4 ms·

To me it seems people are more likely to speak their mind freely when they are anonymous. It's the only way to get rid of the need to conform.

by dgut 10y ago

muninn_ 10y ago
Yeah so I would see that as a kind of "level 3", if you will. In a level 3, you'll say anything. You don't care, you may or may not believe it, but you'll say it. In a level 2, like social media, you'll say things you wouldn't say in real life, but you'll still moderate some of what you say because your peers will see it and maybe they'll disapprove publically. Level 1 would be your in person communication. This is going to be highly moderated compared to l2 or l3. You certainly won't say things in person that you would say online. To me this seems makes sense.
- exo762 10y ago
  I'm much more comfortable speaking openly in person than online. Online I don't have control over context or the audience. I don't have direct emotional feedback nor I myself can use emotion to properly convey my idea to someone. This puts me in position of extreme vulnerability, since my message can be distorted and put out of context. Social media are useless for any serious discussion unless you have pseudonymity (HN, reddit) or full anonymity (4chan).
  - westmeal 10y ago
    But most chans are also pseudonymous. The only difference is that by default websites such as these require some sort of alias. It's very hard or even impossible to be really anonymous on a computer network.
    - Inconel 10y ago
      I would assume that by saying the chans are anonymous, the poster meant they are anonymous between users. Sure, the site administrator, your ISP, or the NSA may know it's you posting, but the other users of the site don't. And you don't have a site wide identity that follows you around. Unless you explicitly choose so.
  - jslabovitz 10y ago
    I agree. I definitely stifle myself online more than I might in a small in-person group, or even a large group, for fear of negative reactions. For me, it's got nothing to do with anonymity or some possible later repercussion; rather, it's being sensitive to short-term feedback. Effectively, the bandwidth of human communications through the internet is low and error-prone, and hence stressful for me to get my thoughts across. (It doesn't help that long-form replies -- which help me explain my ideas better -- have been grossly devalued.) Sadly, it's gotten worse in the last few years -- perhaps due to Facebook, or perhaps due to societal changes that opened the door to mediums like Facebook. I seem less and less capable of growing that thick skin that people always talk about...
    - mwfunk 10y ago
      Agreed. IMO the biggest problem with online communication is that people don't realize how much ambiguity there is in language, or how easy it is to misread what people type into little boxes on web pages. Every tweet is like an underdetermined system of equations with infinitely many solutions (solution == what they really meant when they typed up the tweet, and everything else that readers project onto posters). Everyone has to choose how to interpret ambiguous statements all the time, and by nature our brains are more likely to choose interpretations that conform to our own expectations. We can create our own private echo chambers if we aren't careful, where we always interpret what people who are on "our side" say in the most charitable way possible, and we always interpret statements from opponents in terms of the biggest strawmen our brains can come up with. This is a pitfall of any sort of communication, but it seems to be a vastly greater danger with online communication. People tend to blame the lousiness of online communication on other people, and there's some truth to that, but I think it's just inherent in both the medium and human nature. In the long term I hope that digital mediums can evolve to support better communication and provide more fertile ground for more constructive discussions.
  - sverige 10y ago
    The great advantage to conversations in person is that there is the ability for that conversation to be forgotten. And forgotten not only by your interlocutor(s), but also by yourself. When you put it out in public online, it might persist unaltered for years or even decades. My most upvoted comments under an old pseudonym on YouTube caused me to decide to never, ever look up old posts on Usenet.
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    +1, most of the people I know haven't really thought through their political views so when it comes up in person, I very often end up saying something that would be shocking to them if I wasn't there to make the case for it (and in 99% of cases, they end up convinced or at least convinced that my position is valid). Online is an entirely different story. The barriers to communicating efficiently makes people default to pattern-matching instead of thought, which pretty quickly devolves into the lowest common denominator of conversation. As you say, places like reddit are better for this, where people have a higher tolerance for longer conversation and the interface supports longer posts. I'm part of a subreddit that's probably in my top 3 fora ever for quality of conversation ever, but it relies heavily on the fact that the norms are pretty well-internalized by everyone.
- technopath 10y ago
  There's a lot that I won't ever say online, even anonymously, that I would say in person to someone I trust. So for me talking to trusted people is level 4.
wybiral 10y ago
Try browsing 4chan for a bit. It's crazy to see how much conformity and mob behavior happens even in an anonymous format like that. Almost as though people exhibit adherence to a culture just to perpetuate that culture itself rather than their own identity (of which there is none).

