In Response to “Anonymity”…

November 9, 2005 at 4:11AM by Anonymous-san ・ Filed under Articles

This was written in response to an article someone wrote about anonymous

messageboards, such as 4chan and world4ch! There are certainly a lot of words
here. If you feel like jumping into this pool of text, go right ahead and leave
what you think.

The guy that wrote that huge article said:

There are ways of remaining anonymous, but also claiming identity (with a
password scheme called tripcodes) and there are image-based boards filled with
Anime and Porn called Futabas, but the basic principals still remain.

The intended aim of having names/trips is so that when the discussion at hand is
turned in a direction where individual discernment between posters is essential to
the conversation (e.g., a thread created by a moderator for the sake of
communicating with the userbase) then the names can be seen and reacted to.
However, many of the moderators are “just another one of the guys”. We post
anonymously with the rest of the userbase. We laugh at the same stupid threads, we
photoshop all the same stupid images, we engage in the same stupid flamewars.

Yet we still understand that there is a time and a place for revealing one’s
identity. The adage “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him” applies itself readily
here: for if there is no need to show everyone “HELLO MY NAME IS ANONYMOUS-SAN AND
I HAVE BEEN POSTING HERE FOR THE PAST 23 MONTHS ALSO I AM A MODERATOR” with every
single post you make, then showing it when you post will get in the way of what
you are trying to say. Any threads that you make will be full of posters kissing
your ass and never disagreeing with you for fear of being banned or ridiculed,
even if the thread you make turns out to be a stupid thread or if you don’t know
what you’re talking about.

However the concept of names/trips only has validity if the poster in question was
already known at the time he entered the community, and people are free to post in
any way they want. With a name alone, if they have not been educated as to the
concept of a tripcode (and thus looking like a nonlurker, something that singles
one out among any group); with a name and trip, if they wish to broadcast to
everyone that they and they alone are posting (in some contexts this is fine, but
in most others it can be interpreted as egotism, an overwhelming desire to stand
apart from the community and even as an antisocial gesture if used with every
post), or anonymously, where one’s words are judged solely on their meaning with
absolutely no prejudice or closed-mindedness.

Of course, there are many people who believe that “standing by the words that you
say” is the only effective way of communicating. This has its good points and its
bad points. If you are out to build an internet reputation, to distinguish
yourself among your peers, this can be seen as a detrimental attitude, especially
when applied to a community that already has a rich and detailed culture. Not a
culture defined as “who said what” but merely “what happened”. If you make a
legendary post and then find that it has changed the political and ideological
landscape of the BBS, or if you make a really good joke and it becomes an instant
catchphrase, then saying Yeah, that was me that said that. Look at me, I’m posting
with my name so you can all look at me and say “that’s the guy that said that
really funny thing about three months ago” can and will be considered egotistical.

On the other hand, if you make good contributions to the community and don’t want
to be seen as egotistical, then posting them anonymously is a lesson in humility
and taking things in strides. As long as you yourself know that you created a fad
or delivered the finishing blow to a heated argument, then that victory is both
yours (internally) and shared by the community (externally), because there is no
real way of knowing who has said what. Your victories become the victories of the
group: your losses become the losses of the group. Anonymous posting promotes a
sense of closeness, of comaraderie, of a shared culture that is seen on only a
superficial level in forums where anonymous posting is seen as “cowardly”, or that
anonymous posters are there merely to troll because they are afraid of revealing
who they are.

The fact is, that anonymous posters don’t post without a name to conceal their
identity: they post without a name because the things they are talking about are
not of such critical importance to warrant plastering one’s signature all over
everything.

Personally, I have a name and trip that is known by many of the posters on the
BBS. However I don’t post with it because of the reasons I’ve stated above, mainly
because who I am really has nothing to do with what I say. If you think that your
identity somehow is supposed to give more or less credence to your words, then you
are mistaken: for it is this preconviction that starts one on the road to elitism,
a difficult issue with any forum. The words that you say will be judged merely on
their own merit in an Anonymous system, and believe it or not people WILL adapt to
it very easily.

Once usernames and avatars and search functions and all that fluff is removed,
anonymous BBSes become solely focused on the transfer of ideas, and can be an
interesting sociological study on the dynamics of a group. When someone reads an
anonymous post, he will not spend any time thinking about who the person is, but
will focus on what he says. People will become more adept at paying attention to
details, to writing styles, to little unconscious touches that mark each poster.
They will learn from and in turn give back to the community, and will help it
grow.

Some other guy said:

I think this is backward, Russell. The problem with message boards isn’t that
you can’t be anonymous, it is that you CAN be anonymous. It is darn easy to have a
fake identity on the web, and then you can flame and spam and do whatever without
any accountability. I can’t imagine the discussions on 2ch would interest me. I
definitely consider the source when I consider a comment.

