When the Anonymous require Anonymity.

[silveradept]

I've been mulling this idea over in my brain for a bit. Such things do not often end in cohesive thought or crystallized philosophy, but vague inklings are still reference points for further inquiry.

The start point for our journey is real life, or "First Life" if you're a fan of having a Second Life. (Prime Life and Life'?) Most people have two selves that reconcile into a whole - the "public" life, the life that greets your neighbors, pays your taxes, helps your landlady take out her garbage. In public life, you are Thomas A. Anderson... okay, enough with the Agent Smith routine. Anyway, public life is the life that you present to most people and that most people see you under. Then there's the "private" life, one that explores what happens when the doors close, the windowshades are drawn, and there's nobody else around to see. Well, sort of - the "private" life is really the life of the person that is told to the trusted inner circle, who get something much closer to accurate accounts of what's happened. The truly private life is what happens when there's nobody to see and there's nobody who gets told. (I think this applies both to single persons and to couples, though.) There are probably very few truly private things in our lives - although they probably affect us tremendously.

At first pass, this idea seems to be a reasonable thing. Most people do not want to be regaled with the intimate details of the lives of everyone around them. And most people do not want to tell all peoples they meet about the intimate details of their lives. There are people who take advantage of such things. So by restricting the public group and creating the "private" group, those things that are intimate but need or want to be told are still released. A group of women will discuss their sex lives, (a very important discussion, actually), but some of those women will not discuss their sex lives with their partner, much less any of their partner's friends (assuming they're not part of the trust circle).

With this idea in mind, we jump to the Internet, where unless there are deliberate actions taken by a person (or by a person seeking someone else), a user handle is relatively free of associations and identities. Everyone starts on the 'net as a complete enigma. Most of us dispel parts of that enigma, so much so that a personality coalesces around a particular user handle. It can be a true reflection of the person typing, or a distortion or reversal. In all cases, judgment can only be made of the username (unless identifying fragments are attached to it, by someone seeking out validation of claims and trying to match a name and other characteristics to a username. Remember, we all could be liars when we're talking about ourselves.) It's not even necessarily true there's a human behind the keyboard - bots will get better to the point where you really have to think hard and ask specific questions to determine whether or not one is talking to a Replicant. The Internet affords all of us anonymity, which we exercise to greater or lesser degrees.

What I then find fascinating is the creation of things like "sex journals" or alternate usernames or the usage of private filtering groups. It is, in essence, creating the "private" grouping of the public username. Second Life is being split in two just like regular life. The anonymous require anonymity, because the personae they've created or used on the Internet don't talk about those things, and to do so would be a bit of a character break, or so it may seem. There are some people like greyweirdo who have no trouble talking publicly about things that most people would consider to be "private" matters. There's not any details about nookie, necessarily, but just saying that one is poly, bi, gay, lesbian, or enjoys one (or more) of a significant number of fetishes is enough to get people saying "TMI!", "Perverts", or "There are children around!" For some, even discussing menstruation is going too far for a public post. Others might think that having a coherent political thought expressed on paper is sufficient grounds for lj-cut or other filtering mechanisms.

Did this happen because as in real life, there are usernames that will look for something specific and then zealously attack it or make comment on it, trying to make it a weakness or an embarrasment or somehow the defining characteristic of a username? (Something Awful, your reputation precedes you in this regard.) I can see examples where people retreat to a different name or change theirs because prime life intruded in a very bad way, threatening harm or death in the physical. In other cases, maybe the harassment gets to be too taxing to deal with, and a username slips away. Those are not the things I'm interested in. I'm interested in stable usernames that, for one reason or another, have a filtered "private" group or another username that they describe their "private" life in. In an environment that you can maintain significant anonymity in with almost no effort, and then better anonymity with some effort, why do people still lock things into a "private" domain, or disassociate the public name with the "private" one, even though there's not necessarily any reason to do so?

I've rambled enough on this, clumsily and clod-footedly, so now I'm passing it off to the rest of you, who are far more agile and experienced at this than I am. There's no need to personally identify, if you don't want to - speak in general terms or anonymously - after all, that's what this particular kind of question is meant for.

Comments

[idan-cohen.livejournal.com]

A interesting as fuck post, sir, which I will have to think about for a bit.

Why am I awake?

