All sorts of chewy fact-bits here. Maria Konnikova, in the New Yorker:
Several weeks ago, on September 24th, Popular Science announced that it would banish comments from its Web site. The editors argued that Internet comments, particularly anonymous ones, undermine the integrity of science and lead to a culture of aggression and mockery that hinders substantive discourse. “Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader’s perception of a story,” wrote the online-content director Suzanne LaBarre, citing a recent study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as evidence. While it’s tempting to blame the Internet, incendiary rhetoric has long been a mainstay of public discourse. Cicero, for one, openly called Mark Antony a “public prostitute,” concluding, “but let us say no more of your profligacy and debauchery.” What, then, has changed with the advent of online comments?
Anonymity, for one thing. According to a September Pew poll, a quarter of Internet users have posted comments anonymously. As the age of a user decreases, his reluctance to link a real name with an online remark increases; forty per cent of people in the eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-old demographic have posted anonymously. One of the most common critiques of online comments cites a disconnect between the commenter’s identity and what he is saying, a phenomenon that the psychologist John Suler memorably termed the “online disinhibition effect.” … When Arthur Santana, a communications professor at the University of Houston, analyzed nine hundred randomly chosen user comments on articles about immigration, half from newspapers that allowed anonymous postings, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle, and half from ones that didn’t, including USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, he discovered that anonymity made a perceptible difference: a full fifty-three per cent of anonymous commenters were uncivil, as opposed to twenty-nine per cent of registered, non-anonymous commenters. Anonymity, Santana concluded, encouraged incivility.
On the other hand, anonymity has also been shown to encourage participation; by promoting a greater sense of community identity, users don’t have to worry about standing out individually… In a study that examined student learning, the psychologists Ina Blau and Avner Caspi found that, while face-to-face interactions tended to provide greater satisfaction, in anonymous settings participation and risk-taking flourished.
Anonymous forums can also be remarkably self-regulating: we tend to discount anonymous or pseudonymous comments to a much larger degree than commentary from other, more easily identifiable sources…
Two sidebars about the local commentor-sphere. Sometime this morning, according to Sitemeter, Balloon Juice broke 100,000,000 “visits”. According to someone who knows much more about this than I do, “Google thinks that about a million visits came from about 150K unique people. So if that ratio of visits to visitors holds up, which is just a guess, 15 milllion visitors will have made 100 million visits to B-J when the sitemeter ticks over. I doubt it scales exactly like that but certainly the number of unique visitors is well into the millions…” So… congratulations? (Further metadata, BJ currently averages 40k visits every day — somewhat fewer between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon — barring breaking news.)
Second, many thanks to Matt McIrvin for introducing me to the “Law of Jante“, a concept I have often talked about but didn’t know existed as a trope in its Scandinavian homeland. Jante’s Shield: You are not to think you’re anyone special or that you’re better than us. The Eleventh Law, or Penal Code of Jante: Maybe you don’t think I know a few things about you?
Truly, there is a spirit linking all small, semi-closed communities… even the virtural ones!
Sly
That took longer than I expected. GIFT is pretty much settled science.
cathyx
Why can’t google know how many of the comments are coming from the same person? They track everything else we do, what would be so hard to track that?
John O
Thanks, AL. I’ve wondered about BJ stats from time to time, and don’t know where to find them reliably. Question: Is 40K/day “visits” hits, or unique visitors?
Corner Stone
Jante seems like a very insecure person.
gbear
Everything about that story is just so wrong – I don’t even know where to begin. Whoever wrote it is a complete moron.
Hungry Joe
Popular Science and other such sites should treat comments like Letters to the Editor: Readers submit and an editor selects. Maybe even with a no-pseudonym criterion; that’s the site’s call. Other joints, like this one, it’s Katie don’t bar the door.
Hillary Rettig
@gbear: Partly because I don’t know whether you’re posting anonymously, I can’t tell if you’re super clever or super clueless.
gbear
@Hillary Rettig: gbear isn’t my real name. ;)
TheMightyTrowel
@Hillary Rettig: At BJ I always opt to presume on the side of clever with a patina of drunk.
