On Messageboards of an Anonymous Nature.

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Yes, really. And no, I don't think irony is the right term here.

The whole point of these places is levelling the playing field through anonymity. It's at once a lesson in humility and an exercise in self-control and emotional detachment from whatever is being said in favour of letting ideas be presented and scrutinized on their own merits independent of who presents them and of who might get upset by them, as well as a lesson in critical thinking:

Humility; in these places you need to understand that you are barely more than literally no one. The moment you try to advance some sort of identity ( "speaking as a gay/woman/muslim/engineer/spec-ops soldier..." etc.) you are 1: attempting to claim undue credibility because no one can verify that you are what you claim and are thus basically asking others to take you at your word that your word is worth more than the next Anon's, and 2: missing the point and undermining the concept. This is why peope who try this will be faced with racism and sexism and whatever other -isms may be relevant; it's not that the place is specifically hostile to people of X identity, it's that lack of identity was the whole idea to begin with. Moving on to:

Self-control/Emotional detachment: there's a reason why "you mad?" in all its various iterations is such a ubiqutious response meme to someone getting agitated online. The old adage about sticks and stones holds doubly true here because not only is it just words (or pictures) on the internet, but the person presenting them is a literal nobody. Without an identity on either side, discussions with substance will sink or swim based on their substance, and others will just descend into incomprehensible shouting of mean words back and forth, which sensible people will just steer clear of altogether. Most of the time, you're posting for the sake of people reading rather than for the sake of the person whose posts you're adressing, so getting agitated is pointless and taking the bait when they try to insult you doubly so.


Critical thinking: track down sources and do research for yourself. Believing anything and especially doing anything based on what a literal nobody on the internet said is a great way to earn a Darwin Award.


As for the use of "autism" as a slur/insult/whatever: I can assure you that places like these boards were refuges for outcasts and weirdos with no shortage of autism long before WP was a thing. If anything, It's at least 50% self-deprecating dark humour.

Clearly we're not discussing /fit or whatever, we're talking about /b and its ilk.

Yeah, I hung out there for quite some time.

Deciding to stop took a long time, and came after I reflected on the meaning of "wholesome" e.g. conducive to long term well-being.

Sometimes there's harm, sometimes it's just not wholesome.

It's not just the anonymity. It's the amnesia.

Lots of places on the Internet let you adopt a different persona, this one, for example. And it is extremely liberating, allowing you to develop aspects of yourself that for whatever reason you might not be able to develop in your daily life. But even then, there are forces that prod you to invest some effort into your new identity and make something of it. Apuleius obviously isn't my real name, but I at least have some reasons to want the other members of this site to read my posts, and it's an incentive to make what I write at least somewhat worth reading. If I my posts made other readers despise me, I could in theory just get a new handle and start over, but it would feel bad.

It's been this way since before the Internet. Actors with stage names and authors with pen names put up an effort to make their names worth remembering and respecting. George Orwell (Eric Blair - he used a pen name to draw attention away from his elite background). Mark Twain. Et cetera. Look at all the works of fiction about people using made up identities to accomplish what they could not under their own names: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Zorro. Superman. Spiderman.

Chan sites are not like that. Any attempt to build something out of your posts is pointless because of how there's almost no way to keep onto a handle even if you bothered getting yourself one. And the deliberate deletion of threads encourages people to let loose with the worst sides of themselves. It's like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and it's starting to end the same way that novel ended.

Anonymous places like 4chan are breeding grounds for Schrodinger's douchebags, who say offensive things and then decide whether they were joking or serious based on the responses of the people around them. What's interesting is that they are often about "owning the libs", but "why is it always libs?" One person whose videos I follow spoke about this phenomenon, where people post "ironic" things because they supposedly don't really care about anything and just want to watch the world burn, but in reality they are only interested in burning "certain parts". They hate trans people and Muslims, but they don't want to think about why they do.



(This link has subtitles for people who can't handle watching videos with sound.)

And to make clear because I want to get out ahead of this. WrongPlanet is NOT anonymous. It's pseudonymous. A pseudonym is an assumed name that is different from the person's real one. An anonymous board is one in which there are no logins, and no usernames or anything are attached to users' posts, so you are often uncertain whether two posts were written by the same or different authors. A pseudonymous board like WrongPlanet is one in which you have to have a username and password to login and when you post, your username appears, but you do not have to (and are often encouraged not to) have your real name there. As long as rules against sock puppets are well enforced, you can be generally sure that 2 different usernames represent 2 different people, and the same username always represents the same person.

I remember reading a study, which I can't find right now, that showed that versus anonymity and requiring real names, the use of pseudonyms often produces the best discussion that gets the most truth out, as people are free to express important things--including things like sexuality--without fearing it getting out, versus requiring real names. But at the same time, they can build an online reputation to where people can judge the quality of each user's contribution and can gain a coherent idea of a person's worldview, versus anonymity. In fact, the Federalist Papers were written pseudonymously, with the author's real names not being revealed until much later, so pseudonymity is good.

Last edited by beneficii on 01 Aug 2019, 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

I would avoid posting on forums where you don't need to register and you can either post under a name you pick or as anonymous. There are more trolls there and they can impersonate you and no one would know that person isn't you.

On forums like this, it's harder to troll and impersonate someone because the moderators can see their IP and they would know and ban them. Also creating sockpuppets is harder because the mods can see it and ban your multiple account and on an anonymous board, you can pretend to be different people all you want without anyone knowing.


