Every new technology seems to raise new ethical questions. What we discover, however, is that the old answers suffice to answer the new questions. Consider the internet. For some of you the internet is as normal as the sunrise. You’ve never known a world without it. For others, like me, we remember both the beginning of the internet, and before the internet. Once we all had discussions about netiquette, wherein we tried to establish and learn the new rules. Now there are no rules.
I have, over the years, come under fire from various internet anons for rebuking internet anons for being anonymous. Combine anonymity with the poisonous racial vainglory that seems to have taken hold of the young, chestless and deformed and you get the most vile, ad hominem vitriol to ever stink up cyberspace. And soon enough comes the attempts to justify anonymity. My pointing out their cowardice is, in their minds, tantamount to my hoping their children starve. After all, if the evil left finds out who they are, they’ll lose their job. Then they point to history, to the pen names of some of our founding fathers.
Which ought not to surprise me, since these keyboard warriors are cosplaying as heroic lovers of liberty. The truth is there may well be times and seasons for anonymity. We may even be in such a time right now. Conceded and stipulated. Trouble is, the legitimacy of anonymity depends a great deal on what it is used for.
Consider Bilbo Baggins. Yes, that Bilbo Baggins. He has in his possession a ring that, among other things, makes him invisible to his enemies. His enemies include a cast of characters that, illegitimately, want him dead. While some might question his wisdom for donning the ring that makes him invisible, or, if you will, anonymous in three dimensions, no one would fault him for using it to escape. He slipped through the fingers of Smaug, Smeagol, trolls and goblins through the ring.
What Bilbo did not do, however, was put the ring on to rob banks. He didn’t slip away from the tax collector, or peep into his neighbors’ homes. He didn’t argue, that because there were times and places where using the ring was appropriate, that such was a defense of using it inappropriately.
Which is just what anon internet trolls do when they accuse and insult.
I rarely enter this fray in order to defeat these trolls. Rather my desire is to help those who read them, who are tempted to believe them, understand to whom they are listening. When you give ear to these accusations and calumnies you are listening not to Bilbo the heroic slayer of dragons, but Bilbo the pathetic bank-robbing wretch.
Anonymity is the ring that turns Smeagols into Gollums. Giving ear to them only encourages them. Don’t argue. Just ignore them, like you can neither see nor hear them. And know that they will give an account for every word to the One who knows every secret.
