Anonymity

"Anonymous". To some, it's just a word. To some, an interesting concept. To others, it's a collective. That's right, a collective of people, to be exact. They are a subset of internet culture, and some laugh at them, while others recoil in fear. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on just who or what anonymous is, but to put it in a nutshell, it's a trend that started out as the general idea of posting to the internet with no handle and no way of identifying one's self. The concept stuck particularly to imageboards, and one such image board, 4chan, particularly attached itself to it, perpetuating it even further.

I could wax poetic about Anonymous in relation to 4chan, but that's not the concept I want to discuss in particular...and really, what I'm about to say does apply to them as well, but that's not the context I would like to put it in. There's a certain mob mentality that comes with 4chan and that's another can of worms altogether.

What interests me is anonymity and how it applies to internet social networking sites, such as LiveJournal and Blogger. Or really any blog.

Most people on the internet have a handle they go by, and an email or an AIM screen name or some other identifying piece of information. And most people are content with their internet footprint. Those who don't want too much personal information tend to shy away from any sort of activity, and those who don't care are more active parts in the community. If you don't want something coming back to haunt you, you just don't post it-- it's common sense. (Some still do, but again, I digress.)

Except that now there's this concept of "anonymous". Take LiveJournal for example. Provided that the owner hasn't specified that the journal is locked, or hasn't disallowed anonymous commenting, anyone can go in and post a comment without their name attached to it, just a date, a label-- (Anonymous) in LiveJournal's case-- and sometimes an IP address. Generally speaking, the IP address isn't as useful as it sounds unless the messages are threatening. The average user doesn't have the resources or drive to find out a name and address from an IP alone.

Of course, it's easy to see how a feature like this could be used abusively.

The extent? Is appalling.

Let's take a look at a particular one. This one:

http://rp-anon-meme.livejournal.com/

I'll save a lot of lengthy explanation of what RP and what these people are complaining about by simply stating that if you're not sure what RP entails in this context, it entails co-writing with another (or multiple people) for fun.

It's a hobby, in short.

And yet there are over 21,000 comments, almost entirely aimed at tearing people down for being bad at this hobby. Now, not all comments are destructive, some are positive, but the majority are and that is the intention of this particular community.

Let's put this into perspective here.

Billy loves model trains. He loves watching them go around the track, listening to the noises they make. Billy, however, is not that good at painting model trains nor is he very good at making scenery for them to run in. But he tries, and he enjoys it, and he is proud of his work! Then Billy's roommate, George, invites some friends over...we'll say ten or twenty. All of them also enjoy model trains, so it's a model train lover party. They get there, see Billy's train set and all start telling Billy how shitty his model train set is.

This would not be an acceptable action in most circles.

So why, then do people feel that it's okay when no one knows who they are?

Wikipedia actually has a sub-par article on Online disinhibition effect and this is certainly an extreme form of it. Because people don't fear the retribution that comes with attaching their names to things, we find out just how cruel and spiteful they are, and over what, a hobby? When you combine anonymity and the bullying effect, its results are appalling.

Perhaps we should all start walking around in ski masks so that we never have to be held accountable for our actions at all.

Or perhaps XKCD put it best: