The power of the malicious anonymous user

Published on November 18, 2013 By Frogboy In Everything Else

Listen to this, it’s worth it

A good friend of mine sent me a link to this episode of “The Moth”: http://themoth.org/posts/stories/anonymous

It’s about a popular teacher who nearly saw his career ruined by hateful, anonymous rivals who took snippets from his blog to paint a horrible, completely inaccurate picture of him. It illustrates the disproportionate power of cowardly, anonymous people have to inflict harm on others.

The power of malice

I can relate to this in a very personal way. Not a week goes by where someone doesn’t take a snippet from something I’ve written and uses it to smear me in a very personal way. I’ve been blogging since 2001 and posting on forums for much longer. As you can imagine, I’ve got thousands of writings out there and if you are willing to sift through them and cherry pick you can probably put something together that sounds horrible.

The power of narrative

The Internet makes us all into empty vessels that people pour their hopes and dreams or their bile and venom into. I’ve been both kinds of vessels during my career and neither one remotely resembles reality. Once a narrative gets started, it’s difficult to change its course. It is easy to become a passenger on the narrative that ultimately forms your reputation – for good or ill.

Comments (Page 2)

DivineWrath

on Nov 26, 2013

I thought that talking about motive might be relevant to this discussion. If not, I can reconsider what I talk about.

Jafo

on Nov 26, 2013

DivineWrath

reply 16

I thought that talking about motive might be relevant to this discussion. If not, I can reconsider what I talk about.

That's fine....except the motive behind anonymous slandering/defamation/trolling/bullying is simply their sad, unfullfilled lives needing validation... a raison d'etre. The anonimity is simply the empowerment afforded them.

It's all about 'because they can' rather than 'because there's a need'...

If there were a genuine and valid reason for verbal 'attack'.... a legitimate 'motive' one would do so publicly and stand behind what one said...in other words....add your signature.... just as you do in a Statutary Declaration.

But, what they do is typically NOT defensible [as in arguable in court with appropriate evidence] but is simple white-anting or libel. Character assassination without recourse can do more damage than when the 'claims' are able to be tested in court ....with the potential result of criminal findings against the 'attacker'...

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