Everyone Wants to be Batman

Last week, I made a post on Twitter that started to go viral. The post I made stated,

"Controversial opinion: What honest person doesn't use their name for their handle on Twitter?"

I was flooded with posts shortly after making my Tweet. Most of the comments disagreed with my insinuation, but also most were not toxic at least, so that is something to be thankful for. The Tweet ended up having over 3 million impressions (views), over 37,000 engagements (interactions), and ended up netting me over 215,000 profile views.

There were many reasons given for people remaining anonymous. I will try and give a fair view of each of the reasons given that were fairly popular.

For privacy:

To me, this is begging the question. Why do you need privacy to talk to people? In some sense, this leads into the rest of the reasons and is really the driving force behind all these other reasons.

Now, further, I will separate these reasons into three different categories. The privacy issue exemplifies all these reasons IMO.

1) From Fear:

I would say the dominant reason given for having an anonymous account is due to fear of some sort of repercussions from others if they used their real name. Here are those reasons:

Me and my family's safety:

What are you posting on Twitter that you think someone is going to come after you or your family? Do you think you are going to have to say, "I will find you," on the telephone or something?

Harassment:

Again, what are you saying online that you think you are going to get harassed in real life based on what you say online?

Don't want to get doxxed:

If you are worried about offending people who you speak with online, then perhaps you should try and be kind rather than feeling like you can say anything to anyone without any repercussions. In short, this is an excuse to be rude.

I don't want to have stalkers:

The nature of a stocker is that they stalk, meaning, they look up all they can find on you. I find this doesn't really work as many people said in the thread that if a person really wanted to find out who you were they could find you.

Cancel culture:

In the same vein as much of the others, meaning, you would be saying something that goes against the norm. Not necessarily a bad thing to go against the norm (heck I did in the post that this article is about), but it really depends on what the opinion is.

2) Selfish reasons:

These are the reasons I find to be somewhat nonsensical and border on absurdity in how selfish these reasons are. Here are those reasons:

My Handle is cool:

One of the worst reasons not to use your real name. People have said, "Maybe people don't like their name?" but this is no different than identifying as something you are not, like trans people.

I want to fluff post:

People didn't use the word "fluff" they used another cuss word. This strikes me as incredibly selfish. You don't want to use your name so you can make stupid posts? Talk about not caring about the quality of what you are doing!

I want to be dishonest:

If it wasn't bad enough that people wanted to be anon because their handle is cool or they want to fluff post this is a reason that tops everything in terms of how bad of a reason this is for remaining anonymous. You want to be anonymous so you can lie to people. That is literally what this means. Have some decency!

Fan account:

All things considered, this was one of the better reasons I have seen given for having an anonymous account and it was mentioned only a few times. And this doesn't really mean people don't know your real name. It just means your account is associated with being a fan of someone/something. I would NOT consider a healthy fan account to automatically mean a stalker, just so we are clear.

3) Prideful reasons:

These are the reasons people gave that I find most prideful. I don't really consider these reasons being "good" or "bad" here, just that the reasons given for these tend to be more about the public being undeserving of knowing their name. Here are those reasons:

Don't want my employer to see what I post:

If you have a high-profile job and don't want to get fired for the opinions you post on Twitter I have two questions for you with this: 1) Why do you feel the need to be someone else online then you are in real life? And 2) Why do you need to voice your opinions as an anonymous account rather than not need to voice every opinion you have to the public square?

I don't want people to associate my posts with my own private business:

Fair enough. While it is possible this can have a motive of greed to it, it's not obvious that this is automatic. So I don't really have much to say about this one.

Anonymous accounts give us more freedom:

While this might be true on the face of it, it certainly isn't true if we account for responsibility. If we want to just be free without responsibility then we are going to have a whole lot more problems to deal with.

People are more honest with anon accounts:

This strikes me as a very weird response to me. You are lying about who you are in order to tell the truth? People brought up all sorts of things related to this.. pen names, federalists using the pseudonym Publius, etc. If there is just cause for it, then this can indeed be viable. I will talk about this more at the end.

I'm LGBTQ+: Frankly, no one cares if you are gay, queer, or even transgender - at least where I live. Jobs today protect people who are LGBTQ+ most of the time. There are even laws about not harassing people who are LGBTQ+. If you are LGBTQ+ and you are anonymous, but post about those topics online, then it really depends on if you get people hating your anonymous account. If they don't harass your anonymous account because you are LGBTQ+ then they are not going to really care if you have your name associated with it. Now, I could be wrong, but I don't see people threatening LGBTQ+ people online. And before anyone says I am being unfair to LGBTQ+ people, I have had gay friends over the years.

Finally, there are four more reasons that I think are legitimate (one with a stipulation).

You are a minor: Yes, this reason was given and I think it is one of the best ones. I see no downside to this.

You are not in a free country: This reason is just as good as being a minor.

You have been victimized in the past: Just as legitimate as the previous two.

You are a woman: If you are a single woman, then go ahead and be anonymous. But if you are married to a man, then you can bring your complaints to him. He is supposed to protect you.

I also want to point out two posts that were made by two people that I think are pretty on point. The first post was this:

"Those for whom there are no exact terran renderings."

And they continue...

"Also, Batman."

Now, the mention of "batman" is very notable. Everyone wants to act like they are doing a greater service by remaining anonymous to "fight the power" or some such. But very few people would actually need to hide their identity to do this. In short, most people wouldn't need to remain anonymous, but since there are no rules against it, that is what people do.

The second post is this:

"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide... comrade."

Pretty much my thinking as well. It does seem that many people have a victim complex and think people are always out to get them. This kind of paranoia is somewhat ironic given I am the person making the post about using your real name as someone who has a form of schizophrenia so you would think it would be me being paranoid. But I have worked though my issues of paranoia to the point that I do not fear using my real name for my Twitter account.

Finally, just to be fair to the other side, here is a quote someone shared with me by Edward Snowden about internet privacy (provided without comment):

"Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say, or freedom of the press because you have nothing to write."

I don't expect anything to really change by making this article and probably only a tiny fraction of people who are involved in the thread will read this, but I more or less am just writing this to tell you all where my head is at.

Thanks for reading!

God bless you! Until next time!