from

http://labs.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/ ... ?ref=fpblg

I'm interested in the idea of 'stable anonymity'. Despite my multiple personalities on the DM site, I'm basically JuanTwoThree for all other purposes. I would be on the DM if they weren't so duplicitous about comments and immoderating.

By and large the rows are rare on this site. And short-lived. Would it really hurt if we used our real names?

Oh bloody hell yes. First troll to come along who wants to piss you off would be signing you up for shit and posting your name, address etc. left, right and centre. I use a pseudonym online not because of the people I talk to but because of those I never want to talk to.

Agree with both of you. It's very tiresome to read an interesting article and then have the comments over-run by idiots, often simply pushing their own obsessions or bonnet bees, or insulting the subject of the article if a politician.
I've been Malcolm Armsteen since 1970, originally for satirical purposes but lately for anonymity. There are lots of real crazies out there as well, and although they can't hurt you they can cause a lot of trouble.
That said, Twitter means that we tend to be less anonymous.

There was a good piece on this subject in the Observer a couple of weeks ago. crabcakes' point about abuse is quite right. I'm friends with someone who blogs about gender issues using her real name: she's had death threats, regularly receives very explicit threats of sexual violence, and is exposed on a daily basis to the kind of name-calling and character assassination that would get a pupil excluded from school. Some of the abuse is orchestrated; much of it is ad hoc. What discourages her most is that so much of her time is taken up by people who have no interest in what she has written. All they want to do is drown her out, bully her into silence. And while she is tremendously fastidious in setting down her opinions, thinking them through, backing them up with evidence and anecdote, the haters just send her emails containing a few lines of gratuitous abuse and, occasionally, her home address. Much though she would like to, she can't ignore them.

On forums like Mailwatch where a small number of people post regularly, it's not really a question of anonymity so much as pseudonymity. If anyone has read all 700+ of my posts, they will have absorbed enough information to be able to 'identify' me. Knowing my name will not add anything valuable. Using a pseudonym allows me to set the boundaries of what other pseudonymous people can find out about me from the internet. There's also something liberating about it: I've always felt somewhat trapped by my 'real' names (which I have changed more than once — does that make them pseudonyms?) as they reflect an inheritance I don't necessarily identify with, but with which I become identified. They're also a public face I have to keep up: 'ezinra' can make dirty jokes and express controversial opinions, and allow them to remain in the public domain, in a way that 'I' could not.

Rudeness on the internet is a boom subject in the social sciences at the moment. Who are these angry people? What motivates them to be aggressive and abusive online? Are they aware of how they behave? What do they get out of it? From a gender angle it's quite depressing: the utopia of post-gendered 'cyborgs' communicating free of embodied social stereotypes has given way to a situation where:

Todays The System is strangely appropriate....

http://www.notquitewrong.com/rosscottin ... -internet/

Whilst there's sites like Redwatch around I'm staying anon I don't need a bunch of skinheads turning up on my doorstep.

As it is I've given away enough genuine information on here that anyone who knew me fairly well could work out who oboogie really was if they read through my posts.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

Sorry i'm slighty confused is the government trying to force people to give up internet anonymity

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There never was a golden age Mike, it's all an illusion

The Third Doctor Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974)

You ain't seen me..... right?

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I'm a nasty, violent lefty. You cunt.

What are you talking about? This is my real name!

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"Winterval is the favourite myth of the lunatic right who base most of their weekly columns on angry Brie-based dreams rather than looking out of their window." (Robin Ince)

I cover my name on some boards not on others, My twitter is my own name, but yeah this one is a play on a WWE wrestler.

I have a few names for different sites, I don't feel it gives me leeway to be rude though.I have always felt that there must be something wrong with people who give way to aggression the minute they sit behind a key board. Rather strangely swinging sites seem far worse than politics sites for this!

Certainly not a case of make love not war.

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Blog...http://itsjustahobby.wordpress.com/

Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets. Nye Bevan

I know someone (female) who has the misfortune to have an internet stalker.

Anonymity.... is what lets her visit posting boards....

I am Big Rob because I am small and called Jeffrey....


The only people in the US who have their online anonymity removed are sex offenders.

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....

Now...

I'm rude and un-bridled in my internet conduct and I go by my own name. What does that make me... - so here beginneth the race to the ad hominem attack - big prize for the winner.

Seriously though, I prefer to believe that I'm likely to meet people offline as a result of being online... Over the years I have met so many people off the internet that I feel it has actually been beneficial overall and I can't see the point in pretending to be someone else. I'm a real person and for the most part I believe in what I write and would be happy to defend or accept criticism as appropriate for whatever I have written!

Someone from this forum did try and fuck with me once. But that’s in the past and I forgive them. Funnily enough, this place, which is populated almost entirely by rude anonymous weirdos ... hahaha... is the only place where I have had any trouble.

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

That rather depends on how you are defining 'hurt'. The internet has been a godsend to stalkers everywhere. I know people who also have access to enormous online databases through their jobs and I know that they have used them to locate people's ex-directory phone numbers and addresses, etc. People who opt out of the electoral roll on security grounds owing to the nature of their job can now be found in seconds flat by half the customer service reps in the country.

Pretty much all of us have lots of information held by half a dozen immense companies (utilities/media/communications) with tens of thousands of staff only a surname search away. Be careful who you piss off - or be anonymous.

True.