BTW, Hillary, did I ever tell you thanks for linking at some point or another to your job application book? I was reading it in 2011 while applying for lots of academic jobs. It got me thinking about interviews and apps from a totally different angle and I’m 100% sure that the fact that I successfully got one of the jobs I applied for was down to that lateral thinking.
schrodinger's cat
I blame Facebook, for this trend of promoting commenting with your real name.
Ruckus
@TheMightyTrowel:
Aha, the safe bet.
TaMara (BHF)
I can confirm that posting under my real name and the fact you all know what I look like inhibits my inner bitch.
Linnaeus
I used to call this the “internet mask effect”: anonymity or pseudonymity can be like a mask that “frees” you to say and do things you wouldn’t otherwise.
aimai
At least in the parts cited they don’t seem to distinguish between anonymous and pseudonymous comments. I think thats a mistake. People who have maintained a single pseudonym are a different breed of person than someone who comments anonymously and /or under different names and personas. Meanwhile, the astoundingly racist twitter feeds of some of our youths indicate that for an astonishing number of people saying something stupid and awful, if your peers agree with you, is not something you have to bother to be anonymous about. Its just common sense!
Omnes Omnibus
@TaMara (BHF): I think the continued use of the same pseudonym in the same forum can also restrain people’s inner whatever.
schrodinger's cat
@Linnaeus: Is that necessarily a bad thing?
Mike with a Mic
I prefer PA’s take on comments
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Now to finish configuring my birthday loot.
Cassidy
I’ve always used my real name.
cathyx
@gbear: I thought your name was real like Ted E. Bear is real.
pete
“certainly the number of unique visitors is well into the millions”
ALL our children are unique, and of course well above average.
Linnaeus
@schrodinger’s cat:
No, not necessarily. Context is important.
Bob In Portland
I stopped comments on my blog because they were either my sister correcting my spelling or someone trying to sell something.
Violet
I’m sure that second percentage is off by only a margin of error of two.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
This.
A while back I considered starting to use my real name and people stated that I had established a personality and should stick with it. I think as long as you maintain that there is little issue. I’ll use JSF as an example. He can get on your nerves sometimes but he is fairly consistent in his style and content. So it is easy to either read or ignore him at one’s pleasure.
Baud
I shall have to use this one day.
gbear
@TheMightyTrowel: I’m less than a week away from my 19 year anniversary of becoming an ex-drunk. My patina this evening is closer to boredom. Just stirring up some mischief while dinner is in the oven.
schrodinger's cat
ICHC, the main site and then ICHC/lolcats used to have a good community regulated comment section. Then the people who run the site had this idea to ban anonymous commenting and have people use FB for commenting or even one of their existing accounts with an FB plug-in and the once thriving comment section was completely decimated. A thread usually would have 100’s of comments and now there are barely one or two comments on each lol. They decided that integration with social media (FB, mainly) was more important than a vibrant comment section.
gogol's wife
I’m disappointed that the upcoming duel between Rand Paul and Rachel Maddow hasn’t gotten more comments (anonymous or otherwise). (See two or three threads down, Soonergrunt’s open thread, in which Jim Foolish Literalist cited Rand’s plans to “call out” the journalists who are questioning his honor.)
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Did someone ask him about that badger on his head?
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
Rachel will have a field day with that tomorrow.
Vlad
Back in the stone age, I used to edit Wikipedia under my real name, and I’d get crank phone calls from anonymous assholes who didn’t like changes that I had made to pages on the site. So, y’know, fuck that noise. I’ve been determinedly pseudonymous ever since.
Bill E Pilgrim
@gogol’s wife: It’s even funnier because it turns out his statement about wishing he could duel her was lifted verbatim from a John Wayne movie.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Vlad: You mean you included “The Impaler” in those posts?
Scott White (Stillwater)
Thanks for this AL. Good read, good evidence. I’m now gonna post under my real name from here on out.