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Speaking as one of thsoe who has a "private" journal as well as the "public" one, I thought I'd jump in with my reasonings behind the two names. Wait, let's go back earlier. Back when the internet was just forming (well, maybe not, but pretty damn close to when it became a public accessabe thing) I was known as "Minnie Fay". The name Minnie Fay followed me through high school and college. Everyone knew me as such, and I hid no secrets, keeping a blogger rather public on my personal website. in 2001, I created a Lj (minniefay) for the sole purpose of being able to comment on John's entries while he did a semester in Japan. I liked LJ, so I stayed. in January of the year I was 23, I had decided I was tired of being Minnie Fay. I had just started chatting on Nightstar, and I had discovered that an ex-boyfriend of mine who had badly hurt me was not only on the network, but was in the channels I wanted to be in. (A frind who didn't know this person was my ex got me into NS). i also decided that I had been MF for over 10 years and it was time to "grow up". the Brother's Creeggan album had just come out, and so I picked Anna On The Moon. There are still plenty of people who will call me "Minnie", but I think Anna has become her own person, an extension of me, so mcuh so that a lot of people call me Anna instead of Becca (especially boardies). I started working at a bank, and so my online life started to HAVE to be somewhat private. I couldn't disclose publically where I worked, I culdn't discuss things that happened at work publically, and to make matters "worse", a co-worker had an LJ and added me as a friend..so I could'nt even really make "Work rants" using no names. I also was dating a guy who had friends who disliked him dating so soon after his break-up wih another girl, and once they found out that I was Anna, started harassing me over there, some under the guise of pretending to be friends, and adding me to their F-list so they could read the locked entries. Anne Of The Island began. Every person initially put onto that lj was someone that i physically knew in real life. These were the epeople who I had known way back when I was still Minnie Fay, the people who I thought I could trust with my private thoughts n omatter what. No one really knew of that journal unless I specifically told them about it. The entrises were locked, and the userinfo states nothing about me. (of course more recently i have identified as being both names). I created this because putting my regular LJ on filters was too complicated, and I needed a place to speak with the people I trsted. Heck, i even post girlie things semi publically with a warning "girls only TMI" before the cut, or post pictures/details of people's gifts with "so and so don't click". Anyway. Maintaining this separate journal has wound up really helping me with getting some things out that I needed to, but didn't want to talk about with a large grouping of friends. (and well, i have something like 150 friends right now). I still post Most of my life publcially as Anna, but there are some aspects, such as my sex life that I feel need to be filtered down. Sometimes when I do it, I wonder why i do, because the people on my Anna LJ probably all can be trusted and if there's something they don't want to read, they can just skip it. But yet, I contiue to post in AOTI. Not ALL the time though. Sometimes that journal will go months without any entries, and then smetmes there will be a flury of them. I think, to some degree, I treat AOTI as a place where I don't have to explain myself or give background information becasue anyone reading it is someone who I've known for a while and alredy knows the important information, either through being a reader of AotI when I first started discussing something, or because I told them personally about it. For me, it's not creating anoniminity with having the two journals, it's just a more elaborate filter.

Er, that got long winded. Sorry.

Re: Why am I awake?

[tinchen.livejournal.com]

I have to agree here. To sum it up in my own words: as soon as you interact with other people, you are not anonymous anymore. As soon as you start communicating you let details slip and when then people from you RL-sphere come into your virtual sphere you have to split these parts again.

Of course there are people who manage to stay more anonymous, but those do not share as much of their whole life and thus will probably not have as many contacts as those who share.

(and, btw, my thoughts and words feel far more clumsy than yours!)

Re: Why am I awake?

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Hahahahah are you sure? that was written pretty badly AND written after a bout with insomnia.

For me though, the "internet" friends and the RL friends start to blur - either because I've gone and met the internet friends and they turned into RL friends (via meeting at a conference, convention, or just happening to be in their state/town), or I've talked to them so often online and shared so many details that they became closer than just random internet people. BUT, there are some RL people you just HAVE to keep off your online personal. My cousin, for example, blogs over on MySpace, and I cringe sometimes reading it, because reading about her underage drinking binges and hiring a stripper for her 18th is NOT something that I want to read about, especially when I see her grandmother (my aunt) freqently.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Sex. Oh, yah, I remember having sex once. Long ago.

Yarha, Some of Us Don't Have Much Foolin' Around to Hide

[silveradept]

Well, y'know, sometimes that's what happens - if there's not much to hide, then there's not much need to really hide it. As opposed to the idea that we should have nothing to hide because we're all morally upstanding people who would never even think about doing something that They, be they government or moral crusaders, or whatever, would disapprove of.

[brynnmyrddin.livejournal.com]

Personally, I friends-lock most of my entries because I don't like my journal entries being open for all to see. All my LJ friends are either friends in real life that I rarely see (none of my friends go to my college) or fairly close online friends that aren't RL friends mainly because of geographical distance. For example, one of my friends lives in England and another lives in Australia, and they're actually closer to me than a lot of my RL acquaintances are. We talk more often and about more personal things, and I actually consider them better friends than most of the people I spend time with IRL. And so the majority of my entries are friends-locked.
The LJ-cuts are just for pictures or long-ish entries, so I don't stretch people's friends pages.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Initiating this comment before any of us read others' comments in order to get thoughts down before they fade or are distorted.

