Anonymity is as old as the internet. Okay – actually it’s much older than that, but for purposes, Online Anonymity is as old as the internet. Give or take a few days.

It started off mainly on newsgroups which covered particularly sensitive taboo topics (like sexual bondage) which people wanted to discuss, but didn’t want people to know who they were.

Fast forward now to a few weeks ago when a bot programmed by Rika Wantabee appeared on a micro-blogging platform popular with Second Life users – Plurk.

The concept is a simple one. A user will send a private message to the bot, and it will republish that message under its own account name – SecondSecrets. The message can be about anything or anyone, and hence opens the floodgates to the catty nature of humans.

Of course, anonymity is nothing new to Second Life, since the advent of being able to create alternative accounts, or “alts”. Be who you want, when you want, and have nobody know who you really are. We suspend our reality and accept this as being part of the online culture, and generally speaking, we require no validation of who somebody actually is.

But should we require the knowledge of who somebody is in a virtual environment? There are many cases where it may be beneficial to know the person you’re speaking to is who they claim to be. The obvious case is when entering into an online relationship with somebody. Another example could be when undertaking work for a client.

But in a Big Brother world where everyone is constantly under surveillance, perhaps a little anonymity allows for an environment for us to escape the constraints of reality. We’ll ignore that every click you make on the internet is being logged somewhere, and Linden Lab usually know what you’re up to in world. This is more about an escape from society and pursuing activities which you wouldn’t be comfortable with other people knowing about, or conducting yourself in a way which may become disadvantageous if it became public knowledge.

Larger corporations often run hotlines where their employees can report unethical activities – whistle-blowing. Studies have shown that anonymity can be useful participating in support groups on the internet, and allow people to gain much without risk of having to suffer humiliation.

Anonymity is also key in the freedom of expression. It allows for many topics which may never otherwise have been discussed to be bought to light, and for the community to openly debate the topic. It allows you to gauge how other people react to it, and to see different points of opinion.

In many cases in writing, it is necessary to retain the anonymity of sources. I’ve refused to disclose the identity of SL users and even Lindens when I’ve published articles on Metaversally Speaking. Anonymity allows a user to make their point without incriminating themselves in the process.

But then, anonymity can very easily turn sour. Give the mask of anonymity, and a person will troll, flame and behave in a manner which would earn them a punch in the face in the real world.  When the need to back your opinions without your identity presents itself, you get what I call the YouTube effect. Comments on various YouTube videos oftentimes turn into trolling-fests and incite hatred and abuse.

There’s also the cross-world fear, when someone who is anonymous tracks a person down in real life, as obtains personal details like real name, address, telephone numbers, place of employment, etc and uses that information to harass their victim.

I used to have a policy on this blog to cut out all comments left under anonymity. In reality though, I’ve found that almost all such comments are raising excellent points, and seem to be left by people who want to contribute to the topic, but for some reason do not want to do so under the name of their avatar.

Which raises a new point – is an avatar not a level of anonymity in itself? Surely by having an anonymous online identity which is completely detached from your real life, you have no need to be hiding yourself?

Not quite. Lets not confuse Anonymity with a Pseudonym. For many people, an avatar is part of who they are – they operate a second life under this identity, but are attached to it in the same way as they are to their real identity. An online reputation can hold the social and financial meaning to some people that a real reputation can. For this, the purpose of the Pseudonym is less about being anonymous – when identity has a personal and sentimental value to you, it holds a value to you, which becomes something which you’re not willing to deface or destroy.

So the power of SecondSecrets lies in anonymity. When we assume an anonymous identity such as this, we hold little regard for its reputation. It becomes something that is exploited to deface and exploit others, and to try and bring them down.

I’m not saying that is either a good or a bad thing – my point is that anonymity is a powerful element to online life in general, and we should aware of that.

People (myself included) often discount an anonymous opinion, and dismiss it as it doesn’t hold much water if someone isn’t prepared to back it up. But what SecondSecrets pointed out is that people are attracted to the concept of anonymity. We harbour within us a desire to know what it is that people are unprepared to say out loud.

There aren’t many voices in Second Life who are willing to come out and put an unpopular opinion out there. Be it to preserve their reputation, to avoid confrontation or simply just out of fear, the power of anonymity removes those factors and puts the idea out there for everyone to see.

From that point on, it’s our reactions which add any fuel to the fire.