Mike with a Mic
@gogol’s wife:
Paul has three problems here. The first is that duels aren’t exactly legal anymore. The second is that you never had the right to a duel for simply being accused or convicted of a crime, ie theft in his case. Now there are still some parts of society where challenges to a sort of combat are quasi OK (aka smokers and other fight challenges in the military, which aren’t legal but still happen all the time and are part of service tradition), but as Paul has never worn a uniform and neither has Maddow he has no right to invoke this sort of blood challenge.
So even if duels were legal, Paul doesn’t exactly have the right to one.
Tripod
My tail wags to the left.
Also, fuck all ya all.
tybee
@Tripod:
so in what part of new jersey do you live?
Bill E Pilgrim
Wait I know this song.
Everybody wag to their left.
Everybody wag to their right.
Can you feel that? Yeah.
We’re paying with scorn tonight.
srv
@Corner Stone: I thought everyone was special here. This Jante fellow must have come from a less civil blog.
I do still miss Civility Thursdays when John made us all say especially nice things about each other.
Hawes
FUCK ALL OF Y’ALL
-anonymous
Xecky Gilchrist
[email protected] makes a good point wrt anonymous vs. pseudonymous, and Vlad @31 spells out why I use a pseudo (I know, I should have warned you to be sitting down before letting it drop that Xecklothayyquou Gilchrist isn’t my real name.)
Does Konnikova’s article address the fact that there could well be a bunch of anon/pseudonymous commenters out there being paid to be assholes to further the grand designs of Rupert Murdoch et al.?
handsmile
My thanks as well to Matt McIrvin for introducing me to the Scandinavian “Law of Jante” on last night’s “Jersey Guy” thread and to Omnes Omnibus who offered the imprecisely translatable Swedish word “lagom” later in the thread. Embarrassed thanks I might add, as I’m of Swedish heritage. “Lagom” will certainly be going into the personal vocabulary.
I’ll be quizzing my friends at NYC’s Scandinavia House (a cultural center in Manhattan) to learn how well-known or applied the “Law” is among the natives.
As for pseudonyms, the one I use here was first coined by a college friend (long ago) as a close substitute for my allegedly unpronounceable (to him) Swedish surname.
tybee
@Hawes:
now that’s more like it but you’re not quite there…
Anoniminous
@gogol’s wife:
Seeing as how Ms. Maddow’s first date with her partner was to a NRA sponsored “Ladies Day on the Range” methinks Mr. Paul needs to rethink.
Corner Stone
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I feel so…used.
Amir Khalid
Some of us here (like me) comment under our real names. Where’s the research on us, dammit?
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
And you’re the most uncivil of all!
Bill E Pilgrim
Can I ban people in real life for making unpleasant or rude comments?
pseudonymous in nc
Yeah, Facebook real-name comments are such a model of civility. Oh no, they’re just a bunch of cranks who want to rule that space, and crowd out people who don’t want to earn the ire of cranks.
The obvious point is that if you’re going to get 5000 comments on a story, then you shouldn’t have comments. It’s not a conversation, it’s throwing stones into the Grand Canyon.
We know the answer to this question: civility comes from consistent identity (pseudonymous or otherwise) in a smallish community with decent moderation and commenters and posters who set good examples. The only reason this gets asked and asked again is that newspaper sites and high-traffic sites like Yahoo want comments for repeated pageviews (and ad views) but they don’t want to put the effort into cultivating any kind of community, because a) it doesn’t scale; b) it requires spending money.
Joey Giraud
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re right, I’ve been “Joey Giraud” online for 12 years now, and I do care what most people think of Joey.
Might use it as a stage name someday.
Soonergrunt
@cathyx: Check with NSA. They’ve got an algorithm, I’m sure.
priscianus jr
Who am I anyway? How do I know I’m really me? How do I know you are really you?
By the voice in the dialogue. They are all recognizable as such.
But seriously, folks, the idea of pseudonyms, especially in political commentary, did not exactly start with the internet, and it sure as hell didn’t start with Facebook. Almost all political commentary was written pseudonymously and anonymously even in the 17th,18th and 19th centuries. For the same reasons and way more so.
