Into the Digital Future: Exploring Identities in the Digital Age with Quazar

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here and learn more about the series here. 

Quazar is an actor, artist, puppeteer, and radio presenter—as well as a developer on Roblox, an online platform where millions of people from around the world come together to play, learn, and explore with friends, all in user-generated 3D worlds.

 

Jordan Shapiro: This interview with former Roblox developer Quazar was such a fascinating interview.

Laura Higgins: There were some really interesting takeaways from it – about what it’s like being a young person who’s perhaps a bit diverse, trying to find their way both online and building that community, as well as finding themselves all at the same time. It was really interesting and a funny conversation too!

Jordan: I think it’s going to be a pleasure for parents to listen to, to get in the head of somebody who’s a developer, but also for kids to listen to this one. They’ll realize that they can really relate to other people’s struggles.

Laura: The wonderful thing that we got out of this conversation was that it’s good to be different sometimes. Different can be so creative and so empowering.

……

Laura: This week, we have a special guest who is a Roblox developer, a longtime member of the community whose name is Quazar. The thing we’re going to be talking about is all around online identity and how the idea of being able to try on different personalities and personas can really help young people to find themselves—and actually all of us as we’re spending time online.

Jordan: I’m really excited about this episode. You know, I remember back in the day when we were all first getting involved in social media and online things, and the whole thing [people worried about] was, “oh, it’s so anonymous! People are going to pretend to be anyone they want! They’re going to pretend to be kids, but it’s really going to be a 40-year-old guy!” Just crazy assumptions about what was going on with people. You still hear it with people saying everyone wants to be like the Instagram stars, and Instagram’s so fake. And of course, a lot of research shows that people online are not fakers, that actually it’s a much better representation of who they are.

Some things I just wanted to mention: if you really look into the theory of psychoanalysis or in psychology, they talk about something called persona, which is usually defined as something between the mask we put on to protect ourselves from the outside world and also the mask we put on to show ourselves to the outside world. And I think we’re talking about all of these things together – it’s fascinating to think about how they come to be in an online space.

So it’s a really, really great pleasure to introduce our guest. His name is Quazar. I’m going to ask him to talk a little bit about himself and what he does and who Quazar is.

Quazar: Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. My name is Quazar49 and I’m a Roblox developer. If you don’t know what Roblox is, it’s an online site where people can make their own worlds and make their own games entirely for free with a fantastic bit of software.

So I’m an artistic character and I’ve always been into different projects. And recently I’ve come to find a website called Roblox where I’ve been able to explore and just generally kind of reinvent myself in some manner of ways, as I have done over the course of the past. For example, when I was five to about 10 years old, I was wearing top hats and tails while walking through town. During my teenage years, it went a bit more punky and now it’s gone back to kind of 80s-neon-new wave-crazy-colourful insanity.

So what you mentioned earlier, Jordan, yes, we do all have phases, if you like. But in a way, I think the word “phase” in itself is kind of a derogatory term for such a thing, because in many ways, you may think a phase obviously doesn’t last. But in many ways, especially with both online and offline gaming, and different bits and pieces, these things can form a person and they can change a person drastically, which is certainly what I’ve come to find out.

Laura: I’m really lucky to have met you in real life a couple of times and we’ve gotten to know each other over the last year. And I’ve always been very lucky that you’ve been so honest with me about some of the experiences that you have, not just about finding a character and trying out all these different characters, but also some of the things that shaped some of those choices. Do you feel comfortable telling us a little bit about some of the stuff that was going on in the background that led to some of those decisions?

Quazar: Absolutely. And it only strengthens the impact I hope. So, I just want to start by saying that if anyone younger is listening to this or any parents listening to this have a child that may either dress differently, speak differently, look different. Regardless of how different your child or you may be listening to this, the strength comes from the bad experiences. And the thing is, you can be all creative and fantastical, but I wouldn’t obviously be as strong or as confident as I am without having to have some of the issues.

Just to set the scene here, I am a 20-year-old with long blond hair who collects 1970s and 80s memorabilia… That’s just to let you know that I’m sitting in a room surrounded by all this 70s junk: Betamax, LaserDisc stuff, I’ve got a Smash Martian doll over there. So there’s a lot of stuff that sets me apart from other people. So things that happened mostly were both physical and verbal bullying, constantly, every single day in school. It was absolute hell. Purely because people just didn’t like the way I was or who I was. It was very, very derogatory, featuring many unmentionable words that mostly ranged from, well, insults based upon my sexuality because everyone thought I was gay because of how I spoke, or different things. They always just mostly took the mick out of me for base-level things.

