When does individual identity merge into group anonymity?

Yashveer (1) is a student in the final year of an Economics and Politics degree. He originally thought about working in international development but is now thinking that he might have to take a graduate role in commercial finance. 

Awang (2)  is originally from Malaysia and came to the UK to study Engineering. He subsequently established a successful medium-sized medical equipment company in the UK. He is worried about his daughter who is showing signs of mental ill health.

Florence (3) is a theatre nurse in the NHS. She has just started on a Leadership training programme because she hopes that a management role will be more conducive to her future plans for having a family and a career. Next on her to-do list is finding the right man.

Charlie (4) manages an IT support team in a charity. They have just recruited someone who he is very attracted to but is nervous about approaching. In his spare time, he plays a lot of board games with friends and has even invented his own game, which he is thinking about taking to market via crowdfunding. He just has to take the risk.

Evelyn (5)  never married and has always been fiercely independent. She goes on regular long country walks with a group of friends and enjoys landscape painting. She is worried that her worsening arthritis might curtail these activities. She would rather end her life than become inactive.

Amahle (6)  is thinking about leaving her husband, Geoff, as his drinking has worsened and he is becoming increasingly aggressive towards her, even though he hasn’t been violent as yet. She is not sure who to talk to about her fears as her parents are still in South Africa and did not approve of the mixed-race marriage. She is also worried that their daughter, Fleur (7), seems to be siding with Geoff when they argue.

Magdalena (8) immigrated from Poland 15 years ago and she now runs her own domestic cleaning business. Since Brexit, she has been struggling to maintain her staffing levels. She is also experiencing problems in her relationship with her partner. She is wondering about whether she should go back to Poland, but is concerned about attitudes to LGBT individuals.

Rashid’s (9) parents are keen for him to study Accountancy and Finance at University, but his passion is cricket. He is a rising-star fast bowler in the county under-17s team and has dreams of playing for England. 

Francesco (10) works for an Anglo-Italian marketing consultancy mainly focusing on lifestyle brands. However, he really prefers the occasional work they do for not-for-profit organisations as it feels more meaningful. He would like to move into the charity sector but is concerned about the drop in income.

Paul (11) is a successful futures trader and describes himself as ‘a confidently camp gay man in what is still a macho culture’. What he is less open about is his persistent anxiety based on the feeling that he is always one bad investment away from a high profile failure which would damage the reputation of the LGBT community in the financial sector.

Abioye (12) is a professional youth worker with a large church. He loves working with young people and helping them to explore their own developing faith and identities. He is feeling pressure to further his career in the church by moving into adult ministry but is not sure that this is his true calling from God.

Yūko (13) began solo webcamming to earn money whilst studying in the UK. She thinks of herself more as a businesswoman than a sex worker. She worked out that she gets more tips when she plays up to the stereotype of a demure and reluctant Japanese woman and so she has to hide how much she enjoys orgasms.

Ingrid (14) met her husband, a director, when she was working as a film production assistant. She feels worried that she might have betrayed her feminist principles by giving up work after the birth of their son Bruno (obscured), but it may also be down to the fact that, although she loves him, she doesn't like him very much.

Mary (15) has been planning to escape her local government admin job to become a personal trainer and sports coach. She recently broke her foot just coming down stairs too heavily and her doctors are concerned that she might have early onset osteoporosis.

David (16) has many identities but his most persistent identity is that of the observer.

Rebecca (17) rebelled against her orthodox Jewish upbringing and left home at 18. Following the death of her parents and younger brother in a terrorist bombing, she is feeling drawn back to the faith of her youth.

Cynthia (18) is a social media influencer in the area of women's sexuality. Her increasing profile has led to a growing number of trolling attacks as well as pressure from potential advertising sponsors.

Rabia (19) wears hijab because she wants people to consider her as a person with a religious and intellectual identity and not as an object of sexual desire. She hates being thought of as a fanatic and is secretly ashamed of how proud she is of her beauty.

