding. They wear a cape or tights or a mask. You need to have good branding too. Make sure your brand is recognizable. Trick out all your social media profiles with custom branded backgrounds and be sure to include your branding in your email signatures. Even come up with a few catch phrases or tagline for your profile pages. I like to use the same branding for blog on my Twitter, Youtube and Myspace profiles s that as more people see me they come to associate my name with this purple branding.

Strengths and Powers

You'll need to come up with what your special powers, skills, equipment, etc are. It's important to know which of your skills or assets you will incorporate into your online personality. Although superhero powers vary widely, superhuman strength, the ability to fly, enhanced senses, and the projection of energy bolts are all common. Some superheroes, such as Batman and the Question possess no superhuman powers but have mastered skills such as martial arts and forensic sciences. Others have special weapons or technology, such as Iron Man's powered armor suits and Green Lantern's power ring. Many characters supplement their natural powers with a special weapon or device (e.g., Wonder Woman's lasso and bracelets, Spider-Man's webbing, Wolverine's adamantium, Daredevil's billy club, Thor's hammer, Gambit's staff, etc.) Obviously, my strengths are wit, manipulation, sarcasm and flirting. I play these attributes up online to provide almost an animated version of myself.

Read also: How to acquire legendary stories and life lessons by instigating people at networking events

Weaknesses

All superheroes have a weakness to make them more relatable and fallible and mortal on some level. Find yours and exaggerate it. Be fallible- it helps people to emotionally connect with you. Show your weaknesses from time to time. An online personality is for the brave, the brawny, the bawdy- but the boring, not a chance. Assuming you have more personality than your average wet nap, you already have all the tools you need to have a successful online identity. For example, if you are a flirt, pen playful posts, if you are a little quirky, type those crazy thoughts you think on Twitter, if you have a biting wit, sprinkle sarcasm throughout articles, if you are a closet comedian, give readers a belly laugh with each post, the list goes on... The gist? Let the inner you bust out and go splat all over that blog of yours. People connect with writing that shows your inner self. They want to see you as human and relatable- warts and all.

Read also: Humanizing your blog writing for intimacy

Sidekick

Many superheroes work with a sidekick, somebody that supports their crime fighting ways and may even have super powers o their own. Find a kindred spirit online and recruit them as your trusty sidekick because 2 heads are always better than 1. Use each other to create Blip.fm wars or scandalous dialog on Twitter or combine your networks to get more Diggs to your articles.

Nemesis

Every superhero needs a number of enemies that he/she fights repeatedly. In some cases superheroes begin by fighting run of the mill criminals before super villains surface in their respective story lines. In many cases the hero is in part responsible for the appearance of these super villains (The Scorpion was created as the perfect enemy to defeat Spider-Man, and characters in Batman's comics often accuse him of creating the villains he fights). Often superheroes have an archenemy who is more troubling than the others. Often a nemesis is a superhero's doppelganger or foil (e.g., Sabretooth embraces his savage instincts while Wolverine tries to control his. Batman is serious and grim, while the Joker is flamboyant and views the world as one big sick joke).Larger than Life Personalities in Business and History. Now, thos of you that know me, know I have made some enemies out there and most of the time it was completely on purpose. It created warring factions of people in social media and it worked to my benefit. Basically, I was able to create more emotional engagement in my blog and my work because of this need people had to either align themselves with or against me. So, go out there, attack a few celebrities, industry pundits, executives or bloggers and see what comes of it. See if you can't create an allegiance against evil.

So, are you ready to be a superhero, a legend, a golden God of online media? Then start crafting your persona. Below you will find my secret super hero identity.

Mary's Secret Superhero Alter Ego

Super Hero name: SuperBitch

Read also: Are you a good bitch or a bad bitch?

Back story: SuperBitch was born of mortal parents in a quiet little upper crust town in New England. Her birth name and alter ego is Mary. Amid the din of her suburban life and private school education, the tiny and well spoken Mary was playing with friends that wanted to raise some money from a lemonade stand in the neighborhood. When this first business sadly failed, Mary suggested that they sell tickets to an event the other neighborhood kids might enjoy. What do 10 yr olds want to see? It was all too clear to the soft-spoken and meek Mary, children want to see Barbie burn. After building a pyre and grabbing her Malibu Barbie, Mary and cohorts set her ablaze. A huge plastic-y flame burst forth and enveloped Mary, altering her DNA forever and creating SuperBitch, the sarcastic, witty, buxom superhero who fights online banalities, online meanies, Twitter stalkers, and boring blogs with lightning fast wit, salacious avatars and scandalous blog posts. She can also leap small buildings in a single bound, tongue tie just about any online pseudo-celebrity with a single email and turn an abysmal Alexa rank into gold in a matter of days.

Strengths: SuperBitch is a master at tongue tying bloggers, a mistress of attention grabbing, a dominatrix of web traffic, a ring master of networking and an Empress of shock and awe marketing.

Weaknesses: Geckos. The all powerful SuperBitch can be rendered harmless by any member of the lizard family, from a salamander to a Komoto Dragon. I also have a hot temper which tends to get me into a spot of trouble from time to time...

Sidekick: SuperBitch likes to kick back and relax with other Good Bitches on the Constellation GoodBitch in the galaxy of Sacrilicious and is often accompanied by her sidekick, NikNik. (Yeah, I'm going to get my butt kicked by NikNik for calling her a sidekick...)

Your Nemesis: BadBitch. BadBitch is SuperBitch's dark and evil twin. That lying, spamming, black hatting, Twitter stalking, net gossiping troll whose only goal is to bog down the Internet with boring content and social media slander. Unlike SuperBitch, she does not get along well with other Good Bitches.

Do you have a superhero alter ego? Please share it in the comments of this post.