As for allowing you to get away from your real identity, I would say that using anonymous comments to get away from your real identity IS your real identity, with your so called “real” identity being the false one.
My real identity remains the same. The opinions I express here are the same I express, also for free, to my family. Only the name has been changed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Well, according to Wikipedia, you are Egyptian and you misspell your name.
pseudonymous in nc
@schrodinger’s cat:
That wasn’t it. I can assure you of that, because I know the thinking that goes into those decisions. They decided that it was too expensive and took too much work to have a functional community under their own management, so they outsourced the identity brokerage to FB.
Anoniminous
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Alas, there is no Real World “Ignore” App.
And hitting people with a baseball bat gets you talked about behind your back.
priscianus jr
@gbear: Everything about that story is just so wrong – I don’t even know where to begin. Whoever wrote it is a complete moron
I really wish you would try. I felt it was off-kilter myself, kind of a combination of the really obvious and making an issue out of something that wasn’t an issue. But you seem to have a more articulated sense of what’s wrong with it. Penny for your thoughts.
GregB
I have a wingnut colleague who has been in full anti-Obama, white rage rant mode.
I used to chime in but I realize evidence and facts don’t matter to the unhinged.
I have been tempted to simply post:
The angrier you get, the louder we all laugh at you.
Ron Beasley
I post using my real name and I still enjoy being uncivil. Of course I enjoy being uncivil face to face as well but that’s just me. My X wife called it “the look.” My facial expression alone indicated I thought you were about the dumbest human being I had ever come in contact with. Most of the time I was right
schrodinger's cat
@Soonergrunt: Do they also have a back up copy of the hard drive from my old laptop?
Joey Giraud
I wonder what those Scandinavian Jante-ists thought of Fridtjof Nansen
He was reportedly very humble. Obviously not an American.
Soonergrunt
@schrodinger’s cat: If you haven’t accessed the drive in a while, they’ve probably archived it. Give it a couple of days…
Cassidy
A person should be willing to own what comes out of their mouth or from their fingertips.
gbear
@Ron Beasley:
Thanks for the warning.
aimai
@Baud: Isn’t truth a defense here? Mark Antony was no prize.
Baud
@aimai:
I don’t think incivility has anything to do with truth or falsehood.
TheMightyTrowel
@Anoniminous: There are three people I work with that I would love to Pie. Why can’t cleek make a pie filter for staff meetings?
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Indeed! that’s why our Villager media is so fond of civility and tone arguments, it helps them avoid any real work.
cathyx
@Soonergrunt: We shouldn’t need to check with the NSA.
“Google thinks that about a million visits came from about 150K unique people.”
What is this ‘Google thinks’ crap. Google has to know how many of the same people comment on any topic. What are the real figures? The know every site I visit and every product I look at. This can’t be difficult.
Gin & Tonic
@Anoniminous: Alas, there is no Real World “Ignore” App.
There may be no app, but there’s definitely a skill. I am renowned among my acquaintances for my ability to kill a conversation with people who don’t interest me.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: … with lechery in your eyes and larceny in your heart.
ETA:
“A quote is more likely to be repeated if it is anonymous.”
– Anonymous
Baud
@BruceFromOhio:
Fixed per Internet standards.
Corner Stone
@Sly: Do you mean that “Sly” isn’t the name your momma gave you?
BruceFromOhio
@Baud:
ETA:
GO BROWNS!
GO TEXANS!
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: Well, Anne Laurie is my real name — my first name. Since I’m terrible at picking pseudonyms, it’s a darn good thing that my parents didn’t choose ‘Jennifer’ or ‘Susan’ …
For comparison purposes, HowManyofMe says there are 3,622 people named John Cole just in the United States. So until he started teasing us with further details, he could use his real name and still be pretty well anonymous-on-the-internet. (There are supposed to be 86 people in America named ‘Anne [my last name’, but “one or fewer” Anne Lauries using that last name, and besides, the folk song I was named after will always confuse the google-machine.)
