The Web and You: What's Your Style?

Wondering how you could be a Luxury Lounger even if you're a miser to the core? Well, thanks to this 'glued to the browser' era, most of us lead dual lifestyles today- online and offline. While most people tend to have similar habits both on the real and virtual fronts, your way of living could also be totally different on the web! To help you decode your other life, here are the lifestyles you might be leading...

Luxury Lounger
You dig extravaganza. Pubs, clubs, lavish restaurants, couture trends and the plushest places across the world are what you visit on the web. Sinatra's opulent tunes, spas, travel, designer e-mags, rich photo-galleries and expensive shopping, or even window shopping, is what you look towards when you unflap that laptop. You make your life grander by making the web assist you. Your three-word surfing mantra- Indulge. Pamper. Gratify. Go ahead, pleasure yourself!

Utility Freak
Need a pen? Rush to the web. Need a partner, search online. Even stapler pins if you like! Half-price shops and online auctions are your most exciting pastimes. The internet is the answer to even the tiniest of your needs, from baby clothes to pets to household furniture to property. It is the biggest resource of your life. How would you ever be able to sustain yourself without it...

Tech Tripper
Welcome, geeks! Latest gizmos, software, hardware, high-end technology, out of the world inventions, extraordinary electronic stuff, hacking codes, programming, networking tricks... you're one of those who feels everything on the web except technology is trash. The virtual universe is your tech haven. You could be a freeloader who loves to basket movies, music, spy software, operation accelerator codes and other sophisticated technology illegally for free. Or, you could be the compulsive gamer. iPhones, palmtops, et al... you're here to grab everything that 'webnology' covers! Techies and music buffs are the most avid followers of such a lifestyle. “I am a total audio junkie when on the net,” says Gaurav Raina of popular music band Midival Punditz. You're wired for life, and loving it!

Wanderer
You enter the 'other' world without any purpose. There's no direction that you follow, for you meander, discovering and exploring all that comes your way. You are the aimless surfer, the thoughtless traveler who lets the web winds carry you to any place, from poetry sites to inspiring videos to funny clippings to some news and debates, popular profiles and almost anything that's worth having a look at. It's like the snowball trip through an unknown valley. You could be the roaming blogger, the wisdom gainer, or any one with no particular interest. In the web, you are lost and found. You are also known as the 'wilfer', which is derived from the phrase 'what was I looking for'.

Message Maniac
To you, the web is mostly a tool of communication. All the time. There is not a single moment when you're not chatting or networking, scrapping or talking, mailing or community building. “I'm certainly a mail maniac, while my husband is a total techie, and I feel like an alien when I try to decode his web lifestyle, because for me, the web is all about communicating!”, says renowned dancer Yamini Reddy. If you lead a more intense form of this lifestyle, everything, from dating to flirting to cracking tough deals to even deciding your next cup of coffee with a co-worker in the next cabin happens over the internet! While you're making the most out of 'webunication', remember not to forget the locomotion skills you're gifted with!

Business Browser
The world wide web is all but business, and you think nothing beyond this. Your belief is supported by your approach to using it, for it is in NO way connected to your personal life. You surf for work, potential business opportunities, professional partners, stocks, exploring new markets, using the latest technology to support your business, top business models, management mantras, innovative ideas, and everything else that can grow and expand your business. For example, dancer, emcee and TV personality Shivani Wazir Pasrich is a self-confessed workaholic online. “I am very focused while on the web. Whether its my kid's homework or my next assignment, I am always surfing for work,” she says. Take an online break guys, surf for fun once a while!

Sleaze Sucker
In all probability, you're a male (no gender bias but general statistics). The web is your paradise. Here, you're free to devour as much of the forbidden fruit as you like. No limits, no censors, no wife police, no 'oh my God how could you' and an easy way of feeding your wildest fantasies without physically cheating your partner. And to you, doing it virtually can hardly be called infidelity! Porn, hot videos, feline feminine photos are your source of satisfaction. Your philosophy- “It can't get better than this for free!” This is your destressing and libido building exercise, for what's (real) life so full of care, there's no time to ogle and stare! And, as they say, boys will be boys!

Multiple Personality Poser (MPP)
You are the classic escapist. You are the hot babe, the cool dude, the successful tycoon, the desperate housewife, all in one. The web is not your world, it's your 'worlds'. You have at least five names and identities, totally different from each other. You are multi-aged, multi-faced and multi-friended. That's your way of getting away from that mundane schedule to be what you could never be in reality but always wished for. And on the limitless web, multiple wishes are not a constraint. “With people becoming lonelier by the day, the web allows one to live a dream life and romance with any identity one wants to portray, because anonymity is easy”, says psychologist and sociologist Urmi Mala Sarkar. So you believe in experiencing different aspects of life by living in all ways that you could never otherwise have. Way to go, adventurer, deception is thy game!

The Ever Student
Since the advent of the internet, you have grown. And for this, you extend your heartfelt thanks to Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and the numerous other sites without which you could not have possibly been where you are. You are the perfect internet intellectual, always in search of the unknown and the little known, and more gyaan on the best known! You expand your horizons by gaining as much knowledge and information (even about things that are outside your circle of concern) as possible. It is a world you want to conquer. You are determined to know things latest and oldest. The web is your ally in academic excellence. Good luck, limitless learner!

Though you could also be the MPP-Lounger or the Tech Tripper-Wanderer, think hard and you will know what web lifestyle you majorly follow. The good thing is, not everyone can know the second life that you lead as easily as your real world ways, but you certainly ought to know it to understand your 'webbed' self better!