Potential Project Abstract...

This project seeks to look at how anonymity is used over the internet to create an identity and then how that separate identity allows the person behind the anonymous persona to divorce themselves from their particular society’s normative values. The idea of anonymity over the internet has generated much furor and many believe that the so-called lack of accountability granted by that anonymity will have an incredibly destructive effect on society. However, anonymity allows the user to create a persona that reflects ideas or feelings that he or she may not feel comfortable expressing whilst constrained by the social mores of his/her physical community. The different reasons behind the decision to be anonymous have even been seen to create new communities and groups over the internet; PostSecret has become a place for people to express their secrets anonymously and potentially to prevent suicide and feelings of anomie while anons seeking to change society or to mock it (vigillanteism vs. the “lulz”) seem to gravitate to Anonymous. Looking at previous studies of anonymity, collective identity, and the internet phenomena of PostSecret, 4chan, and Anonymous (to give a few examples), this project will attempt to address how anonymity is allowing people to create new identities, identities that have a social disconnect from traditional views of morality or ‘moral rectitude’, and thus allows for, perhaps, a more honest form of reflection on the self and on society. Whether this will cause creative destruction of both, or simply devolution into chaos and moral abyss, is another avenue that will be explored.