This is a developing issue I keep running into.
I'll get to know someone relatively well, we'll talk on a number of things, maybe we'll get drunk a few times, everything's cool - I have made a new friend and they're fun to be around.
I live in a part of the city where everyone tends to know everyone else, at least a little bit. Around here everyone tends to work with everyone else, or sees everyone else during the course of their work (e.g. they work at Bagel Rising, they'll talk to everyone who comes in hungover Sunday morning). Inevitably, it seems, this person will have discussed everything of interest with their co-workers, and in a grab for new material, will start talking about me. When this happens, a series of opinions get put together about me that, to someone who's never met me, seem like the god's honest truth and not a dramatized pseudo-fictional retelling of something I said or implied.
I then get people I've never even met treating me not as another guy but this bizzaro character who kind of resembles me but has been taken to the extreme in a number of ways. Like if they were going to make me into a character on The O.C., that would be the dude they seem to legitimately think I am. I then have this fucking uphill battle ahead of me where I'm, I dunno, having to prove I'm the way I actually am and not this expectation.
This hasn't necessarily been an actual problem yet, but it kind of sucks knowing that whenever I say something or express an opinion or tell a story, it gets sexed up for TV and goes towards this semi-public understanding of me. I therefore have to keep my guard up and watch what I say, and restrain myself rather than enjoy myself, lest I suffer the consequences.
It would be pretty great if I could just say what I felt without having to think about how it might color a largely fictionalized reputation of me that people seem to regard as the truth.
I guess what bugs me is that it seems like a requirement of bonding with someone else is that you'll tell them the things you're not supposed to tell anyone. Now you're two peas in a SPECIAL SECRET POD telling each other exciting real-life stories (that have been exaggerated and warped into an engaging narrative for the sake of Good Times) and developing this mutual true-enough semi-bullshit understanding of the people around you.
It just sucks that as a result of people wanting to talk about real life stuff on a daily basis, it colors your reputation outside of your control and you have to keep you guard up. I realize I should either (1) not give a shit about people like this or (2) actively be out there being myself and proving the image false, but it seems fundamentally retarded that I need to do anything about this. It's like I'm being given the option of either playing this game or letting this go unchecked.
EDIT: I suppose I should mention that I notice this more with girls than guys, but it still happens with both
