Anonymity, pseudonymity, and the agency of online identity: Examining the social practices of r/Gonewild Page: 4
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pronounced with services like Facebook Connect that carry identity across a variety of very different sites
that enable very different practices. This type of singular identity that merges social groups and previously
unrelated practices may represent the kind of "authenticity" Zuckerberg supposedly values, but it is
inaccurate to say that type of authenticity is truly found in our offline lives.
Of course, Zuckerberg and his colleagues represent only one side of the online anonymity debate. Possibly
the most public figure who represents the other side is Chris Poole, the founder of the anonymous image
board 4chan. Poole (known publicly only as "Moot" until 2010) disagrees with the Zuckerbergs, stating
that, "Mark [has] said that identity is authenticity, that you are online who you are offline, and to have
multiple identities is lacking in integrity. I think that's nuts" (Poole in Krotoski, 2012). Poole argues that
rather than online identity being like a mirror that reflects one true idea of self, people are instead more
like diamonds: their identity is prismatic (Poole in OreillyMedia, 2011).
Poole's arguments share some commonality with many of the studies that have applied Goffman's theories
of the presentation of self to social media sites (see Marwick and boyd, 2011; Murthy, 2012; Livingstone,
2008; van Dijck, 2013; Vitak, 2012). These articles tend to analyse impression management online as a
practice rather than the representation of a "true" static identity. Most pertinently for this article, Bernie
Hogan (2013) has used Goffman to explore the benefits of pseudonymity and anonymity in the context of
social media. As he argues, people are interested in exploring different identities in different parts of their
social life, similarly to how Poole argues that we are diamonds who look different depending on the angle.
Hogan's examples include a woman who wants to write ideologically on a blog but may not want her role
as a supposedly objective Wikipedia editor to be damaged by her other, less neutral writings. This is one
small example, but it shows the value of eschewing the totalizing control of the "real name" Internet and
why claims to authenticity are inaccurate. Someone can be both a liberal writer and a neutral editor who
follows Wikipedia's rules; one aspect of the self is not more "authentic" than another. But for the
separation of those identities to be possible, individual sites must allow for the freedom of pseudonymous
identity construction. For that reason, we examine the practices of the women of r/gonewild to show how
the use of pseudonyms allow these individuals to segment their r/gonewild behaviors from the other parts
of their online identity. First, however, we examine the anonymity debate through the lens of security to
examine a different part of the debate about identity online that is relevant to the social practices of
r/gonewild.
U
Anonymity and security
Much of the popular debate about anonymity versus real names focuses on two related areas: trolling and
safety. Trolling, and the related concept of flaming, has been around at least as long as people have been
communicating using the Internet (Sternberg, 2013). Early Internet sites relied almost solely on textual
cues, so there was little attempt to fix identity to corporeal bodies. Instead, as Donath and others argued
(Lessig, 1999; Turkle, 1995), the presentation of self was more fluid online because people were freer to
switch identities on a whim and construct a new identity through text. Of course, with that freedom came
the associated practices of flaming and trolling. Flaming refers to hostile comments that often involve
profanity and personal attacks. Likely the most famous description of flaming is Godwin's Law, which only
half humorously states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1" (Godwin, 1993). Trolling involves posting content designed to incite
an emotional reaction in its audience. The comment might be presented in an innocent way, but the "troll"
intends to anger or frustrate a group. For example, someone who goes to an Internet Movie Database
message board to post about how terrible a beloved movie is intends to upset other users. Much of the
research on trolling and flaming examines how the practices are enabled, and sometimes encouraged, by
the anonymity of certain sites (Bergstrom, 2011).
Flaming and trolling have been widely studied in academic literature. They have been linked with
masculinity, the lack of social cues of textual media, critique of the tragedy-obsessed media (Phillips,
2011), affective provocations that vitalize online participation (McCosker, 2014), and the asymmetrical
relationship between people online. In fact, as Nancy Baym (2010) explains, flaming and trolling were two
frequent topics that arose in much of the popular press discussions of the Internet in the 1990s. And they
continue to be relevant to discussions of discussions of civility online, as can be seen by the Zuckerberg
quotes discussed earlier and some prominent sites' decision to ban anonymous comment posts, such as
the Huffington Post, whose founder Arianna Huffington justified her decision by claiming that it will stop
"trolls" from "hiding behind anonymity" (Kirkland, 2014).
Now, in the age of the hacker group Anonymous and other social activist groups, a related phenomenonhas arisen: doxing, which involves groups of anonymous or pseudonymous users researching an individual
and then publishing identifiable facts about that person. Doxing has been used for supposed social good,
as in the case of the Anonymous offshoot KnightSec exposing the identities of people involved in the
Steubenville rape case (Almasy, 2013), but anonymous and pseudonymous Internet users have also
"doxed" people such as Zoe Quinn, a female video game developer who did little more than allegedly4 of 12
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van der Nagel, Emily & Frith, Jordan. Anonymity, pseudonymity, and the agency of online identity: Examining the social practices of r/Gonewild, article, February 17, 2015; Chicago, Illinois. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc987456/m1/4/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT College of Arts and Sciences.