With the advent of computers and subsequently the Internet, our lives between the virtual world and the real world have blurred.
The anonymity of the internet can lead people to create entirely new selves. This new identity you give yourself online can be someone totally unlike who you are in real life. For example, the website 4chan allows an internet user to post text and images annonymously on a forum board. Due to the percieved safety that one gets from a veil of annoymomity, various rude and offensive comments and images are frequently posted online, to the disgust (and sometimes humor) of others.
The infamous Goatse (WARNING: This link contains graphic descriptions, but is safe for work. The Goatse photo itself is extremely adult, disgusting and shocking. You should be at least an age of 21 if you want to view the photo. This blog will not link to any adult websites. FIND THE PICTURE AT YOUR OWN RISK!) is an extremely good example, whereby people would post links on forums that would lead to a ‘helpful’ website, but was linked to the Goatse website instead.
MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) like World of Warcraft and EVE Online allow users to create an online avatar to interact with other users in a richly detailed virtual world. The vast majority of these games either feature a fantasy or science-fiction themed world. Thus users create new identities of themselves, playing out scenarios and adventures pertaining to that world. Users of these MMORPGs lead parallel lives, one in real life, and one (or more) created personality online.
Users in these MMORPGs think that they are anonymous, and therefore unaccountable for their actions online have led to many instances of what can count for verbal harassment and assault in real life. In internet slang, this is called “trolling”. These problems have plagued World of Warcraft so much that on 9th July 2010, an official representative of their online web service Battle.net unveiled plans to release users’ real names on the forums instead.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Users of World of Warcraft went into an uproar, and even posted the real names and phone numbers of Blizzard (which is World of Warcraft’s developers) employees and their friends and families. This eventually led to Blizzard withdrawing its decision of posting the real name of users in their forums.
So you see, the users of World of Warcraft, angry about the privacies of their online personas, went up in arms and ensured that privacy was restored.
What does this say about online communities? They are afraid that the mixing of the real and online personas may be detrimental to one another. For example, a banker might not want his company to know that he plays an MMORPG, as it might be seen as unprofessional. On the other hand, a celebrity might enjoy his online persona being relatively ‘unknown’, and if his real life identity is connected to his online identity, his online identity may get harassed.
What about you, dear reader? Is your internet identity one that you would prefer to keep a secret, or do you not mind mixing the real world and the virtual world?