Goran’s (20) job keeps him in the city but he pictures himself more as an outdoors type and dreams of living in a wilderness somewhere. If he’s honest with himself, it is more a desire to get away from other people; ever since lockdown he has felt increasingly anti-social and is disturbed by how much hatred he feels for society.

Kyle (21)  wishes people were as straight-forward as his dog, Parker (obscured). Unlike everyone else in his life, Parker always lets Kyle know how he is feeling and seems to know instinctively how Kyle is feeling. Sometimes he wishes he was a dog.

Jo (22) has identified as non-binary since they were a teenager. However, since setting up home with a cis-male partner, they have started to feel a preference for the female aspects of their identity.

Weronika (23) talks a lot about having a positive body image and speaks out against fat-shaming, but she knows that her own comfort eating stems from her feelings of loneliness and the fact that she finds it hard to share her authentic self with others.

Bilaal (24) is frustrated by his lack of success in his academic career. He ascribes this to systemic racism and blinkered traditionalist thinking of senior academics, but part of him worries that he’s not as clever as he would like to believe.

Megan (25) has started to have cravings for burgers and other junk food. So far she has managed to stick to her organic vegan principles but is concerned she might not be able to resist for much longer.

Briony (26) met Ricardo (27) on holiday in Brazil. His wife had died a year ago and he was bringing up his son Mateo (28) alone. They married and moved to the UK so that Briony could continue her successful legal career. Ricardo’s reluctance to get a permanent job or take his fair share of household chores has started to sour their relationship. However, Briony and Mateo have developed a deep love for each other which means she is reluctant to leave the relationship.

Bailey (29) is a bassist in a reggae band. Bailey is keen to incorporate influences form a wider range of genres into their music but is facing resistance from some of the more traditionalist band members.

Amber (30) has slowly become disillusioned with the pressure to conform within the Goth subculture that she has been immersed in for several years. She is reluctant to leave altogether because of the sense of belonging but one more creepy Goth guy stalking her might tip her over the edge.

Teresa (31) is growing ever more bored with her respectable job, her respectable husband and their conventional and increasingly infrequent sex life. Her fantasies have often turned in the direction of BDSM, where she imagines herself as a dominatrix. She knows her husband would never go for that.

Marcus (32) was adopted by a white couple as an orphaned refugee baby and raised within a traditional British cultural environment. His adoptive parents supported him when he became interested in contacting his Angolan relatives as a teenager. He now feels that he should engage more with his cultural heritage but he likes his British identity.

Sean (33) is a drug dealer, mainly selling grass and coke to middle class professionals. However, he is under pressure from his suppliers to push harder drugs and to target young people. He doesn’t want to but feels he can’t resist for much longer.

Violet (34) and Albert (35) came to the UK from the Caribbean in the late 60s and, for most of their lives, have proudly worked in the NHS, where they met and fell in love. Although they were not threatened with deportation themselves, they have felt betrayed by the UK Government’s treatment of the Windrush generation.

Denise (36) is tired of people treating her as stupid because she has blond hair, large breasts, an Essex accent and likes to wear short skirts. She loves reading about and discussing politics, philosophy and the arts but doesn’t often get the chance. She doesn’t see why she should have to dress like a ‘frump’ to be taken seriously.

Ryan (37) is sick of people assuming he is gay because he is an empathic interior designer and likes to be well groomed. He is worried that he is becoming homophobic and has started treating women badly as a reaction to being stereotyped.

Becky (38) has started to hear voices. She knows they are auditory hallucinations but they feel like they are coming from outside her head. She feels she ought to get help but they are not saying anything disturbing, in fact, they provide an amusing commentary on what is happening around her. Her main fear is of laughing out loud at their ribaldry.

Ben (39) is self-conscious about his diminutive stature. He tends to adopt a larger-than-life extravert persona in compensation but he finds it tiring to maintain for long. He also tends to be too easy going to prevent anyone accusing him of having a Napoleon complex.

