Pseud's corner
It riles them to believe that you perceive the Web they weave. (G.E.)
OK, I have an excuse for the pseudonym: I live in Ecuador, a country where any kind of free expression in one's own name can land you in jail and/or with a million-dollar fine to pay, particularly if the President doesn't like what you have said. Worse, I work in the public sector, over which an explicit prohibition against expressing opinions in public media hangs like a dense choking smog. But what about those people who don't live under grinding tyranny in Third World countries? Is there, perchance, something wrong with their using pseudonyms to write blogs and post comments?
As discussed in the old Spanish blog, Mark Zuckerberg thinks there is - but then, he would, wouldn't he, Facebook having practically reconstituted itself into the fourth arm of government, after the executive, legislature and judiciary. It's at times like these when, forgetting for a moment the state of my lungs, I feel the urge coming on to write a Letter to a Millennial Nation, a la Sam Harris, a ringing denunciation of the short memory of our increasingly Alzheimer-stricken civilization, which has apparently already forgotten that there was a time in living memory when never showing up in any sort of government or public database was a realistic aspiration for the majority of people. That people in Spanish speaking countries submit so passively to the authoritarian nightmare of being required to have an Identity Card on their person at all times is something that never fails to depress me: "at least the Internet will never be like that", I murmur sometimes in a vain attempt at good cheer, while knowing full well that this is a pretty foolhardy prediction given the - currently - fairly sizeable number of powerful people who are determined to ensure that things turn out a very different way indeed.
Of course there are those with a totalitarian streak who would like individuals to be identifiable and reportable to the Authorities at all times, "just in case". These are the ones who, like Zuckerberg, want to see laws and mechanisms to ensure that anonymity on the Net is no longer a practical possibility Their argument is the one habitually brandished by those who do not understand (or do not approve of) the age-old Requirement of Care in tort law: "we need laws to prevent people doing things that might lead to harm, even if those things generally do not do so". And "the only argument against such a law would be that the thing in question might be construed as actually beneficial". This is where it turns out that the only person qualified to decide on the matter of what is actually beneficial is the speaker himself, by virtue of his unchallengeable wisdom and authority. And thus we end up once again in the playground of political discourse.
I think it's important for any Internet user to understand that there is only one possible reason why anyone would ever question the anonymity of others, and that is that they hope to exert power via blackmail or strategic libel or via the practice of doxing, silencing any vocal opposition in the process. (A previous version of this post included a lengthy anecdote of my own in this regard: blow a raspberry if you want to hear it.) For anyone who is not planning to turn your life into hell, the question of what you call yourself cannot be other than blissfully irrelevant: after all, one on-screen name is as good as another, and the appeal to personal authority or ad hominem to settle an argument is very old hat indeed. In the light of this, anonymity (which in this context includes the use of made-up names and avatars) is clearly a sensible precaution, the double airbag and clunk-click of Internet use: but is there, leaving aside legal threats and other strongarm tactics, a bad side to it?
Well, some ne'erdowells (according to a noted Irish vlogger) "hide behind" pseudonyms in order to launch cowardly verbal attacks on other Net users. This is true, but how seriously can we take "attacks" that do not go beyond mere harsh language? And as for the objection that some of these pseudonyms (mine, for example) constitute a tour de force of pretentiousness and/or childishness, well yes, but isn't that rather a good thing, and wouldn't it be much worse if those of us who are drawn to Pythonesque silliness like a moth to a flame pretended to be more grown-up and sensible than we actually were? Aren't we actually doing you a favour by letting you know, through the frivolity of our chosen handles, what we're really like?
And that "what we're really like" is actually where anonymity on the Net surely comes into its own. Think about it. If one day you thoughtlessly confess to a fellow worker that you fancy Carol Vorderman something rotten, or that you think the first eighty bars of Yes's Close to the Edge album are one of the finest things ever to come out of rock music, or that you believe that people should be allowed to marry turkeys, you may curse your big flappy mouth the next day, but the genie is out of the bottle, and your only choice thereafter is between developing a skin thick enough to withstand the eternal symphony of jeering, or going to live on a remote Scottish island and herding cabbages for the rest of your life. This is why it makes sense that anything that might be construed as a confession should be attached, not to your passport name, but to a temporary, expendable online identity that can be jettisoned and replaced as necessary. The freedom the Net allows for people with "issues" - including the victims of abuse - to unburden themselves and at times to obtain valuable feedback from others is not to be underestimated: it has probably already saved tens of thousands of lives. Not only that, but with the advent of the Net it has never been easier for opinions to be crash-tested, and defective ideological prototypes hastily abandoned.
Which leads me to the following testable hypothesis. Those who shout the loudest in support of policing the Net, those who seethe with the greatest fury against the option of anonymity, will be found to be those who depend on shaming tactics to win arguments and enforce an artificial consensus based on fear. They are the people who know that a mere cardboard identity cannot be effectively shamed, and that in consequence, it may one day turn up to the party carrying some very sharp ideas indeed.
