“Pyschologist Adam Joinson (1998) points out, people usually think
of anonymity as meaning that
they’re not identifiable.” (Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic,
2004, p. 62) I posit to consider the
truth and
frustrations associated with the people that masque behind the vale
of anonymity in a virtual world,
especially from my experience in social media,
networks and gaming. There is sharp
brevity to a
person who hides behind a domain or fictitious identifier. When
these persons feel compelled, there
malicious behaviors can come out in a
variety of ways online. These anonymous
people can create
burdens on others in the way of language abuse; harassment
and personal attacks. Some of these
things
can cause frustration and anger in users who are trying to enjoy the
simple leisure of social networked
entertainment. Yet anonymous persons find
that behind their hidden veil, they feel impervious to any
type of reaction or
retaliation. To take it one step further how safe are you from the reality that
your
identity can be discovered? This
blog’s purpose by creating awareness of issues, hopes to provide a
sense of
action and create openness for others to help prevent hostility in all aspects
of social media.
As a technology enabled person (TEP), I have been using social
media and gaming for over 28
years. I
was 16, when our family purchased the first pc in our neighborhood. I quickly discovered the
benefits associated
with social networks, such as connecting with others, playing games and data
search. By using networks called BBS’s, which stood for Bulletin Board systems,
I was able to chat
with people. Later, faster
networks and companies dedicated to connecting people, such as AOL
provided
subscription services to join their networks.
This enabled more people to have group
discussions, and play games
collaboratively and virtually. All of
these advancements that we users
continued to benefit from also came with their
drawbacks. Neil Postman discusses this
dichotomy in
his report on “Five things we need to know about technological
change” (Postman, 1998) One of his
findings concludes that there are trade-offs
to technology. His first idea states
that for each advantage
technology has a disadvantage. (Postman, 1998) In this
regard, the ability to connect with many
different people from all parts of the
world in one place could cause some interpersonal concerns. It
was easy to see that people could be
abusive with a sense of sharped tongued comments to rookies on
the net, like
me, at the time. ‘Noobs’ as I have
learned can be the heart of an anonymous users attacks
and frustrations. It is a bit humorous to think someone who is
inexperienced at something draws such
hostility to others, but it is true, I
have witnessed this behavior first hand.
Although, back when
connecting others was just starting, there was still
a level of decency. I like to think of
the chivalry
status years of the BBS before the big boys like AOL took
over.
As software, hardware and social networks improved over time, so
did the usage and amount of
people using the services to connect with each
other. In chat rooms, I discovered that
people were
creating many different screen names, hiding behind their
fictitious identifier in order to be free to use
whatever sense of verbiage
they wanted to explore. There was
disinhibition type mentality present on
the net. (p.62) Thurlow and others help
us to understand this behavior in anonymity in this way, “being
or feeling
anonymous can make people feel less inhibited by social conventions and norms,
but there
are different ways of looking at the effect this has on CMC. “(Thurlow et al., 2004, p. 62) Different
types of people can act totally out
of their shell because of the freedom of being anonymous through the
net. The World Wide Web has provided many a cover
for aliases. This has led us to be more
careful
about our dealings on the net, in essence the benefit of connecting
with so many people in society,
placed a social challenge on how to deal with
these dynamics. Let’s face it, in our
real lives, we face
challenges everyday, but in most cases, we see and hear the
people we are dealing with. In the case
for
CMC, our world is masked through a screen and words.
As time has a way of healing, so too does the web have a way with
dealing with the dynamics of
anonymous people online. Thanks to a focus on CMC, social-control
strategies have been created to
help people be more able to deal with anonymous
and malicious behaviors. Things like
respect, polite
and sociable behavior formulates the terminology of netiquette. (Thurlow et al., 2004, p. 65) In cases
of online gaming, I have discovered
the ability to report a player for their abusive language or
harassment. This identifies a trend for a person to the
virtual community and protects the innocent to
still be able to enjoy their
entertainment. It is not perfect, but
the more people learn how to deal with
the anonymous people who feel they are
free to bother others, the further we will move to a lessened
state of
worry.
In this discussion, I focused on ways in which anonymity creates
distraction and frustration for
others, as well as ways in which there are
action items available to help protect people from anonymous
people who focus
on harassing or frustrating online users.
It is up to the social communities to create
rules and policies to help
educate users and minimize the abusers.
Through the awareness and actions
taken, people will be able to enjoy
the web for its true value of connecting people and supporting social
networking through media.
References
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