Does Anonymity Lead To Social Anarchy?

Last week, the racism article I wrote generated a lot of talk which was very interesting. One of the things it unearthed was a link sent from a PR person to a piece in Time Magazine about the psychology of comments and Internet anonymity.

One of the things about anonymity that struck me as I read the article, and has struck me before, is that lack of anonymity in the real world is the basis for most of our social constructs. On the Internet, we talk about privacy all the time, and there are definitely places where privacy is critical. For example communications (think FISA) and the right to engage in transactions in private is generally, I believe, a right.

But such privacy, in the realm of the Internet, strikes at one of the most basic social constructs we have. It is a concept that has been baked into keeping humans in line for tens of thousands of years. And that is "shame."

The minute we can do things in private without the ability to be seen, our freedom and willingness to engage in anti-social behavior skyrockets. Music piracy is a great example. People argue all the time that there is nothing wrong with downloading music for free off the Internet. I totally disagree, but whether you do or not, there is one thing I think few would argue. If piracy involved walking up to the artists in person and taking a copy of their songs, even digital copies that cost nothing to reproduce, people, by and large, would not do it. There is something about doing something wrong in the physical presence of the victim that changes the equation. All this crap about how it is no big deal goes away.

The same is true for discussions on the Internet. The racists who joined the chat room to harass Wayne Sutton and Corvida last week would, by and large, not have done so if they were not anonymous.

Another example is that according to Sara Lacy, the Tech Ticker chat room has become a cesspool. "the spammer/troll/abusive hater that has become the stereotype of any Yahoo chat room just ruins it for me." I suspect the deviant behavior is the ultimate result for all large anonymous chat rooms.

The truth is people that say questionable things online with the cloak of anonymity are much less likely to do so in person. And when they do, they are ostracized either officially, or more likely through social pressure, to behave in more acceptable ways. Generally, people are much less likely to do bad things if they fear getting caught, or fear being known or associated with the bad or anti-social act. This is obviously not universally true, which is why we still have prisons, and white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups. But the fear of “being-known-for” is a wonderful deterrent.

And so, what I have been thinking about a lot is the question of whether all this anonymity is really a good thing for humanity. Will it turn the web into a social wild west? And as more of our culture moves to the Internet what will *that* mean. Something that humans have refined since the evolution of homo sapiens may, in fact, be going out the door even as we speak. And so far, the signs are not entirely encouraging.