OK, I have an excuse for the pseudonym: I live in Ecuador, a country where any kind of free expression in one's own name can land you in jail and/or with a million-dollar fine to pay, particularly if the President doesn't like what you have said. Worse, I work in the public sector, over which an explicit prohibition against expressing opinions in public media hangs like a dense choking smog. But what about those people who don't live under grinding tyranny in Third World countries? Is there, perchance, something wrong with their using pseudonyms to write blogs and post comments?
As discussed in the old Spanish blog, Mark Zuckerberg thinks there is - but then, he would, wouldn't he, Facebook having practically reconstituted itself into the fourth arm of government, after the executive, legislature and judiciary. It's at times like these when, forgetting for a moment the state of my lungs, I feel the urge coming on to write a Letter to a Millennial Nation, a la Sam Harris, a ringing denunciation of the short memory of our increasingly Alzheimer-stricken civilization, which has apparently already forgotten that there was a time in living memory when never showing up in any sort of government or public database was a realistic aspiration for the majority of people. That people in Spanish speaking countries submit so passively to the authoritarian nightmare of being required to have an Identity Card on their person at all times is something that never fails to depress me: "at least the Internet will never be like that", I murmur sometimes in a vain attempt at good cheer, while knowing full well that this is a pretty foolhardy prediction given the - currently - fairly sizeable number of powerful people who are determined to ensure that things turn out a very different way indeed.
Of course there are those with a totalitarian streak who would like individuals to be identifiable and reportable to the Authorities at all times, "just in case". These are the ones who, like Zuckerberg, want to see laws and mechanisms to ensure that anonymity on the Net is no longer a practical possibility Their argument is the one habitually brandished by those who do not understand (or do not approve of) the age-old Requirement of Care in tort law: "we need laws to prevent people doing things that might lead to harm, even if those things generally do not do so". And "the only argument against such a law would be that the thing in question might be construed as actually beneficial". This is where it turns out that the only person qualified to decide on the matter of what is actually beneficial is the speaker himself, by virtue of his unchallengeable wisdom and authority. And thus we end up once again in the playground of political discourse.
I think it's important for any Internet user to understand that there is only one possible reason why anyone would ever question the anonymity of others, and that is that they hope to exert power via blackmail or strategic libel or via the practice of doxing, silencing any vocal opposition in the process. (A previous version of this post included a lengthy anecdote of my own in this regard: blow a raspberry if you want to hear it.) For anyone who is not planning to turn your life into hell, the question of what you call yourself cannot be other than blissfully irrelevant: after all, one on-screen name is as good as another, and the appeal to personal authority or ad hominem to settle an argument is very old hat indeed. In the light of this, anonymity (which in this context includes the use of made-up names and avatars) is clearly a sensible precaution, the double airbag and clunk-click of Internet use: but is there, leaving aside legal threats and other strongarm tactics, a bad side to it?
Well, some ne'erdowells (according to a noted Irish vlogger) "hide behind" pseudonyms in order to launch cowardly verbal attacks on other Net users. This is true, but how seriously can we take "attacks" that do not go beyond mere harsh language? And as for the objection that some of these pseudonyms (mine, for example) constitute a tour de force of pretentiousness and/or childishness, well yes, but isn't that rather a good thing, and wouldn't it be much worse if those of us who are drawn to Pythonesque silliness like a moth to a flame pretended to be more grown-up and sensible than we actually were? Aren't we actually doing you a favour by letting you know, through the frivolity of our chosen handles, what we're really like?
And that "what we're really like" is actually where anonymity on the Net surely comes into its own. Think about it. If one day you thoughtlessly confess to a fellow worker that you fancy Carol Vorderman something rotten, or that you think the first eighty bars of Yes's Close to the Edge album are one of the finest things ever to come out of rock music, or that you believe that people should be allowed to marry turkeys, you may curse your big flappy mouth the next day, but the genie is out of the bottle, and your only choice thereafter is between developing a skin thick enough to withstand the eternal symphony of jeering, or going to live on a remote Scottish island and herding cabbages for the rest of your life. This is why it makes sense that anything that might be construed as a confession should be attached, not to your passport name, but to a temporary, expendable online identity that can be jettisoned and replaced as necessary. The freedom the Net allows for people with "issues" - including the victims of abuse - to unburden themselves and at times to obtain valuable feedback from others is not to be underestimated: it has probably already saved tens of thousands of lives. Not only that, but with the advent of the Net it has never been easier for opinions to be crash-tested, and defective ideological prototypes hastily abandoned.
Which leads me to the following testable hypothesis. Those who shout the loudest in support of policing the Net, those who seethe with the greatest fury against the option of anonymity, will be found to be those who depend on shaming tactics to win arguments and enforce an artificial consensus based on fear. They are the people who know that a mere cardboard identity cannot be effectively shamed, and that in consequence, it may one day turn up to the party carrying some very sharp ideas indeed.
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