It is already 2023 and the Internet have grown to adult age. When it was young there was lots of naive ideas how it will make world better place but nowadays some of us might argue against it. Surely like almost in all things in life there is good things and bad things and everything is not so black and white, but I personally think that even Internet have given us lots of great possibilities it also has ruined many things.
Biggest loser in this game of life with Internet is the anonymity.
When I was young it was a common knowledge that you should not tell others who you are, where you are and not much anything about yourself. Of course we told lots of things about us to others in internet back then as well, but it normally took lots of time and chatting before we share our personal information to others. Nowadays things have changed to worse. Now it is seen as a shady behaviour if you do want to stay anonymous on internet. But does the anonymity matter still? If so, why?
Years ago it was somehow excepted that other people behind the screen somewhere in web were either pervert, psycho, killer or just creepy in some other way and I guess that was part of the reasons why people were told not to share their personal information on net. Surely reasons could have been others as well, but at least those comes to my mind when I am writing this.
Internet have grown and normies have found it and therefore it is not anymore seen as shady and creepy place in general than how it was seen long time ago. I have no idea if there were more psychos and perverts in web back in the days or nowadays and it does not matter much to me anyway and it is not the point why I think anonymity matters.
Biggest reason you want to stay anonymous in internet is the normies. Yes, you read it right. The Normies. Those average casual internet visitors who just life their life, hang around browsing news magazines and write posts in Facebook, Twitter and so on. Those are the people what you should be much more worried about in current age of Internet than potential psychos who might lurk another side of the web connection. And yes of course you should use common sense and remember that there is also that kind of creepies out there, but if you stay anonymous in internet then you already are protected against creepy pervs as well.
In this point you might already be wondering, why normies are the threat for you, casual internet user? Well, let me tell a story about normies.
When I speak about normies I mean "The Average Jane or Joe", but on this context this person has access to Internet and he or she have account on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or whatsoever and they share their opinions and views there about politics, religion or whatever the hot topic currently seems to be.
Biggest reason why you should be afraid these persons and stay anonymous is their ability to have a cult like mentality to cancel you just because you have unpopular opinions. They might find out where you live, for whom you are working for and then they even might call or email to your boss and tell that you are a bad person, a bigot who should be silenced. In some cases that is the case and you are fired from your job since some companies are worried about their public profile that they rather fire you to feed the howling normies than accept that you have your own life and own opinions of things.
It is good to note that I do not mean that if you are working on company X and you write publicly negative things about company X with your own name that there will be not negative impact on your career. That is kind of excepted. In this context I mean mostly just when you write or tell things what are totally NOT related anything what you and your company do.
For example, you might work as a secretary on hotel but you have opinions about abort, drug legalizations or same sex marriages what are not accepted by your company official policy and therefore that might cause you issues even those are not any way related to work you are doing.
If you cannot freely express your opinions because it might get you kicked out of your job or it might lead to cyber bullying what might even escalate to real life bullying as well then there is a problem. It will cause culture of fear, hate and anger since only some of views are accepted and others are seen as a threat what must be silenced with the army of normies.
That is why you should stay anonymous on internet and write your opinions without telling who you are. Then you can freely express what you really think about things and hopefully make some other people think as well if they found out your texts and start thinking if your writings make any sense or not.
That is how we grow as a humanity - we hear opinions and values of others and then we argument against those values if there is something to argue about. If you write with your own name and face, quite often arguments goes against you and everything you said is missed just because it was written by you. People often don't care about what is said - they are more keen about who said it and act based on that.
Some might argue that if you are not writing hate speech then you have nothing to worry about. You are not cancelled anywhere, people do not have need to contact your boss and make your life miserable because of your opinions. It is a nice and beautiful idea, but far from reality since everything seems to be hate speech if it is not following the currently accepted narrative of right and wrong.
For example, here are some topics where you will be easily targeted if you are writing anything that does not fit the socially accepted opinions:
Of course those topics are just short sample of opinions what would cause heated debated very easily. If you will tell your opinion about abort to person who have strong opinions that it should be legal to do then it is quite excepted that it will cause you issues even if you are not writing anything what could be seen as "hate speech".
To be fair of course same happens vice versa - if you are saying that abortion is not morally wrong then those who disagree with you might easily be angry about it and share it to others. So my point is not that you should be thinking this or that way even of course I wish you would agree with me because you would also think that my opinions are correct. My point is that whatever you write about these things it will easily goes to useless debate and if you are not writing your opinions anonymously you could be targetted by lynch mob who wants to silcene you for your "hate speech".
Anonymity matters, now even more than previously.
Writing anonymously when expressing your opinions is the best way to make sure that you can write your real unfiltered opinions and try to explain your views to readers without fear of getting kicked out of your job, get targetted for bullying in internet and in real life.
Anonymously writing also helps that when you express your opinions then nobody can ignore it just because "you are just a dumb nazi/far right/commie/hippie/poor/rich/whatever". Your arguments matter.
Your words might not make any difference at all anyway, but at least you are safe when you express your views.