* Posting Ethics: Pseudonauts Ought Not.

Anonymity is the Spiritual Foundation" of Every Twelve-Step Program.




Alcoholics Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous
Overeaters Anonymous
Smokers Anonymous
Sexaholics Anonymous


Posters Pseudonymous is an unacknowledged movement ( as opposed to a "program") which is proliferating on blogs around the world.

It certainly does not claim to have a "spiritual foundation".

Posters add comments to blogs or news articles without being required to give their actual name, often adopting several pseudonyms rather than keeping a consistent persona under a single moniker. In many cases it is one step-up from a graffiti wall.

About two years ago, I engaged in this pseudonymity as a poster on the Yale Daily News and thought nothing of it until the beginning of the current school year at Yale.

At that time, a controvery broke out about the Yale Press's decision to censor cartoons of Muhammed in a book it published on the controversy of those very same iconclastic cartoons of Muhammed.

Those cartoons, previously published in the Danish press, had resulted in worldwide protests by Muslims and several violent deaths, some of them murders and assassinations.

At that time, I saw an ugliness and hate speech in many of the Yale Daily News anonymous posters which I considered dangerous and cowardly (if not downright unethical) and I decided that I did NOT want to be a part of that dynamic.

Since the only thing I can really chnge is myself, I did.

If I had anything to say in the future I would say it with my actual legal name (Paul Keane) and my blog title, The Anti-Yale.

I have been posting under my name and The Anti-Yale ever since.

Does this make me better than the pseudonauts?

No.

But it does make me stop hiding behind a facade, from being pseudo-naughty, if you will-----and in the case of some of the Danish-cartoon-controversy posters, pseudo-evil.

It makes me OWN my own words and thoughts, navigate openly in the waters of my own ideas with my penants flying proudly, not flee from them behind a digital camouflage, skulking the waters in fear and deception.