On The Value of Not Being Anonymous on Social Media

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For years I felt comfortable tweeting as myself for two reasons. The fist reason is that we met up so often than tweeting under my actual name made sense. The second reason is that it was a network of friends of friends and we were seldom, if ever trolled. That changed during the pandemic so I chose to tweet under one pseudonym, before another, and then another. The reason is that I felt that I was going to be attacked by people online, if they knew who I was.

I decided to create an account on Calckey where I was posting as myself. until I was trolled and insulted. I blocked the offending account but I also created an anonymous account, in reaction to this attack. It’s not that I want to be anonymous. It’s that I don’t feel comfortable tweeting as myself on a network, and in an era, where trolling is normal. I am on social media for conversations that will eventually encourage me to meet people in person.

I believe that this is a coming of age thing. The Fediverse is still young and growing up. Communities are not mature. Communities are not yet networks of friends of friends so the social bonds that would normally keep people civil have not been formed yet. I believe that, in time, this will come. For now I think it makes sense to be anonymous, until we find a community where we feel safe being ourselves, rather than pseudonyms.

On Reddit, Quora, Twitter and Facebook you respond to posts by strangers. Every time that those strangers attack us, is a time we feel that we should not speak to “strangers” on the web. It consolidates the habit of lurking, rather than participating. I don’t want to lurk, I just want to insulate the real me from internet trolls, in case it escalates and potentially damages my reputation. Remember, a troll is anonymous, but their trolling can have real life consequences, if we are not anonymous.