Unrelated: Is it correct to wish you a happy/prosperous/blessed Muharram? The English-language websites say 1435 starts somewhere around now, depending on moonrise, but I don’t want to be offensive about one of the more serious religious holidays.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: There are 222 of my name. Interesting.
Corner Stone
Corner Stone, Cassidy: Take it outside, the both of ya. This is a family bar! — The FPer
joel hanes
With significant exceptions, I’ve posted using my own name since I started posting to UseNet in 1988.
Nothing very bad has ensued.
Well, my one-time employer _did_ once receive a letter from one Helena K. Kobrin, Scientology’s in-house barrator, a letter that threatened to bring suit because I had compared six top-secret, copyrighted lines of a Hubbard-written Sekrit Skripchur to the lyrics of Frank Zappa’s “Call Any Vegetable”. For this, I was awarded the rank of Suppressive Person Grade 4, a proud accomplishment in those days.
Cassidy
See comment #77.
I like you both. Don’t make me use the time-out bat!
Gin & Tonic
@joel hanes: Impressive. I have been around the Internet as long as you, and this is the first connection I’ve seen between Scientology and “Call any Vegetable.” Perhaps I haven’t been following things as closely as I should.
BruceFromOhio
@Anne Laurie: Tried something similar with my first-mi-last, and what a diversity; a mech engineer in London, a smattering of M.D.’s, and a sex offender in Oklahoma City. Makes me think about changing it to a new name altogether ….
ETA @joel hanes: Close friend recently had to do a bit of scrubbing on his blog and comments, as a perspective employer commented unfavorably on his material during a job interview.
Lyrebird
@Cassidy:
I’m guessing you have an X and Y chromosome, too? Not putting that down, just saying that part of what’s missing from that article is any consideration of why some folks feel the need for anonymity to stay safe, to stay employed, to stay employ-able…
I work in a field where checking your internet presence happens for sure before they consider calling you, so no full-name anti-McCargleBargle screeds for me!
As far as safety, I can’t speak to the male perspective on this, but most of the other female persons I know who’ve let’s say just once been stalked would nevah evah put that info in a post, even though it’s probably 90% safe to do so here.
I don’t question the research they’re citing, and there’s plenty of evidence for GIFT, but what about online support groups? There are (remarkably) people on here w/older computers than mine, even, so I cannot possibly be the only former visitor to various alt.whatever boards.
And what about blogs where you complain about your child/spouse/students/what have you — it would be unethical to do so with your name attached!
Okay I will go take something *else* too seriously now, but thanks to anyone who read this whole item…
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
No problem if you want to wish me a happy new year, since good wishes are always welcome. New Year’s Day just isn’t a big occasion in the Muslim calendar, is all.
magurakurin
magurakurin is my real name, but it is how I say it and write in in Japan. It looks like this マグラクリン
on forms and applications here.
gbear
That site show 179 guys with my name. One of them lived in my neighborhood for a while and I got some really strange phone calls for him. The worst was from a woman who called to remember old times (obviously pretty steamy) and wouldn’t believe me when I kept telling her I had no idea who she was. I finally asked her just how it was that we knew each other, and she went ‘Ohhh, AAALL!!’ in a horribly heartbroken voice. That’s when I hung up.
Lyrebird
@Amir Khalid: You rock! And happy new year! In the unlikely* event that I’m ever setting sail for M-a I will look you up.
*I’m certain it’s beautiful, and I know the food’s awesome, just unlikely bc of 1) far away and 2) not known as a vacation hotspot for joos. But you never know.
Just One More Canuck
@Omnes Omnibus: 222 Omnes Omnibuses (Omnibi?) That’s surprising
Omnes Omnibus
@Just One More Canuck: I used my middle initial so it cut the numbers down a bit.
Jose Arcadio Buendía
As a commenter, I actually advocate for getting rid of comments. Shutup.css is your friend.
Just One More Canuck
@Omnes Omnibus: Is your middle initial X (as in Xecklothayyquou)?
