Anonymity

There's a big brouhaha going on right now because some 11 year old girl posted a Youtube video cussing out some online bullies. I haven't seen it, but apparently it was pathetic enough to get the a certain anonymous online community united against this girl. In a few short hours they found the girl's full name, address, and home phone number and basically made her life (and her parents' lives) miserable. Sometimes I wonder what I'm passionate about, and since I spend a lot of time on the Internet, this is the kind of thing that gets me up-in-arms. Stories like these bring up the question: "Is anonymity on the Internet a good thing?"

Read any discussion online about the legality of anonymity and you'll learn that anyone who regularly docks at  public forums such as Digg are entirely pro-anonymity. They're also "experts" on every subject under the sun (especially law), and incredibly opinionated. Cracked.com recently ran an article about anonymity that, although it's a humor site, was pretty accurate.

In my opinion, there are 4 types of people: People with something to hide, paranoids, people who don't have anything to hide, and people who don't have anything to hide but are sympathetic toward people who do have something to hide.

I figure people who have something to hide really like the anonymity of the Internet. Other than people who do blatantly illegal things, or just socially shunned-upon things, there are also people who think they need the anonymity to be cool. You know...like people who think being an anonymous avatar in a forum turns you from this guy:

Into this guy:

Bad news, guys. Since everyone else is the first guy but thinks they're the second guy, they automatically treat everyone the same way the cool kids treated the nerds in high school. Now that they think they have superiority over everyone else online, they're making up for decades of being picked on by treating everyone else like garbage. Since you can't punch anyone in the face on the Internet (I'm looking at you, Google!), all that matters in order to dominate your peers is intelligence and the ability to argue a point (and use proper grammar while doing it). The Internet is basically an anonymous playground for all the social outcasts to be somebody, and it's effectively built a generation of arrogant intellectual jerks.

I heard an interview with Tenth Avenue North on the radio about their song "Healing Begins". They said something along the lines of "I've always felt like the best thing that could ever happen to someone is if all their past mistakes were broadcast on the 5:00 news. Then they'd have nothing to hide."

There's a lot to hide about on the Internet. I'm not saying that we should publish every site everyone goes to and profile every person, but it would be nice to track down cyberbullies that cause people to commit suicide, destroy peoples' lives, or post disgusting things because they know there will be no repercussions.