Anonymity
For as long as I can remember, I have viewed the anonymity of the internet as a bad thing. From pornography, to hate speech, and trolls. In my experience, most people tend to push boundaries more on the internet than they would if the situation was in person or offline. There ARE, however, situations offline where people tend to push those same boundaries. Ever seen a road rage incident? Do you think people react the same way getting cut off in traffic as they do getting cut in line at a supermarket? People I grew up around, in a very rural part of my country, would probably apologize for being in the way after being cut in line at the supermarket. That same person, however, would be the first to flip the bird going down the road to someone who made them move their right foot 2 inches to momentarily hit the brakes.
The first point I’m trying to make here, in some weird roundabout supermarket traffic way, is that anonymity can make people act differently than they normally would in person. I’m sure everyone here has seen an example of that. I never really thought about it past that point though, until I came across bear blog. Now, I am not saying the same trolls and hate speech does not exist in Bear Blog, (and please don’t troll me from this post just to show me how wrong I am, lmao), but I have personally not seen ANY of the bad that can come from anonymity since I have been browsing here. What I have seen from you all on here, is beautiful posts about deleting socials and spending time with friends and family, fighting the dehumanization of the internet, and things like a “Bear Blog Carnival for the month”where someone takes the time out of their day to come up with a prompt and compile peoples submissions so they can all get a chance to have their writing read. There is no AI algorithm here. Drama and fear mongering posts do not automatically make the “front page.” I know I am new here, and maybe this is just a sort of honeymoon phase. But I am in awe of what this community has created and I am very proud to be a new accession to Bear Blog.
Now to my last point, I do not normally share a lot about my life. I try to be a very intentional person. I think a lot before I give input on things, and I take a while to get warmed up to those around me. My very first post on this blog was a letter, or email, or text, (I don’t even know what it is supposed to be) to my parents. We have not spoken in years, and the last time we tried it turned into a huge argument. The letter has been written for months now, and I still have not sent it. I will, when the time is right. Anonymity has allowed me to share that with the dozens of people that have seen it here on Bear Blog. And on a walk yesterday, I realized that without Bear Blog, (until I send it to my parents of course), nobody would have ever seen that letter. I just found beauty in the fact that I felt comfortable sharing it on here because of the anonymity and was wondering how many others have found themselves able to share, express themselves, or create in ways they would have never been able to without the anonymity of the internet.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If not, thanks for trying! If I gained nothing else from writing this post, it was how to properly spell anonymity, it took me until like the last two usages of the word spell it correctly! Woot!