TheMightyTrowel
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks to a rather unusually spelled surname there is only 1 of me. Hence pseudonym (even if anyone of you who paid attention could devise a google search that would smoke me out damn fast)
different-church-lady
I’ma offer two things:
1) I used to use a consistent on-line handle from site to site (a distillation of my real name, but not something that someone could figure out my identity from alone). One day, in a forum that was particularly contentious. some asshole decide to do a Google search on that handle and drag in everything I had said about any topic anywhere on the web. Plenty of people said, “Hey, not cool,” but it still spooked me enough that this person wanted to make it that personal that I now come up with a unique user name for every site I participate in. And after that there’d be no way in hell I’d ever use my real name.
2) I don’t think Anonymous v. real names is the real key to anything: in my observation it comes down to moderation. If the people running the site want civility, they use a hand-on moderation technique and the assholes go away because they lose their stage. If the people running the site don’t do that, it becomes a free-for-all, whether they want it that way or not. If you tell people “We don’t put up with that here” and then you follow through, you don’t have nearly as much free-form “incivility” (although I’m sure you still have determined trolls).
Cassidy
@Lyrebird: I don’t think you’re taking it too serious and you have reasonable concerns. Yes, I am a man and I was raised to be responsible for what comes out of your mouth. I understand it is different for women and respect that. For me, I think that if you need a fake name to have the courage to say something, then you should reconsider if what you have to say is worth it.
JoyfulA
@Anne Laurie: I have an “Anne Laurie” in-law, but I’m certain she isn’t you.
Ruckus
There are 34 people with the same name as me.
When I started posting here I had a job that put me sort of in the public eye occasionally. Such as having been on live TV and interviewed for shows in the field I worked in. It was just easier to use a pseudonym and avoid possible issues.
Redshirt
Due to my undercover role for the CIA and also my pro sports career – and my future career as cowboy astronaut – I have to remain anonymous.
Also, Morgan Fairchild is still hot.
Corner Stone
I’m friends with a wingnut here in my neighborhood. He does a lot of good work for the local area. He said something an even more wingnutty local person did not like. That Xtra wingnut sent emails to my friend’s boss at his job. My friend had to go in to his boss’s office and *prove* that every comment he had made on our local board was not made from a work computer or during working hours.
So, guess what my wingnut friend did? Yes, he stopped contributing his time and energy to local area efforts.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: Thank you, and Happy New Year!
aimai
@Cassidy: Its not that we were raised not to be responsible for what we say–but that we have the experience of being viciously attacked, stalked, and utterly destroyed by people who take it hard that women express opinions at all. I say what I mean and I mean what I say but so what? The question for most of us isn’t whether we are irresponsible posters, its how brutal the attack will be on us just for posting at all.
I began by posting under my real first name but the ugliness of the attacks which happened whenever something triggered someone’s online misogyny buttons made that seem like a bad idea. I, personally, find that I can take the hostility a little better at a slight remove. Because my nym seems female I’ve experienced plenty of random attacks on my posts just because of generalized misogyny but it doesn’t bother me as much or I’d have switched to an even more distancing or masculine nym.
Cassidy
@aimai: I get that and said as much. The virtual world for women is completely different than for men. As I said, I don’t believe in saying something behind a false identity. That works for me, but I know I’m not going to be stalked (sort of) and I don’t say anything that I wouldn’t publicly own, either.
One of Lyrebird’s examples was posting/ commenting about students/spouses/etc. For me, that’s where I do draw a line for judgement. If you want to bitch about the people in your life or job, have at it, but own it or don’t do it.
PurpleGirl
@different-church-lady: Re your point #2: One of the blogs I read is Making Light. It is moderated by a couple of people. Comments that are incivil or otherwise a problem are likely to be disemvoweled. The comment will still show but without vowels it can be hard to read, but anyone who wants to read it still can figure it out. In the past there have been a couple of long threads which had a troll or two being disemvoweled over the course of several days. Lately not so much, the threads haven’t been very controversial and attractive to trolls.
Corner Stone
WTF? This is fucking stupid of you. Dude is a fucking scumbag.
Jesus Christ.
