You know, I understand the value of anonymity. It has created opportunities for many of the world’s most controversial perspectives to be heard in the face of abusive regimes and catatonic populations. One of my favorite social media accounts (AllCapsBro on Twitter) is anonymous, Banksy has utilized it to spread an artistic message of anti-conformity across the 21st century, Internet warriors for decades have utilized anonymity or pseudo-anonymity to push causes forward - I get it: sometimes it’s valuable to hide behind a mask.
However, when those entities begin to be corrupted by an agenda that is linked to money, they sacrifice the mantle. Posturing for profit or attention is despicable and worse when anonymity is used to do it. At least with Hollywood or political celebrities, we know who they are and can observe their track record. When it’s a one or more keyboard jockeys slamming out content that flies in the face of reason without disclosing their underlying profit-motive intention and relationships with corporate overlords: we have a problem.
This kind of scum produces an information disservice to the public and the audience that follows them. They can seemingly walk a line between establishment money and underdog status. We know better though, an authoritarian is an authoritarian is an authoritarian…no matter how they dress. They will say anything, do anything, look like anything while taking a paycheck or worse in a smokey back room behind a door most aren’t aware exists.
We’ve seen it time and again. Propaganda artists don’t even need to know they are in on the game while unwittingly advancing mechanisms that they may even espouse to be against. That’s the complexity of the modern social landscape. As we transition deeper into the attention economy, integrity and transparency become more valuable in regards to the quality of the message transmitted.
They may inadvertently propagate hate and violence, negligently promote illicit activities which their transparently real followers latch onto in the spirit of fun entertainment while making their behavior apparent to law enforcement, endorse skewed political agendas, or have a clearly biased relationship with particular media sources.
None of that matters though because they are “anonymous”, right?
