Persona (online personality)
Overview
Persona (the character you present to others) comes from a Latin word for the mask worn by stage actors, and psychologist Carl Jung turned it into a concept for "the outward personality you show to society." On social media, it refers to a character or personality you deliberately play online. Posting under a username that differs from your real name, using an icon that isn't your real face, and writing in a tone different from your everyday one are all ways of building a persona.
Question boxes and personas
Your answers in a question box help shape your persona as the owner. Which questions you answer, what tone you answer in, and how much you reveal about yourself all shape how your followers picture you. If you mainly share funny answers, you may come to have the persona of "someone with a sense of humor," and if you answer serious advice requests with care, the persona of "someone you can rely on."
A persona can be designed on purpose. If you decide "what kind of character I'll answer as" when you open your question box, your answers gain a consistent tone and content, and it becomes easier to meet your followers' expectations.
The gap between your persona and your real self
Having a gap between your persona and your real self is not a problem in itself. Even face to face, the you at work and the you at home are different.
It becomes a problem when keeping up the persona turns into a burden. It's painful to keep playing "the cheerful one," the pressure of answering as "someone who knows everything" is heavy, or you can't break the image of "the perfect person." If your persona ties you down so that you can no longer say what you really think, that is a state where the persona is controlling you.
Keeping your persona flexible
A healthy persona is flexible, not fixed. Sometimes you show weakness, sometimes you change your opinion, and sometimes you honestly say, "I don't know."
A question box is a good tool for keeping your persona flexible. Anonymous questions are unpredictable, and how you react to unexpected questions can widen the range of your persona. A persona is not armor but a costume, and it's fine to change it to suit the situation.