Corner Stone
I point out what a scumbag someone is and he continues his irresponsible BS and we’re the same?
Fuck you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: That Publius guy sure was a coward, right?
Suzanne
Suzanne is my real name, and I’m already Facebook friends with a few of y’all (including John), so I am easily findable. I used to post as baddesignhurts on some other blogs, but….meh. My name works. I say offensive shit IRL, too, so anonymity doesn’t have much to offer.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: He should have owned it. Or that’s what some people who enjoy threatening other people believe.
Lyrebird
@Cassidy: I think all your points are worth considering, but i don’t think I succeeded at all in conveying the point about one’s kids… I see this 180 deg differently — what if you’re on a support group of parents of kids with [scoliosis, ADHD, what-eva..]. They are minors. You are a stressed mom or dad. You might need to talk about something that should NOT be attached (even indirectly) to their names, and (in my professional world), you have no right to w/o getting their (adult) consent, which would require time travel.
Nancy Slonim Aronie gives a very moving talk about what happened for her son after her vignette about living w/his illness got into something big, maybe Parade magazine. He went to school the next week and it was a miserable experience… she vowed never to publish another vignette about him w/o his approval.
Corner Stone
@Lyrebird: People here seem to think because they are the ones primarily doing the threatening, they are immune somehow from IRL blowback.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I had a blog under my real name a long while back. I put it up one day. I ended up disabling comments the next and never enabled them again until I took the whole site offline. People mixed together with the internet are idiots. Even my friends were idiots. PopSci did the right thing, wish more people would.
This in spite of the fact that I have never commented using my real name in my entire life, not here, not anywhere else. If not for anonymity, I’d simply keep my mouth shut, which would not be a bad thing for me or for anyone else.
FlipYrWhig
I used to post under my real name. Especially on the baseball groups on Usenet. Because, hey, baseball, my opinions on that I’m happy to share. Then this weird racist conspiracy theory guy who was a fan of the same team started acting all crazy. We tangled a few times. He would find my name on various websites and incorporate details from them into his threats. Soon after that, my phone started ringing at weird hours. Creepy. Eventually he went to prison for spoofing email accounts, and it was a second strike because before that he had been nailed for putting racist messages into frozen dinners at the food distribution plant where he worked.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: If you didn’t really believe those opinions on baseball were worth losing your economic viability, or some psychopath hitting you in the face for expressing them, then why would you bother posting them?
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Seriously? Look man, I’m not going to go out of my way to offend, but your link and commenting in a blog are not the same thing, not even fucking close. If you’re saying something here that you can’t bring yourself to say in real life, then you got some things to consider.
@Lyrebird: I hadn’t considered that context. I automatically assumed someone bitching about their real life, but using anonymity as a shield. I’ve seen that too often.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Read this. The world is full of crazy people. I don’t say anything here that I wouldn’t or haven’t said in meatspace. But I don’t say everything everyplace. I use a pseudonym for the same reason. I have given out enough information about myself that anyone who really wanted to find who I am could do so, but I am not simply handing the information to the casual asshole. I note that you don’t use your full name. Why is that? It limits your exposure, right? So consider taking a step back.
Omnes Omnibus
Why moderation?
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Irony, of course.
dopey-o
@priscianus jr:
I just gotta know – is Priscianus your real pseudonym?
Corner Stone
“I like to threaten people online. I wonder why they won’t post under their real names?”
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, I’ve spent most of my adult life being referred to by my last name. Even in my new profession I tend to introduce myself by last name. I reserve my first name for close friends and family, which none of you are. It has nothing to do with exposure. If I were worried about that I wouldn’t have left so much easily identifiable information about me on this blog.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Honestly, that is a bullshit response.*
* I had typed a bunch more, but then I thought better of it. Calling people cowards for not using their names while not using your full name? There is a word for that.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: My first name is John, btw. As I said, you’ll find it in the email address I posted in the comments when someone was looking for exercise advice. I’ve talked to Doug, mix and Cole so they can verify it for you. You know where I live down to the county. You know what I do for a living. I have nothing to hide. When you talk to me on here, you are talking to me. This is how I will interact with you in real life.
