In ‘I WILL DO EVERYthing That Am Asked’: Scambaiting, Digital Show-Space and the Racial Violence of Social Media, Lisa Nakamura discusses the concept of anonymity and online platforms that facilitate this anonymity, which is alive and well, striving in the online world.
According to the creator of 4Chan, an image board and meme-atractor website, anonymity is crucial for the “online ecosystem” as most internet users will anyway place their true identities through the ‘normal’, everyday services like Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is interesting to hear an opinion like this one, when normally online anonymity is looked down upon.
Anonymity might actually be the only remaining mean that “foster[s] creativity” according to Christopher Poole (4Chan’s creator). Even though it is hated by many, I don’t think that people will disagree with the fact that most times humans will show, say, and do the most when they are protected under their anonymity masks, unafraid of their social identity, reputation and place in this world.
Poole founded 4Chan in 2003 when he was only 15 years old as a platform to discuss Japanese pop-culture, a great interest of his. However, one of the website’s boards, /b/ also called “random” board, unexpectedly started gaining more and more visitors and now solemnly constitutes a third of the site’s attraction.
What attracts people to leave their ‘personal’ anonymous touch, is the fact that /b/ does not require the user to register, has no archive and of course, everything is anonymous. So even though this is a place of hatred, weirdness, and blowing off steam, the millions of posts per day, can have such a huge impact that some of the effects can and do leave the 4Chan platform and emerge into the broader everyday internet culture. This ability and chance to discuss and possibly see what really strikes people about the world, might not be possible if anonymous platforms didn’t exist for people to express how they really feel, even if that means hiding behind a mask.
Bibliography
Walker, Rob. “When Funny Goes Viral.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 July 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18ROFL-t.html.