Wow! You good sir need to take a step back and look at things from another
perspective! The only time anonymous posting ever devolves into that kind of
environment, with people giving false information for the sake of doing so, and
flaming and spamming, is when the majority of the other posters are expecting
nothing more than clear-cut on-topic conversation. If you’re talking with your
friends, and the conversation slowly shifts to another subject, do you forcibly
tell them “HAY GUYS STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT SOMEWHAT RELATED TOPIC WE’RE STILL NOT
DONE WITH TALKING ABOUT MY NEW CAR!!11″ and expect them to approve? No, because
doing so stifles the natural flow of conversation.

If you put up limits to the way people are allowed to express themselves, then
people will not feel comfortable expressing themselves. It’s as simple as that. A
forum with flexibility is most resistant to hardship and will evolve as a
community of real people do, because that’s exactly what’s going on behind the
scenes. As I said before, sociological experiment.

The reason people do those kind of things, like flame and yell at people over the
internet, is because people like this guy get so miffed about it. If he were to
just sit back, relax, and have a good time, not being oppressive, and not being
haughty, he would learn to take things in strides. Who knows; the people who you
think are spammers and flamers may actually be really good posters in other
threads, people you’ve agreed with! Are you going to throw out your
acknowledgement of their ideas merely because you don’t like what they said in
another completely unrelated thread? Isn’t the whole core of conversation about
clashes and resolutions?

When multiple people gather in a place, there will be collisions at first. However
these will diffuse throughout the space and eventually reach an even level. People
will learn to get along with other people, they will learn to appreciate
differences in opinion and be receptive to them, and they will do so without ever
knowing others’ names. And that’s just so very poetic, to me. How amazing it is
that the way we live and die is the way we most effectively communicate. At the
end of the day, you close your browser and chuckle to yourself, saying “God, >>352
in that thread made such a hilarious mockery of that one idiot. He really got what
was coming to him! He’ll think twice before opening his mouth and spewing that
pile of bull in the future.”, you realize that not only did >>352 gain some
personal satisfaction from his contribution, but everyone else in the thread did
as well.

And it’s that fun-loving spirit, that ease of manner, that makes posting so
enjoyable. You don’t need to worry about if someone is flaming or trying to pick a
fight: ignore him if you want, or yell at him. But don’t take it too personally,
it’s the Internet. Don’t worry about if someone made fun of you because you said
something stupid: maybe you did, and maybe you should read up on stuff before you
decry it. Maybe HE is the one who’s wrong? okay, so what? You know he’s wrong,
everyone ELSE in the thread knows he’s wrong, so bitch him out about it. You
should be able to take what you dish out to communicate on the internet, free of
pointless protocols and mannerisms and politeness that really have become a
hindrance.

It’s good to have two selves when you’re on the internet: one self that is your
true self, with which you conduct your everyday real-life business; and another
which is hardened through battle, through countless clashes of opinion, one that
has emerged victorious one minute then been utterly defeated by a master wordsmith
the next. One who isn’t afraid of telling it like it is, of needless “let’s be
nice to everyone even if we really disagree with them” philosophy, of the Human
Potential Movement. If you aren’t capable of comprehending the difference between
when someone REALLY MEANS something and when he is just bitching on the internet
to get a rise out of people, then you honestly should move back in with your
parents.

To prove my point, I submit for examination two cases. The first is of 2ch’s
News4VIP board. To briefly explain its purpose, it is a board to which moderators
have the ability to banish troublesome posters. They can’t post outside of their
prison, but others who are NOT banished are freely able to post as well. And what
kind of threads do they make? “lololololol hay guys i farted” and “YOU FUCKING
FAGGOTS SHUT UP ABOUT THE GODDAMNED BASEBALL GAME, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT” and
often you’ll get an absolute gem of an Ascii Art Thread (look up the Soumen thread
on world4ch to see what I mean).

The News4VIP board has the largest volume of posts of all of 2ch. It’s the
largest, most active board on the largest, most active internet community in
existence. And it’s not confined merely to those banished posters. A very good
number of them post there for fun, as a trollsink, then switch IE windows to a
serious discussion on physics. They can differentiate between the two modes of
communication.
The second case is that of what has become known as /b/. You really can’t describe
/b/. On Futaba, /b/ is the directory under which the “2D Misc. Image” pictures are
posted and critiqued. Being Misc, it doesn’t have any specific guidelines for
posts. Therefore, anything goes! You’ll see photoshop threads, pornography, anime
screencaps by people who are watching shows on their TV Tuner cards, serious
threads about philosophy, and threads where the OP bitches about his girlfriend.
As of this writing, I know of no less than THREE separate /b/s, each one on a
separate server, on Futaba, each one having millions and millions of posts.

By comparison, all other boards combined may strive to hold a candle to the
postrate and types of threads that you can get there. It’s really a mixed bag, and
it has good days and bad days. But it’s the best representation of human sociology
that exists, because there are no restrictions. People are able to do what they
want to do in a virtual environment, and it is healthy.

