Hello, I am an anonymous entity on the internet.
In an ideal world who I am should bear little significance on my thoughts and contributions. We do not, however, live in an ideal world.
Humans are animals of hierarchy, it is simply how they work, so social standing is a much more important factor than the actual content of what someone says. A beloved president telling you how they are going to fix the economy is very different to your high on weed friend called Bob rattling on about the state being evil and leading us to economic collapse with no escape.
That being the case showing a profile picture and giving a detailed summary of my skills and social standing would make me more palatable and more attractive to prospective readers, yet I choose to not reveal anything. Though even with me not revealing anything you can through reading what I say, how I write, slowly puzzle together an identity. It's even possible to determine whether I was born with a penis or not using an algorithm.
Despite this I choose to be anonymous, and so do a significant amount of people. My reason? Perhaps I'm a ex-Muslim in Saudi, a Nazi supporter in Britain or perhaps I'm just bull shitting completely and I'm actually your average wage slave called Bob who doesn't want to get fired for saying something bad.
Whichever it is, I'm not telling you, personal preference of course, it's not like there are benefits to being anonymous...
The internet allowed people to communicate freely without an identity attached to them, where they could discuss controversial topics without fear of being ostracised. At first, that is what happened, new ideas were discussed and those sharing them formed their own little bubbles further radicalising their own ideas in echo chambers where any dissenters were immediately kicked out. This led to the strange state of the world we see today with furries, progressives,feminists, transgenders, neo-nazis etc. all creating their own little echo chambers and accelerating their own personal ideologies. As any armchair philosopher would know, the person with the most pure form of the ideology usually leads while the repenting follow. Like this the norms of society can radically change in just one generation, an example of this being people in the 50's having the completely disgusting idea that women were best suited for staying home.
Naturally, of the many extreme bubbles of communities some began to pop into the real world, so stuck in their own bubble world they become outraged at the mere idea somebody would say something that does not align with their world view, naturally this should not be allowed, to spout such ridiculous and hateful words this cannot be legal can it? Everybody! Unite! We must put a stop to this!
Of course the state becomes enthralled with this, the citizens themselves asking to take away their rights and give them more power? Splendid!
With people's depreciating fear of the internet, attaching your identity or at least parts of your identity to your ideas became more and more common place and its just easier isn't it, social media where you can share your thoughts with the world and people don't take you seriously if your an egg in your profile picture, have to look professional of course. Nobody really talks about serious things on those anonymous message boards do they come on. You can't get your voice heard like that. You need to share your ideas with the world and make it a better place!
What? You think people can't speak freely like that? Of course they can, you can share whatever you know but posting things to incite hate is just terrible I don's see why people should do that. People have the freedom to say whatever they like on the internet and on social media, of course we won't censor people but there will be repercussions for hateful speech.
-I'm sorry Bob but saying these things on Facebook even as a joke tarnishes our company, even if it was from five years ago its made the headlines now and we simply can't let you stay sorry. Goodbye.
-With this rise in hate speech Facebook is working to stop these horrible acts on our platform.
Ah, but there is a problem here isn't there. People can still say illegal things on the internet. This simply cannot be allowed! This kind of hateful speech is akin to internet terrorism and should be immediately stopped. Violence is being incited and there have been violent attacks and acts of terror. We need to to be able to apprehend criminals before they commit the crime, security is much more important then privacy, of course the government wouldn't abuse this power, you have nothing to hide right? Then you should be fine. There is no reason to be worried. It's not like you will be arrested for browsing the internet, you know, as long you don't visit some weird sites, then you might be put on a list. Also using a VPN puts you on a list apparently. A lot of things put you on a lot of lists. Don't worry about it, its not like the government can monitor everything you do, they don't have those kind of resources, they only archive everything you do and put it on some servers just in case you become suspicious for terrorist activity. We have been getting a lot of terrorist attacks lately so we need to crack down on them before they occur, this is all very necessary. The government has your best interest at heart, they're not evil come on.
I personally just like being anonymous, honestly, there is no reason for it don't you worry now Mr. CIA agent.
