Any one of these ‘faces’ could be a troll.
“To be ungoogleable might be a blessing or a curse”; so it says in a BBC article today.
Part of the story is about the fact that many are going to great lengths to preserve their anonymity online and avoid being found by random Googling.
To my mind the only surefire way to achieve this is not to use a computer at all!
Perhaps a measure of control can be preserved if you don’t engage with any of the social network ‘communities’ but it’s increasingly hard to carry out any meaningful internet activity without being lured into some thread or forum.
I can respect people’s demand for privacy but I no longer see many benefits of hiding being a pseudonym. I agree with Jaron Lanier when he wrote that such choices make us more ‘gadget’ like in our behaviour and tends to encourage the inner troll in all of us.
In honour of this principle I today changed my Twitter profile from ‘Animal My Soul’ to my true name – Martin Raybould.
My first tweet as the real me was a quote from an article in the Irish Times by Joe Humpreys: “People behave less ethically when their identities are hidden”
Related links:
Anonymity on the internet is the cloak of the coward (Irish Times)
What is ‘ungoogleable’? (BBC News)
Is anything “ungoogleable”? (smartplanet.com)
YOU ARE NOT A GADGET : A MANIFESTO by Jaron Lanier (Knopf,2010)
