On the way to class yesterday, I saw a “more hip than” version of my housemate, a “more ethnic than” version of my best friend, a “more freshman than” version of one of my friends from home, and a “more Y chromosome than” version of another one of my friends. I’d seen them all before at one point or another this year, either walking in front of College Row, in one of my classes, or cutting in front of me in line at the Campus Center because I’m too passive to stand up for myself. But seeing all four of them in one place at one time was a little more than I could take. I have this fantasy that one morning I’ll wake up in a parallel dimension where everything is strange and yet somehow familiar. Episodes like the one previously described do nothing but encourage my neurosis. I need to stop drinking so much coffee.
But nevertheless, the Wesleyan doppelganger is an eventuality. Sometime during your Wesleyan career, you’re bound to have some kind of doppelganger on campus, making your life just that much more confusing. But doppelgangers come in many different forms. There is the simple “double” or “pod”, someone who looks, acts, or dresses in a manner similar to you. This would be the person you’re always mistaken for at parties. Or, if you’re more fortunate, the person who is always mistaken for you at parties. There is the “than” variation of the double phenomenon as well. These came in many shapes and sizes: the “more ethnic than”, the “more hip than”, the “fatter than”, the “skinnier than”, and occasionally the “more X/Y chromosome than”. You get the idea. The “than” doppelgangers usually aren’t mistaken for you, except when at a distance or in the one situation when the mistaken identity would be most embarrassing. Therefore, the main function of a “than” doppelganger is to allow your friends to stalk said “than” doppelganger and occasionally point at this person and make snide comments about them. Often, the “than” doppelganger“ shows you what your friends really think about you and forces you to confront all of your physical imperfections.
Some claim that there is also a third type of double, the ”soul mate“, but anyone who tells you this is a liar and clearly lacks a working knowledge of how the Wesleyan dating scene actually works. These are probably the same people who told you that the female orgasm actually exists.
But the trickiest part about the whole college doppelganger phenomenon is how to deal with it. What to do when you are forced into social interactions with your doppelganger? Do you acknowledge that you two are doppelgangers? Or do you ignore the matter completely? The answer may depend completely on whether your doppelganger realizes that they are, in fact, your doppelganger. This is a difficult thing to ascertain itself. And while to mistakenly assume a resemblance to be a full-fledged doppelganger relationship could be disastrously awkward; to resist a clear doppelganger relationship is socially irresponsible. Everyone knows that if doppelgangers shake hands the world explodes or something. It’s like matter and anti-matter meeting. It’s all a fine line, it really is.
And while we’re on the topic: can you have more than one doppelganger? If so, I need to think up a new word to use. Or write a new column. So for my sake, I’ll say that you can only have one doppelganger, and if a better one comes along, you drop the old one. Problem solved.
I myself have only talked to my doppelganger once. I felt uncomfortable the entire time until I realized that we were actually two very different people, with different personalities, interests, and goals. While I was clearly the more interesting, better looking, and more intelligent one, he certainly had an interesting mole. I wonder sometimes if he knew that he was my doppelganger. Do people tell him he looks like me? Does he care? ”And am I the only one obsessed with the idea of someone who looks just like me, leading a vastly different life?“
Okay. Here’s the part where I have to start being insightful.
It all seems to come back to issues of individuality. Especially at Wesleyan, where individuality seems to be such an important thing, we all long to be unique snowflakes and stand out in a crowd. Or failing that, to be absurdly eccentric. The idea of a doppelganger, someone who is us and yet isn’t us, is an intriguing concept. On one hand, it suggests that we aren’t as unique as we would often like to think. We are all generic in some fundamental way. But on the other hand, the idea of a doppelganger represents the wide scope of identity. That someone can look just like us on the outside, but be intrinsically different, that two people who began in the same place, looking exactly the same, can in the end find themselves in two totally different places, seems rather liberating. The idea of a doppelganger is both a challenge, and an affirmation of our individuality. Or at least our god-given right to wear stupid sunglasses to parties to make sure that everyone notices us.
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