Anonymity

I’m kind of excited for tomorrow’s lesson.  I remember seeing some really good points from Room For Debate.  One of the writers said that not all anonymous people are bad, and not all bad people are anonymous.  In fact, The Federalist Papers were written by the Founding Fathers under a veil of anonymity.  

I’m just curious to see how far we can justify that.

Anonymity is an issue, as it gives people the freedom to say what they otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t as themselves. But sometimes people just do it to be jerks.

I don’t really think the Founding Fathers would have done that in the newspapers.  They had the means to do it. They could have been trolls, but they chose not to be.  (That, or the publishers wouldn’t print it.) Also, let’s not forget that these are the same people that would arrange a duel where they can formally shoot at each other. It might not be that far-fetched.

It’s also much easier to use the internet to do things like this.  Usually websites either disable comments completely or don’t screen them.  We can’t possibly keep track of everything everyone says. We can sift through mass amounts of posts, videos, and comments to see what’s worth investigating, but we would have to dig pretty deep, past all the trolls. It’s so ridiculously easy to share things over the internet, regardless if they’re worth sharing or not.  Should anonymous people carry that much weight? How do we even tell different anonymous people apart, if their profile merely says “Anonymous”?

I feel like one would’ve better be able to get away with it under a pseudonym, before the inception of the internet. I feel like having a pseudonym offers more legitimacy than just being “Anonymous.”  But that doesn’t mean it’s better than being a troll.