But others went a little bit further. They shoved me into lockers and I would come home with bruises on my arm, or the most serious things would be people constantly chasing me home from school on their bikes or kicking me in the shins in the hallways or in the ankles. So, the physical stuff was there as well. But the stuff that hurt the most was most likely the verbal bullying and the assumptions that people have based on how you look. My constant thing, especially now is, why should I compromise who I want to be, just because it may cause me some pain.

Granted, it was really hurtful. I mean, it constantly happened every single day. And the thing is, as I’m sure it will seem to many other people out there, it seems as though your world is *that*. It is just your world. You are constantly isolated from everything, especially when you don’t have any friends.

Jordan: When did you start to get involved in having a digital life, an online life, what did that look like in the earliest days? I assume there’s two narratives: the online you and then offline you. I’m interested in how they played off each other or divided from each other or the relationship between them.

Quazar: It actually began with YouTube. I ran a channel where I played a character called Quazar — this name has kind of been attached to me for a long time. There wasn’t anything to do with modern gaming, it was actually to do with me sitting down in front of my iPad 2 camera and filming these little reviews on old video games or old related things such as 70s soda streams and different commodities that I would pick up in jumble sales and charity shops and car boot sales. And I got told to drink cleaning products due to that as well, because people eventually found out, and ridiculed me in school for it. Especially because those videos were riddled with wonderful pre-14-year-old voice cracks. You can imagine.

And after I ran that, from about 12 years old up until I was about 15, I eventually began to do some more offline stuff. I did eventually find an interesting group of people in school that led me down the path that I took, which was being a rock singer. I’m a rock and metal singer for this group. Funnily enough, I did two different groups where I also played fictitious characters. One was called Persona 41. He was an escaped automaton from a 40s freak show. And he used to move like a robot.

But the point is, I’ve always been playing characters. And eventually, I finally found different platforms where I could explore myself in different ways. While these punky bands were going on, I was in this really dark period. I thought, ‘I just want some other project. You know, I just want something else to do’ that is maybe a bit lighter than the stuff that I had really kind of gotten into.

Eventually, I found my way onto Roblox and created something called Vision Park. It’s a 1980s neon-themed theme park with insanely unsafe rides and loads of references to the 80s, from old brands that have long expired, to musical genres, to a flipping Rick Astley reference, if you can find it. So there’s a lot of stuff in there. But the point is I wanted to do something more colorful.

So after these bands eventually died off, I assumed the role of a *different* kind of Quazar, still under the same name, but this blue-skinned guy who wears a colorful and sparkly suit, with a big top hat, and magnifying glasses that he wears over his eyes.

So eventually this led me to a more positive and creative thing, and along with a couple of other things that happened in the background, things started to look up a bit more and things started to be a bit more positive. And, especially now with a fan base that I’ve been able to grow, which is over, you know, over about two thousand strong, really strong fans, with over 2.2 million visits on the game itself, it’s encouraged me to definitely revert back to that innocent ‘60s, ‘70s-collecting Quazar that I was previously, and bring myself out of a dark era. So it’s definitely been a source of therapy in many ways.

Jordan: Yeah. It’s so great to hear you tell that story. I was thinking about the research I’ve read that talks about online experience and identity and frames it as something called “projective reflection,” where at first we take a piece of ourselves and we project it onto the image or the avatar, and then reflect it back and we integrate parts of that avatar into our own identity. So I’m sort of curious to hear a bit about… well, I know your skin hasn’t turned blue! But, thinking about the Quazar avatar, has some of that reflected back into you? Who are the two sides of Quazar now?

Quazar: Well, I mean, what is a character and what really isn’t has affected me, it’s massive. I mean, everything from the design of the character when I first began means something. The fact that I have blue skin—most people on the websites and on the games have normal colored skin, you know, that reflects them in real life. But I always kind of consider myself the outlier or the outcast. So I decided to go for blue skin because it represents the outstanding thing. I’m always kind of outside the norm. So, yeah, the character at first was definitely a massive representation of me.

And what I portray on my YouTube channel, which I might sneakily plug here if that is permitted, called Clock Tower Entertainment, everything on that channel is a representation of me. But in terms of the Quazar character influencing me, the only reason he still exists, for the most part, is because of the younger people who follow me. And I feel as though Quazar as a character, not even as a character as myself, is me, but with all the really dark stuff kind of left out because that’s a lot of exposition that no one wants to know.

Quazar is effectively all of me heightened up to ten, with a massive amount of overly crazy colorfulness. But the way that he’s affected me is through the fans. You see, he wouldn’t still exist and I wouldn’t be talking here, and I wouldn’t still be on the website most likely, I wouldn’t even be creating things in terms of a virtual game landscape, if people hadn’t encouraged me and followed me. And these are other outcasts, and other people, or other kids who feel as though they are the odd ones out. And I feel as though, in many ways over the three years that I’ve been doing this, I certainly don’t think I would still be doing it if people hadn’t taken an interest and said, oh, that’s actually different and cool.

Laura: One of the beautiful things when you open your minds to these sorts of conversations and meeting new people and new experiences online, is that you realize that we’re all quirky and different in our own ways, even if it’s very subtle and quiet. For some people, it might be that they themselves are really introverted. So that’s why they have these really outlandish characters online. And actually it might help to build that confidence through this projective reflection that Jordan was talking about. It might actually help to build their confidence.

You’ve already said you are quite expressive and whilst not necessarily confident in some ways, but really physically and in the way that you dress, very expressive. And so you echo that in your character.

Quazar: I’m not looking for attention. I’m not looking for fame or money or anything. I haven’t earned a penny. I literally haven’t earned a penny from anything I’ve done online. But it’s been a massively important part of my life. That’s what I like to say to my fanbase, because some people come at me saying, “Quazar, I’m suffering with gender dysphoria,” or “My parents don’t understand me,” or “I don’t believe in the religion that my family does,” etc. And these younger people, mostly kids, are scared or they’re nervous or they don’t have the self-confidence that I have. And I feel a sense of duty in a way.

Jordan, what you mentioned, saying ‘how has Quazar affected you, as you’ve come to bring him to life?’ You know, it is still me. But at the same time, Quazar is more than myself at this point. It’s a symbol of difference, and strangeness, and uniqueness, and the fact that you can be whoever you want to be. 

You can be just the way you are, and it’s totally fine. Some people will be bullied in school like I was, but they won’t have the confidence to keep going in on mufti [non-uniform, casual] days with what they want to wear. They’ll fake sick days – been there. They’ll do all this different stuff to try and avoid the torment. And for some people that may get so dark that, you know, they end up resorting to rougher things.

But the most crucial thing is that online identity, whether it’s in-gaming or YouTube, or anything, whether you’re playing a character or you’re just being yourself, it’s a fantastic form of escapism. But also, as soon as you’ve escaped for a while, you can end up learning something from that and you can build confidence and you can take something away from the online world to bring into your real life.

Jordan: Yeah, you’ve done such a great job just now, of really describing this positive projective reflection – this idea that it’s any kind of identity exploration. And there’s a very positive thing in having an online place where you can experiment with that, where the stakes are low, where no one is going to throw an egg at you necessarily, or they might not know who you are.

Laura: So obviously you’re doing a great job of evangelizing and helping young people who are in a similar situation to feel more confident in being themselves, or experimenting to find themselves. But what can platforms do? You talked a little about what Roblox does in terms of letting people experiment, but have you seen other experiences, perhaps when they are the opposite, when they shut down that creativity?

Quazar: In many ways, I believe that the issue mostly lies within the populace, the mass populace. I hate saying this, but the algorithm, which is a very overused term, or the mass amount of attention, for example, the front page games, things need to change or rotate more often. It’s totally fine bringing attention to things in terms of a gaming website. You know, you’ll have the most popular games on the front page or something, but I believe there should be some kind of system in place.

I believe that the different or the less popular should be focused on more. I feel as though if YouTube advertisements or different things, promoted smaller channels more often, you’d be able to get that nice wide variety of different things.

Laura: We as a platform have done a lot in this space. And I know that there are others that do the same and encourage that creativity and the right to be whoever you want to be online as long as you’re pretty much a good person. But I know that there’s still a long way to go, as you say, to normalize the unusual because that’s what this is about, is saying there is no such thing as normal. We should celebrate everyone’s differences in all of these diverse communities that we have.

Quazar: Just be a freak, just be whatever you want to be. At least in terms of me and Jordan and Laura, we like you as you are. You don’t have to be anything spectacular. You don’t have to be famous. And if you think that’ll bring you happiness, you know, and you want to pursue it, if that’s your real passion, go for it. My saying is: pursue yourself.

Jordan: What I hope is that what our listeners get from this, is some of the really positive stuff that happens in the online world. Again, I’ll just reiterate, we get so much of this negative side of this idea that everything online is about trying to create these sort of unbelievable aspirational pictures, or trying to get profit, or trying to make everyone look like a Kardashian. And the bottom line is that’s just not really the case, and that’s not why kids are attracted to it.