I have noticed online that people are less likely to troll if they are forced to register to comment because they don't want to go through all that trouble of creating an account just to make a inflammatory comment. That is also another reason why accounts are starting to tie them to your facebook account or google. I remember when youtube did that and I refused to put in my real name and put in a fake one. Of course they can still happen on your blog or on youtube and on Reddit and even here but they are easier to be caught if you report them and you can also ban them on your blog by blocking their IP address so they can't comment. Most trolls just give up and move on of they have to keep registering and if you don't allow guests to comment. Only way they will keep going is if you engage with them.

I remember the internet social sites were pretty bad because of so many a**holes back then (but the MSN and yahoo groups were pretty good because you needed to be a member there to post and they had moderators). They were anonymous is why so they could create trouble and then came the registration being required and now you have to put in your real name or connect it to your Facebook page to create an account. I remember the days when anyone could just post on message boards and you could use any name you wanted every time you made a post and your cookies would save that information so you wouldn't have to type in your name and email and location every time. No need to register. But all that started to change around 2004 when forums like this came out. Then more and more sites became you needed to register to post and that took care of the trolls.

See Beneficii's post. Pseudonyms, not Anonymous.




Harder, but by no means impossible. It just means that you're a small part of a combined effort. Imagine that each of your posts is a flask with a note in it thrown into a river, except it's readable by a large number of people at once. True or false, what's in your note is now out and can be examined by everyone.




Anonymity has it's downsides, sure. But I wouldn't call it a breeding ground so much as a watering hole. You don't go to 4chan and suddenly come out as one of these people. But it is true that horrible people are drawn in by the promise of anonymous assholery. But the "hurr durr ironic/parody/sarcasm"- excuse is hardly a new one: there are people seriously arguing that the SCUM-manifesto is a "brilliant, cutting satirical work" even after Solanas shot three people and said to read her manifesto to understand why.

As for "owning the libs", the favourite target changes from time to time. Around 2010 or so it was the fundies.

And you should probably cut it out with the pseudo-psychoanalysis. It's not insightful, and only provides insinuations.




Great, but so what? Without the study, I can't check the details oftheir conclusion, but I doubt this is universally applicable. I have, for instance, read about people living under oppressive regimes organising their escape via anonymous boards, where they more than likely would have been tracked down had they used a pseudonymous one.

What you've said here is like saying "moderated discussions are often the best discussions, so unmoderated discussions are bad."




...what?

And on an entirely anonymous board, how would anyone be able to impersonate you in any meaningful way?




You need to know what to look for, but there are ways to see if someone is, for instance, talking to themselves pretending to be different people.




Sites like these have been around since at least pre-2000.

Yep , everyone has a tell in their writing if you scrutinize enough but sometimes it's glaringly obvious or is that my paranoia

Is it paranoia if someone's really after you? Asking for a friend.

I've been accused of being other people. There is even forums out there I am a member of and you can just change your username any time you want and that gets confusing.

Neah but others can try and gaslight you telling you you are paranoid.

And sometimes something is so subtle only the victim would know and no one else. Then that person is too afraid to speak up about it because they know they will make themselves look paranoid if no one else is having a issue with that other person. I call these people sneaky bullies and I think they are the worst because that is a way to silence their victims and get away with it. The victim thinks they are crazy until they learn it has happened to other people as well and they also had an issue with that person. My choir teacher was like this and I didn't notice she did this until she did it to my brother and that explained everything. My parents were very confused this was happening so they were talking to other people about it and they learned from other parents the same happened to their daughter as well. I told my mother the same happened to this one girl in my school named Sarah and I thought it was a big misunderstanding between them. She was a good student so I knew there was no way she would be breaking her classroom rules. The teacher lost lot of my respect. And there are people online like this too.

By using the same name you use and putting in the same sex, age, location and email address. This happened to me on a Bravenet board in 2003 and after that I started registering on forums to avoid it. Someone would have to be an idiot now to think an impersonator is actually me. There are IP addresses now to show location and you can go through their post history to know it is someone else.

You mean all those things that would be nowhere to be found on an anonymous board? You also seem to be confusing anonymous and pseudonymous.

No, they were pretending to be me and some people actually thought they were me but others knew that person wasn't me.

You obviously have not seen anyone impersonate other users.

Article on being impersonated online:

https://diligentiagroup.com/legal-inves ... ne-online/

I like pseudonymous sites best.

Never been on anonymous ones but they sound a nightmare. Closest I've come is on newspaper reply things and those go bad.

Been on ones which give my name and it feels like a camera is on me all the time and I'm being watched. I hate that. Part of why I got anxiety. Also when I give my details I get tempted to give more and more and people don't like me.

I was promoted on one site though (an article) and I love how he said my name. He really slowed down my surname.

Also anything not anonymous my mum finds and comments on like I'm 5. She's really embarrassing in the way she comments. I did a professional type article and she was writing on it about how proud she was and how she'd seen me since I was a baby and blah blah blah. It wasn't written for that, it was written to talk about something external. She also tells all her friends...*

* can you tell I'm an only child biologically and all my step sisters were adults by the time she was with my stepdad

Also I love League Girl's picture. I build up an image in my mind of people based on the picture they choose which yes, I should put one up too but I don't want to put my own art here and someone told me not to put something else up because it was 'identifiable' because it was a flag?