I understand the various reasons why people need to be anonymous. For some it fear, others need that permission to be something they can’t in real life, women have a whole different bag of shit to put up with, so I get it. But, if you’re going to be a negative person or if you’re going to be an asshole and revel in causing shit, then man up and own it. Don’t be a punk.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Whatever. You’re searching for something to be upset about. If I want to be a persona, I’ll play a video game.
BruceFromOhio
@Cassidy:
You’ve set such an exemplary standard, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t possibly live up to it. Give me a few minutes to write my GBCW post, m’kay?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Anonymous and pseudonymous are different. As I said, I don’t say anything on this or any other online forum that I don’t or wouldn’t say in real life. I’ve been Omnes Omnibus online for almost ten years. Before that I was crashskier on TableTalk. My online persona has been the same the whole time and it matches me in real life. I am not even taller or thinner online. I think I am owning it. If you want my real name, dig it up or earn an actual friendship.
Cassidy
@BruceFromOhio: So obviously, you’ve read a few comments. Do I really strike you as giving single, solitary fuck about anything you might have to say? Seriously, in that amount of time it took you to read, write, and then spellcheck because grammar is important, you probably could have rubbed one out and gotten more out of it.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Whats your point here, man? You want to be friends? Want me to send you Christmas cards and shit? I have friends. You want to be offended? That’s on you. I stand by it. If you can’t be an asshole to someone’s face them don’t ask me to accept it from your online persona. Just because you play a night elf shaman or whatever in WoW doesn’t mean you look good in a chain mail bikini and fling fireballs and shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: Go back and read the actual words I wrote.
fka AWS
Interesting thread. I honestly come here for the commentariat – Omnes and Cassidy and all of you. I don’t care if you’re posting under your real names or pseudonyms, you’re a funny lot.
BruceFromOhio
@Cassidy:
Not in the least, which makes it a wash.
Have fun stewing in the bitter juices of whatever it is you got cooked up there, Citizen 53%.
BruceFromOhio
@Omnes Omnibus: Before that I was crashskier on TableTalk.
Were you around when TBogg first began making the snark waves that eventually altered the snarkoverse?
Omnes Omnibus
@BruceFromOhio: Yeah, I remember him from there. His is probably the only ‘nym that has had any sticking power in my mind – for obvious reasons.
Soonergrunt
@cathyx: I honestly don’t know what Google knows, or how they know it. I’m a hardware/OS guy. If the server needs a new KVM switch or patches to Apache or whatever they’re running, I’m the man. But for any of that network analytics stuff, that’s mistermix’s domain. I only have the barest of understanding.
Hillary Rettig
@TheMightyTrowel: Thank you! I’m so happy the book helped! (You made my morning!)
For anyone interested, the book is It’s Not You, It’s Your Strategy: The HIAPy Guide to Finding Work in a Tough Job Market. It costs 99c but I’ll be happy to send it for free to anyone who emails me using the secret code words “Balloon Juice.” :-)
Hillary Rettig
Although I know some people need anonymity for their personal or job safety, I’m not a fan of it because of the whole GIFT thing. I post under my name because (a) anonymity seems like a lot of work and isn’t foolproof, (b) I want to stand behind my views, and (c) I think my views carry extra weight if I’m willing to put my name on them.
That said, it’s definitely more of a drag to get attacked under your own name, and although I’m pretty resilient I stlll hate it and worry about it in advance of posting. (And sometimes don’t post because I don’t want to expose myself to potential abuse.) I’m not talking about BJ, btw – the people here are great. I’ve only been attacked here once – although unfortunately it was by a front pager. Other sites are far more problematic.
One thing that would really help is if more people spoke up when they saw someone being picked on or piled on. When the fp’er led a pileup against me, all it took was a third party pointing out that that FP was being “dickish” for the whole thing to come to an abrupt halt. (Like bullies tend to do, the offender retreated when confronted–simply dropped out of the discussion.)