Anonymity on the internet isn’t all bad

The interesting thing about the internet is that part of its effects on culture are retrogressive, rare indeed. Most cultural retardations are outgrown as time moves forward, they are traditional naive human mindsets that are disproved as unequal, unintelligent or discriminatory etc. as we psychologically evolve, and so we out-grow them and try and establish newer, wiser cultures.
The internet has many boons, but one of its rather unique elements is that it has contributed to the breaking of culture, or its retrogression, and as I’m sure many people before me have written in long, detailed studies and dissertations, much of this has to do with anonymity and the potential to easily garner attention by whatever means.
Just visit almost any forum, anywhere. Visit the comments section of a news website or blog. Look at cultural gatherings like MySpace and other virtual worlds.
Facebook represents something of an oddity though; one tends to use or is at least encouraged to use one’s real name, yet the behaviours exhibited aren’t often an accurate representation of the true character of the poster. We have games like WoW, and pseudo games like Second Life where we take on an avatar to act out alternate behaviours to those we exercise in real-life.
As far as forums and comments sections though, not only will many posters be proud of their broken grammar and language use, they will be indignant in how ill-informed or poorly constructed arguments are, with many posters lacking the understanding of the difference between opinion and constructive counter-argument.
Welcome to Opendiary – the same rules apply, as they do with LiveJournal and the countless other blogging sites.
We have been given easy access to disseminate selected behaviours and expressions with the added safety of anonymity. If someone responds in a way that we don’t like, we just ignore them, or block them/remove them from our access or friends list, something of an open-handed slap these days, almost always taken as an insult though this might not actually be the case. There are far fewer real-life consequences to our actions, and our interactions and relationships seem somewhat shallower, not as enduring as in real-life. In real-life when a friend offends us, we’re presented with the awkward task of working it through. Online, we freely make and discard friendships over the most trivial of offences.

Enough.
I’m not having a go at the almighty intorwebz. I don’t get righteous about it, I don’t really mind. That people wish to be juvenile has little to do with me, it doesn’t upset me and it’s easily ignored. Once upon a time I posted on a forum or two, years ago, but I now strictly do not. I don’t post comments on news sites, lolcats, or anything like that. I write in my diaries, and that is enough for me.

Here’s the thing about the OpenDiary community I’ve found.

Anonymity allows me to examine minute but powerful intimacies and express them freely. You, none of which have met me, read the entries and see only what I wish for you to see, whether I’m honest and convincing is for you to decide, but generally we seem to accept one another at our word, and we open our hearts. None of you know who I am, and I don’t know who any of you are. What we see of each-other are tiny fragments of our lives, hardly enough to make a complete picture, yet we identify so strongly with them, and part of this is because of anonymity. We are not privy to the countless mundane actions of our daily lives, we don’t know what we each are like when we’re upset, petulant, lazy, angry or truly frightened. We aren’t exposed to each-other’s behaviour when we act selfishly without thinking and we don’t have to work through those issues. Indeed, the relationships we’ve formed online are very different to real-life relationships, but they can be almost as powerful in almost as many ways.

I have to say that there are things I’ve posted here that I’ve never verbally expressed to anyone, or at the very least any more than one person, yet the responses I’ve had from my readers are intelligent, well thought-out and emotional. In some ways, you beautiful people are supporting me in ways that no-one else can, and for that I am humbly grateful. You try your best to empathise with my difficulties, even if you don’t understand them, and you join me in celebrating my joys and triumphs, which only expands my experience of them.

I have been awestruck recently by the insights of some of my readers, and you know who you are. I guess in some ways all of your writing has also disarmed me in a small way. Because of my illness and my past experiences, I may sound charismatic, but am extremely adept in isolating myself and keeping myself safe from others. As I’ve said before, I always assess others for their potential to harm me, but Open Diary provides me with an avenue by which I can exempt people from that defence mechanism, because in some ways, you can’t harm me. The wonderful thing is I don’t think any of you ever would. Anonymity on the internet has allowed me to bypass something for my readers that is extremely difficult for people in real-life to achieve.

I have so much more to say, more to express, it’s an emotional thing, even if it does sound boringly academic. I don’t know if any of you have noticed, some of the more literary writers among us definitely would have, but for me, words and verbal expression have a very unique kind of affection, and when we talk and talk and talk, it really does translate to so much love and intimacy.

Thank you all.
Thank you all in ways that I can’t express.
You’ve kept me here when I’ve thought of giving it up, and shown me repeatedly that there is hope for humanity, that we will not decline into a never-ending spiral of retrogression.
If I had it my way, I’d have all of you amazing, creative, flawed, vulnerable, enduring and strong people shape the fabric of human culture. I guess we are already, in tiny ways. I’ve never wanted to be a world-changer on a grand scale, particularly where fame is involved (no thanks), but our tiny actions, our imperfections, our struggles and our expressions of intimacy and affection truly shape the world we live in. It’s all we can do; love each-other.

Thank you for loving me.

Now I’m crying.