To me it seems people are more likely to speak their mind freely when they are anonymous. It's the only way to get rid of the need to conform.

by dgut 10y ago

To me it seems people are more likely to speak their mind freely when they are anonymous. It's the only way to get rid of the need to conform.

muninn_ 10y ago

Yeah so I would see that as a kind of "level 3", if you will. In a level 3, you'll say anything. You don't care, you may or may not believe it, but you'll say it. In a level 2, like social media, you'll say things you wouldn't say in real life, but you'll still moderate some of what you say because your peers will see it and maybe they'll disapprove publically. Level 1 would be your in person communication. This is going to be highly moderated compared to l2 or l3. You certainly won't say things in person that you would say online. To me this seems makes sense.

exo762 10y ago
I'm much more comfortable speaking openly in person than online. Online I don't have control over context or the audience. I don't have direct emotional feedback nor I myself can use emotion to properly convey my idea to someone. This puts me in position of extreme vulnerability, since my message can be distorted and put out of context. Social media are useless for any serious discussion unless you have pseudonymity (HN, reddit) or full anonymity (4chan).
- westmeal 10y ago
  But most chans are also pseudonymous. The only difference is that by default websites such as these require some sort of alias. It's very hard or even impossible to be really anonymous on a computer network.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    I would assume that by saying the chans are anonymous, the poster meant they are anonymous between users. Sure, the site administrator, your ISP, or the NSA may know it's you posting, but the other users of the site don't. And you don't have a site wide identity that follows you around. Unless you explicitly choose so.
- jslabovitz 10y ago
  I agree. I definitely stifle myself online more than I might in a small in-person group, or even a large group, for fear of negative reactions. For me, it's got nothing to do with anonymity or some possible later repercussion; rather, it's being sensitive to short-term feedback. Effectively, the bandwidth of human communications through the internet is low and error-prone, and hence stressful for me to get my thoughts across. (It doesn't help that long-form replies -- which help me explain my ideas better -- have been grossly devalued.) Sadly, it's gotten worse in the last few years -- perhaps due to Facebook, or perhaps due to societal changes that opened the door to mediums like Facebook. I seem less and less capable of growing that thick skin that people always talk about...
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    Agreed. IMO the biggest problem with online communication is that people don't realize how much ambiguity there is in language, or how easy it is to misread what people type into little boxes on web pages. Every tweet is like an underdetermined system of equations with infinitely many solutions (solution == what they really meant when they typed up the tweet, and everything else that readers project onto posters). Everyone has to choose how to interpret ambiguous statements all the time, and by nature our brains are more likely to choose interpretations that conform to our own expectations. We can create our own private echo chambers if we aren't careful, where we always interpret what people who are on "our side" say in the most charitable way possible, and we always interpret statements from opponents in terms of the biggest strawmen our brains can come up with. This is a pitfall of any sort of communication, but it seems to be a vastly greater danger with online communication. People tend to blame the lousiness of online communication on other people, and there's some truth to that, but I think it's just inherent in both the medium and human nature. In the long term I hope that digital mediums can evolve to support better communication and provide more fertile ground for more constructive discussions.
- sverige 10y ago
  The great advantage to conversations in person is that there is the ability for that conversation to be forgotten. And forgotten not only by your interlocutor(s), but also by yourself. When you put it out in public online, it might persist unaltered for years or even decades. My most upvoted comments under an old pseudonym on YouTube caused me to decide to never, ever look up old posts on Usenet.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  +1, most of the people I know haven't really thought through their political views so when it comes up in person, I very often end up saying something that would be shocking to them if I wasn't there to make the case for it (and in 99% of cases, they end up convinced or at least convinced that my position is valid). Online is an entirely different story. The barriers to communicating efficiently makes people default to pattern-matching instead of thought, which pretty quickly devolves into the lowest common denominator of conversation. As you say, places like reddit are better for this, where people have a higher tolerance for longer conversation and the interface supports longer posts. I'm part of a subreddit that's probably in my top 3 fora ever for quality of conversation ever, but it relies heavily on the fact that the norms are pretty well-internalized by everyone.
technopath 10y ago
There's a lot that I won't ever say online, even anonymously, that I would say in person to someone I trust. So for me talking to trusted people is level 4.

wybiral 10y ago

Try browsing 4chan for a bit. It's crazy to see how much conformity and mob behavior happens even in an anonymous format like that. Almost as though people exhibit adherence to a culture just to perpetuate that culture itself rather than their own identity (of which there is none).