Event Horizon versus Anonymity

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In the movie Event Horizon, an engineer has made an "FTL" drive which creates a gateway to Hell rather than to anywhere useful or desirable and most of the movie is spent upon the crew of a rescue team being picked off individually by demons. Although that is a fictional scenario, it sometimes seems to me that anonymity online sometimes encourages people to act like a public address system from Hell. I'm not being completely serious here and I don't consider anyone actually possessed or whatever, but it certainly seems to me that when people think that nothing they say or do will cause them any trouble that they act according to their true nature individually, and sometimes that might as well sound like the false accuser himself. Not that every person responds the same to anonymity, but that it seems to bring out the very worst in some people sometimes.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

I suppose I should say this uses language some may find offensive

I think people tend to be more bold online then they would be if they were addressing a room of people. Facebook is not anonymous and I often see some of the same tactlessness there.

Me I am pretty anonymous in all settings, and I am here very much as anywhere - a step less loose than with the Inner Circle is all.

But I think, while you may not be all wrong, you are not wholly correct. While not being under authority is a factor - people are more careful when repercussions are probable - I have seen similar behavior from people whose identies were known. For example, some of my schoolmates years back, or the guy at UCLA, even a student or two who knew I could not or would not penalize them.

Whether doing good things or bad, everybody online usually/typically practices some degree of anonymity for the sake of personal comfort, safety and/or security ... and then our personal characters are revealed by the things we actually do here. However, yes ...

"Criminals typically try to keep themselves anonymous either to conceal the fact that a crime has been committed, or to avoid capture."
http://www.wrongplanet.net/forums-posti ... 77627.html

I've seen that in Facebook too, but there tends to be a consequence, normally, of them losing facebook-friends en masse along with the possibility of it negatively affecting relationships that one has developed in person. Some people certainly don't care about how others think of them and that might be part of the reason for people using real profiles of themselves to harass and otherwise behave like brats, but intuitively I think anonymity would be more likely to encourage the continuance of such behavior even for such people as would not mind to attach their own names to such reprehensibleness. I could certainly be wrong. When debating on facebook it usually occurred that a few people would abandon any semblance to rationality and just go straight for rabid execration, especially when those enraged consider their opposition to be heretical.

I do think people can be more reprehensible when anonymous. On the Facebook subject, I remember a couple years back when many of my high school friends were friending this person that no one remembered. One would logically question, why one would confirm this person, but whatever. This person (who was anonymous with their fake name) just watched profiles and eventually became a horribly harassing troll. That's a whole new league of loserdom- to have that time & desire. They got away with it though because no one knew who they were. I am sure they made a new profile and preyed on other high schools.

With that said, during the last presidential election, I was pretty shocked at some of the words exchanged between friends and family. Overall, Facebook is a good place to view passive aggressive behavior.

In general answer to your question, no people generally don't act differently. If they are asses they will be assine if they are nice they will generally play nice.
I don't behave differently.

Define true nature