Monday, June 8, 2009

Anonymous Blogging - Ethical?

There's an interesting debate about anonymity going on right now. Two guys who disagree strenuously about politics were arguing, and the conservative unmasked the liberal who blogs under a pseudonym.

I was taught at [elite liberal-arts] College to take responsibility for my words. That writing without putting my name by it was dirty, and anonymity allows for the worst in people to lash out without consequence. Certainly on the internet it's easy for anonymity to allow the worst in people to come out.

But some are making good points about the distinction between pseudonyms and anonymous writing. You can hold a pseudonymous writer to account to a limited extent - you can form a long term opinion about a body of work, you can quote previous writings to refute current arguments. You can't put toilet paper in the tree outside their house, but that's possibly a good thing.

I don't put my full name on this blog because I'm easily stalkable. Hell, there's enough already here for you to figure out where I live, but I'm going to make you work for it. Am I ethical in trying for a little privacy? What if I used a completely fake name, like monkeydude?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What about anonymous comments?

Erin said...

I've always wanted to write a novel, and on the odd chance that it somehow reached publication, it would likely be a good idea for me to use a pseudonym because of my job and the distractions/issues it might cause, especially given different subject matters.

Interesting.