I’m only marginally anonymous, partly because I’m a little lazy, and partly because I don’t see much reason for it. As someone who has been involved with the various levels of what passes for civilized discourse on the Internet and other electronic media for a little shy of two decades, I think it’s a little overrated.
First: being truly anonymous is hard. The first way to find out who I am is to do about 30 seconds of digging into who owns the meathookreality domain. This is something that I could theoretically hide, either by lying to the registrar (which is becoming against policies or illegal) or by using some remote identity for that purpose. But that would only make it tougher, not impossible. This is a side-effect of my insistence of running my own services. If I were to use one of the services that provide the hosting and blogging, I would be as anonymous as they are willing to make me. In this case, I would be giving up trust and adding even more uncertainty to the question of “Does anyone out there know who I am?”
Second: knowing the first, that assured anonymity is nearly impossible, does anyone really want to get into the habit of making the assumption? Does it afford any security, or merely a perception of security that can be dangerous? Knowing that I am merely pseudononymous , the onus is on me to hold myself to a civil standard. This differs from those who feel that their anonymity allows them to somehow be “more creative” or “more true.” I would prefer to hold myself to the standard of someone who does not slander professors or make personal fun of gunners then to give up that responsibility.
So, while it may take a few moments to find out who I am, where I am, and who my professors are, ya’ll are welcome to. This binds me to saying nothing that’s likely to cause problems.