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tl;dr: You will probably act differently when not hidden behind the veil of (optional/partial) anonymity. > Face it, authenticity goes way down when people kno
by getsat 16y ago
tl;dr: You will probably act differently when not hidden behind the veil of (optional/partial) anonymity.
> Face it, authenticity goes way down when people know their 700 friends, grandma, and 5 ex-girlfriends are tuning in each time they post something on the web.
This should probably refer to your "extended social circle" as you can't actually have 700 friends. See: Dunbar's Number
- feral 16y agoThat is not the point of the article. The author specifically writes: "The nature of commenting on the web needs to feel organic and fluid, just like it does in real life. And even anonymous if necessary, though that’s not at the core of my argument." The point of the article is that people present different images of themselves to different friends. Binding all a person's online discourse to a single identity forces them to go for the 'lowest common denominator' image. Regarding your Dunbar's number remark: The author probably meant 'friends' in the sense of facebook friends, which really includes 'acquaintances'. Besides which, its not a physical rule that you can't have 700 friends. Dunbar's number, as applied to humans, is a fairly crude heuristic extrapolation; its not a hard limit to friendship capacity.
- oniTony 16y agoSure, it's all gradients, but at 700 "friends" we are getting into an average of "half a day per friend-year" territory. Those don't sound as meaningful relationships to me.