We here at 4chan have a /b/ of our own, and although it isn’t what we’ve intended
it to become, it has taken on a life of its own with over 3.27 million posts
itself, while the board with the next largest number of posts is /a/, the board
where people post anime/manga related pics, with 194,000 posts.

Look at those numbers. Indeed, the reason why there ARE so many /b/s on Futaba
Channel is simply because there are so many people posting at such a high rate
that it has to be split up lest the board software utterly crumble. Something is
obviously being done right here. Discourse limited only by the whims and
imaginations of the participants allows for the most personal and community
growth. Let’s compare with a traditional forum.

In the West, we do not have one universal internet culture. The closest thing we
have is a scattering of acronyms and lists of popular websites, where people
gather and bicker about who comes from where. It is a terribly feudal system,
where the online populace lives out their entire posting lives ferociously
dedicated to one particular forum and IRC channel. Oh, we all know about the same
acronyms or what have you: but that’s only because they were invented at a time
when we DID have one enormous communication medium that everyone went to? Usenet.
They spread through Usenet, these emoticons and acronyms, and when everybody and
their grandmother started getting Internet access, people wanted to have their own
websites, and finally their own forum systems. And everyone started to take the
initiative to create their own personal forums for, say, three people, on one
limited subject - cars, football, baseball, music, particular bands.

After things split up, people made their own offshoots of these things so now
there are thousands of forums, each with a maximum of hundreds of users, all
completely separate and limited in their domains. The only shared community they
have is with themselves and with the posters of Usenet twenty years ago. There is
at this time no enormous community that people know of. Sure, people have heard of
SA or Fark or Slashdot, and these are certainly some of the largest with thousands
of people in their userbase. But with the penchant Western sites seem to have with
plastering usernames and avatars and fluffy icons and stuff all over the place, it
is daunting and unnecessary to the true aim of a forum? to spread ideas.

A system whose focus is on ideas should have a minimalist interface to lessen

distractions, and also to maintain compatibility with all sorts of
browsing/posting technologies. Perhaps some users are using cell phones to
read/post, or maybe they are reading through an older system that does not have
all the bells and whistles that a newer environment would have. In either event,
using a CSS-heavy, web2.0-extended interface to a forum increases server loads,
bandwidth loads, client-side processing, and adds visual elements that can be
distracting and more difficult to grasp and work with than “type in the box at the
bottom of each thread and press Post”.

Contrast this with the Eastern side of the internet. Sure, you have your
spattering of personal sites and blogs, but 2ch is so huge that ANYONE with an
internet connection who spends any time of consequence online has at least heard
of it, if he doesn’t already post there. It’s huge, it’s popular, and it’s
anonymous. Hiroyuki hit the nail on the head when he said that anonymity on the
internet, where you don’t know someone’s name or face unless they choose to tell
you, is the natural form of communication. And with a BBS as huge as 2ch is, you
have to do something pretty enormous to garner any sort of fame there, if that’s
what you’re after. (People who post for the sake of accumulating attention are
incredibly vain and base people, and they are quickly weeded out by the posters
who post because they *like going there*.)

On a phpBB forum, you have to remember lists of usernames, avatars; there is

enormous drama on these forums. Let’s say you, the budding internet user, come
upon a forum and sign up to post there. Now, why would you do this? There are two
major reasons why you would go through a process and register to start posting in
an already existing internet community which you have never seen before: either
you have a one-time need that will soon be filled, a thread to create asking one
question; or you are simply looking for a place to introduce yourself and make
friends over the internet.

In the first case, you may get your answer to your question in a matter of hours
or days, and then never go back there again. In the second, you may be ostracized
because you posted without lurking. The practice of showing registration dates and
post counts right in users’ profiles is evidence of the fact that inherently
grained into the Western posting system are the excuses and red tape that bar new
posters from posting and keep original posters at their place in the clique. A
user coming to this site for the first time and making a thread will typically be
greeted with “shut up faggot and stop posting” or “who gave you permission to post
in our forum and hang out with us” or “why are you posting without lurking” or
something to that effect.

However, with an anonymous BBS you don’t need to worry about that. Posting
anonymously you are completely safe from people judging the worth of your comments
based on the fact that you haven’t been posting there. In fact, as far as they
know, you could have been posting there before they started going themselves! Thus
ideas drive the conversation, not “who says what”. Of course there will be people
who may give out incorrect information: but when they do so anonymously, they have
nothing to gain from it. Where is the “proof” that they did that? Well, it can be
manifested in other posters who correct them. It’s a discussion forum, meant to be
the exchange of ideas, not a clique where someone can only speak and be heard if
he’s proven himself to posters who have been there before him.

Anonymous posting is a relatively unknown segment of internet communication whose

advantages need to be introduced to the large percentage of Western internet-
residents. And we know that although 4chan has a HUGE number of visitors, only a
relatively small percentage of them ever post. If only 5% of the userbase ever
posted you would be guaranteed to see new content every time you pressed F5.

So hopefully this little essay has turned some of you on to the prospects of
anonymity on the Internet!