Imagine, waking up and you pick up your daily newspaper from your doorstep delivered to you. When you flip through the third page, you see that the Lakers won the NBA finals against the Nuggets. The first thing you do is go to your television and go through the channels to find the one game of the Lakers vs Nuggets. When you finally found it, the game is already finished and you can't rewind it so you have to wait for the prerecorded version to play again. Well, that ain't the case now.
Now, when you go into Google you can see everything. Starting from the lastest cancelled influencer on Twitter to the UFO sightings to fanfictions of Harry Potter characters kissing and doing stuff together (you know what I mean and if you don't, stay innocent my friend). You can even take quirky quizzes like "Were you Cleopatra in your past life?." My dear, I welcome you to the internet.
Where everyone can remain anonymous and post racist slurs. Where anyone can send you death threats and dox you without them being held accountable. Where you can see leaked clips of someone commiting homicide. Where you can see a cute puppy. Where you can see anything and absolutely everything at once.
The oversaturation of information, I mean look at the amount of people posting about microchips in vaccines or the illuminati. I mean, how can we describe the internet? To some it is a wonderful tool that they use and to some it's this scary and terrifying mine field. I mean, let's be real here, trying to not offend anyone on the internet? You're better off trying to find half unicorns and half mermaids if you're trying to achieve that. With almost everyone being online nowadays, the lack of accountability is horrific.
While scrolling online, you can see death threats, racist slurs, misogynistic comments, sexist posts, and pictures of people dying. It's a pretty rough place. However, the anonymity that exists in this place is both concerning and relieving. Let's get into the nitty gritty details.
Being anonymous online is a problem. When you see a post that's problematic, normally, you would want to hold them accountable for their actions. If the user is utilizing a fake account and giving little to no details about who they are behind the screen then how are we able to hold them accountable for their actions? In a hypothetical situation (which is not hypothetical at all as people do experience this), if cyber bullying was occuring and a group of people were posting horrible things about a person using a fake account, how are we able to help the victim if we cannot hold them physically accountable for their actions in the nonphysical world? This is the problem of anonymity online.
With that in mind, let's focus on why being anonymous online can sometimes be good. Let's take this situation as an example, if you feel scared and are cautious because of the amount of identity phishing or even getting tracked then being anonymous online is your only solution. If you feel threatened over the lack of safety there is online, then being anonymous and creating an online persona then having an anonymous user online is ideal for you.
This, my friend, is the internet. Where a person can be the most disgusting human being alive and still cannot be held accountable. Where an influencer can be doing something outright illegal and still have a platform. Where grooming kids is prevalent and death threats are seen left and right.
Welcome to the internet.
I love your publication because it describes in an accurate way what the Internet world is, and if we are not careful it can harm us in some way, either psychologically or even personally, but it also has its benefits, so we must be careful with what we do and the type of information we consume. Greetings and success.