Why People Love Their Anonymity on the Web

Here’s the headline-

Anonymous alcoholics? Study finds web trolls get a feeling of abandon similar to drunks

‘Web trolls’ – I like that. Anyway,

A new study has found that anonymity gives people the same feeling of abandon as power and alcohol intoxication.  Researchers at Northwestern University in the US found that all three states led to extreme behaviour — both good and bad. “Although these pathways appear to be unrelated on the surface, they all lead to disinhibited states through a common psychological and neurological mechanism,” said Jacob Hirsh of the university’s Kellogg School of Management. Dr Hirsh’s colleague Professor Adam Galinsky said the loss of inhibition led to “significant behavioural consequences”.

Or in other words

When people lose their inhibitions, they often behave in a manner more consistent with their true motives or character. At the same time, they also tend to be more easily influenced by their environment. “In effect, disinhibition can both reveal and shape the person, as contradictory as that may sound,” Professor Galinsky said.

Web trolls are who they really are when they hide behind anonymity. We call that hypocrisy. And naturally, it’s simply another manifestation of total depravity.

It used to be an old saw that ‘there are only hypocrites in the Church so that’s why I don’t go’ but the fact is, there are far more hypocrites cowering behind web anonymity and that doesn’t stop people from surfing the web.

Related articles

• Anonymous? Read, Cowardly (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Outing Anonymous Commenters (stirrup-queens.com)
• You Can’t Be Anonymous (dcrblogs.com)