Mark (40) is a model. When he is not being groomed, dressed (or undressed) and photographed he spends most of his time in the gym maintaining his beautifully toned body — which he hates. He longs to be ugly and overweight because that would match how he feels on the inside.

Samira (41) is Kate’s (42) protege. Kate feels very proud of her project to mentor Samira as a potential leader in their organisation because it is evidence of her anti-racist credentials. Samira thinks Kate is just another person with white saviour complex who probably just wants to get into her pants, but she will go along with it as long as it helps her career.

Werner (43) is a devotee of conspiracy theories. Roswell, the Anunnaki, Chemtrails — deep down he knows they are nonsense, but they are so much more stimulating than the mundane cruel randomness of so-called real life.

Jia (44) enjoys the way people, mostly men, fall for her cute, ditzy and helpless routine. It was how she learnt to manipulate her parents and it’s worked for her ever since. She knows not to overdo it. She worries that she won’t be able to rely on it as much when she gets older.

Veronica (45) was part of the social elite in her school until a family scandal led to her becoming an outcast from the group. She has actively embraced her outsider status but cannot completely shake the pain of rejection and secretly yearns to be accepted again.

Logan (46) revels in his ‘bad boy’ reputation but is becoming concerned that his increasingly impulsive and aggressive behaviour is getting out of control, and that he might end up becoming just like his abusive father.

Musa (47) is a DJ. He carries his box of rare vinyls almost everywhere. Amongst the dub limited releases and techno private presses is a copy of Jim Reeves' Distant Drums, which was his grandmother’s favourite record. Ever since she also died in a plane crash, it has been his favourite too.

Chioma (48) and Jenny (49) have been together since they ended up in a drunken kiss at a freshers party. Jenny has been openly lesbian from her teens but Chioma is unsure of her sexuality and does not want to come out to her evangelical parents. Jenny is the only person she has ever dated. Jenny thinks she loves Chioma but is frustrated at her wavering and the fact that they have not progressed much beyond just kissing.

Steven (50) imagines he is a serial killer and pictures himself looking at the people in the crowd through his rifle scope. He knows he will never actually do it but he enjoys the feeling of power that imagining gives him and the sense that no-one would ever suspect that he entertained such dark thoughts.

Kalina (51) works as a PA to the chief executive of a large financial organisation. He thinks she is a great organiser but not particularly intelligent. What he doesn’t know is that she is an undercover officer investigating his fraud and money laundering activities.

Siobhan (52) is preparing to take part in a charity walk in support of breast cancer care. It involves walking 26 miles through London at night in a decorated bra. Everyone thinks she’s doing it because someone in her family died of breast cancer but she’s mainly looking forward to the mild exhibitionism.

Manesh (53) works in the local ‘Indian’ restaurant, except he is Bangladeshi, as are most of the people who work there. Even when people recognise that he is from Bangladesh, they assume he must be a Muslim. He is a Hindu. But what annoys him most is that, because of his grey hair, people assume he is at least 15 years older than his actual age.

Volodymyr (54) was happy to be called Rob because it was better than people pronouncing his name as Vladimir, the Russian version. But ever since the invasion and the rise to prominence of the Ukrainian President with the same name he has started to insist that people use his actual name and pronounce it properly.

Amy (55) loves her voluptuous feminine curves and always wears tight clothing to show them off. But what she loves even more is the room in her house with four full-length mirrors arranged so that she can examine herself from every angle. 

Kristen (56) creates different social media identities and uses them to troll celebrities. She figures that if she can’t have their fame, at least she can try to make them regret it. She has just started trolling Cynthia.

Carole (57) is a passionate advocate of alternative therapies. When she was recently diagnosed with cancer, she accepted the chemo and radiotherapy without hesitation. But she wants to believe that the homoeopathic mistletoe remedy is what is really helping her.

Victor (58), Glenn (59), Randy (60), David (61), Felipe (62) and Alex (63) are all Village People (1977–79).