Two (more or less) processes come to mind:

1. Formation of groups within which one wishes to talk about some outside them: also, conversation within them that one does not desire those outside to read, perhaps because of reputation, which leads us into

2. Preservation of a created reputation: that coin minted slowly, and which once spent or squandered is gone. It's not so much a fear of hostility in many cases, but rather a fear of lack of interest. Fear of boring the 'audience', or otherwise making one's journal less appealing to be read: that's why sensitive topics (personal matters may be included due to sensitivity, rather than inherently the 'personal' part) may be detached, or hidden completely: to make the reading of the journal a more pleasant experience for all concerned.

A desire for attention, popularity, friendship: once you've formed certain bonds with a certain formula, to varying extents there's an effect of petrification, paralysis, one becoming hide-bound in one's so-far-successful ways, afraid to change and perhaps push away those who had previously been friendly to one.

2. deals with an unwillingness to push away by accident; 1. deals with an unwillingness to push away with thoughts that one knows likely might offend, but that one still wishes/needs to talk about (and which probably would make no sense to those in the First Life, or be unfeasible to talk about). Somewhere inbetween these, maybe, lies that realm of unmixed embarassment: those things one will share with a few trusted people, but not with nearer-strangers. There's it's just probably-inappropriate feelings of shame, (and also) fear of others' reactions, fear of knowledge being used against one...

At its root, though, it basically comes down to this: just anonymity isn't enough. You can be as anonymous as a speck of dust on the widest ocean, pour forth your thoughts into the ether/Internet like the haircutter speaking his secret to the reeds by the riverbank, and it won't be enough: it won't matter, because though the words are preserved, though the thoughts have been gotten out, no one else knows. There's the relief of pressure, but not the ease of friendship, not the aid, not the understanding, not the feedback or the comments (that many often can't get in their real life, perhaps because all those they might speak with are the ones they want to speak (perhaps disparagingly) about) that would make their lives happier.

To make bonds, a life in truth, for the average human requires other people: otherwise, why have an online journal at all? Making such a life, a deep-rooted life that others know and understand, the days and even years of conversation and context--that can't be accomplished quickly, but it can be destroyed a lot quicker. After such a thing has been made, most probably wish to safeguard it.

...yare yare... from the length of this alone, what time do you think it is at time of writing? Actually, cancel that: you can see from the date anyway, and I don't actually know if it accurately records it. Or something. (...sleep...)

[Second sort-of edit: splitting due to length.]
[cont.]

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

[cont.]

M) Fear. Fear of misunderstanding, of misguided disgust or loathing: there's always the 'but', the 'but if you knew... if you could see how it seems to me...'. Everyone has their reasons, everyone has their blinds, their blinkers. And their secrets from each other, about each other. Strip them of everything--make it voluntarily if you must, for the sake of morality--and make them see each other in their full mentality.

Let's see how long shame and fear and attempts to hide last. Two enemies, seeing their childhoods and reasons for being on opposite sides: what happens? When they understand in full?

What happens when all of civilisation can perceive itself, wholly, complete and immediate feedback? No secret thoughts, no wondering about others' secret thoughts, no nervousness, no guessing and second-guessing and tangles of 'what if's: just knowledge. Understanding. Instead of the truth being taboo, a cause for ostrasisation, it would be the only option. Those who could adapt and live in total honesty would: those who couldn't would, per chance, perish alone, thrusting all the world from them. *smiles*

N) *slightly disturbed*

M) *whirls* Destroy the tragedy of the commons, once and for all. No 'Thou and I', 'mine and thine', no 'my truth your lies', take away the penalty! Take away from the ability to lie, to conceal, to deceive, and none will be able to hide from ANYTHING any longer! The leeches can't listen and stab you, everyone will know everything... everything. Every true and beautiful feeling in your heart, every flaw and every reason and every cry.

N) It would be disgusting, though, wouldn't it? Isn't that what you've been saying all this time?

M) Recruiting followers... it takes time. A long time, a hard time, and that's just getting their loyalty. Getting their understanding may be impossible. And if that's so, I'm willing to sacrifice a little mental hygiene to have another human being whom I can touch understand me.

N) ...the 'loyal follower' bit ties in nicely to our 'no involuntary what-it-means-to-be-human tampering' though, doesn't it?

M) Mochiron.

Sort-of-edit, after reading comment/s: N) Also, of course, there's the cases where there are active ties to the first life: there, basically the normal separations just transfer over, to varying degrees.