I'll just be talking about light topics in a purely satirical fashion of course, nothing serious. Just titbits like how the economy might crash, how the corrupt state lusts for power, would the world be a better place if women couldn't vote, the cycles of societal collapse etc. Just some humorous topics. Maybe get in some serious investing guides and graph tutorials possibly.
If you'd like to read such light hearted posts feel free to follow me and join the discussion on some of my inevitably rather out their posts.
If you can comment of course, might have to keep quiet if you agree with such hateful ideas, profile picture and every word you say stored on a blockchain and all that. Immutable, secure, forever and stuff. Very minor however.
It's true, I have more interest in what people have to say... than I do about who they really are... :)
Interesting. On a platform like Steemit, a voice should only be judged by it's message! Looking forward to seeing your next post!
Welcome to steemit!
Hope you have a good time.
welcome to steemit@@@studentsavage:)
I LOLed at "light-hearted"
I still haven't shared my identity on here. I might because I don't think identity is all that bad if we can remain relatively unattached to it. I do value my privacy though and do not want to start self-censoring myself to avoid any hassles. I appreciate your attitude.
I would't make assumptions like ”humans are hierarchical animals". Right now they are, sure. But we only understand human nature in a certain set of circumstances. We don't get to see what human nature would look like in a world where love was available without expectations, where cooperation was encouraged rather than competition, not yet anyway.
The world you describe sounds too idealistic to ever be true. In regards to hierarchy, whether it is nurture or nature is up for debate but it currently exists and plays a massive role in society. North Korea being an easy example of this, despite most of the country wishing to rebel the soldiers and police force still carry out orders.
No need to be a perfectionist, having an ideal just serves as a compass, giving you a general direction. If you can't imagine it, it will never be possible, but one step at a time is nice. Rather than focus on trying to build a perfect world, I think of it as constantly moving in the direction of a perfect world. It's more about the ride than the destination, as soon as more people realize that, we can make much bigger steps in the right direction. I think we might agree on which direction that may be even if we feel differently about whether it's possible or not.
As I see it, trust is what is missing from the equation. Of course we don't want to trust blindly, we want to build trust in each other to create solutions. That's what I am focused on and the only reason I will share my identity is because it creates more opportunity to build trust. But I totally agree with everything you say about how people focus too much on it.
Doesn't really matter to me if people are anonymous or not. Takes more than an identity to make someone interesting.
This article will keep you motivated no matter what happens here.
https://steemit.com/welcome-aboard/@solarguy/how-much-does-a-steemit-author-make-per-month-some-interesting-thoughts-for-steemit-rookies
hello, welcome to steemit. interesting thoughts, keep sharing and keep exploring :)
would this be political if you were a pink elephant?
If I was my message would be completely overshadowed by my identity thus any political message would be ignored, sufficient reason to hide that fact no?
There is no need to connect to a real world identity, but there is good reason to have a concept of 'social standing' and trustworthiness on something like Steem.
Firstly Steem involves financial transactions. While we remove the element of trusting a third party, we can't always remove the need to trust a counterparty. Since we need trust in such transactions, we need a basis for that trust. Reputation (being known for your traits) allows us a way to judge your trustworthiness in order to facilitate those transactions. The potential loss of social standing also means that there is a cost associated with cheating. It is far from perfect, but it is better than a blind gamble on the trustworthiness of your counterparty.
Aside from that, there's also the fact that trust and authority are sometimes a legitimate part of debate and discussion. A professor of astrophysics can be a legitimate authority on the subject of astrophysics. In a discussion on the topic, you could verify every single claim that they make, but it would be quite time consuming to do so. It is reasonable to lean on someone's legitimate authority on a topic, as long as a) they really are an expert and b) you have a good basis for trust, because even a legitimate authority can lie, and there must be some cost/risk associated with doing so.
Welcome to Steem!
Your example and point is valid, my point was more relevant to the field of politics and economics, where the public believe that politicians know what they are doing based on the premise that to get into that role they should know what they are doing. I think in regards to the sciences a researchers reputation of course matters but what matters more is peer review, so should an anonymous person make a discovery, peer review will quickly validate it, should it be right.
welcome, A! nothin like a bit of laughing in the face of the government and good ole fashioned satire to start the day off - keep it up! 😂🙌