The Dignified Circus Freak
There is an implication that anonymous people are bad. I think you'll probably agree that it can be summed up in the following statement:
"If you are anonymous, it means you have something to hide."
I do wish this was not true, as though it is not infrequent that anonymous people are hiding something, this is essentially the equivalent of taking any discriminatory statement and using it as fact.
Many jocks are not, in fact, unintelligent, just as many anonymous people have nothing to hide.
Case in point: the mad quoter.
The mad quoter is probably the most innocent serial anonymous commenter there is (in this case I'm referring to the original mad quoter, Andrew, and not the knock-offs). The mad quoter posts only on Tim's blog, quoting various people, giving us little gems of wisdom.
The x-factor in the equation is exemplified here: what are his purposes for being anonymous?
There are a few common reasons.
First, it is enjoyable to know that you're confusing others. The mad quoter, to use our example, had the comfort of knowing he was a mysterious figure whose identity it would have been almost impossible to find out. Even the Vanquisher had no idea who he was.
Second, a particularly nasty comment is rarely accompanied by a name, for the obvious reason of not wanting people to know who said it.
The Vanquisher (and the commenters that try to imitate him by taking guesses) do not distinguish between these two reasons.
In fact, the majority of commenters that the Vanquisher decide to reveal the identity of are completely innocent, and merely comment anonymously for the sake of comment anonymously. The blog with the most anonymous commenters is probably his. By revealing anonymous people, the Vanquisher is pandering to the masses. He is not a hero. He is a circus freak, albeit a dignified one.
He was useless from the beginning, when he decided to reveal that "Rob Rhet" was an anagram of "brother". Not only was it obvious, but it was pointless. Rob Rhet was a trivial commenter, and if someone wanted to get rid of him, they only needed to ignore him. By paying him attention, we created an entire series of anagrams. If the Vanquisher really wanted to find out why there are so many anonymous commenters, he needs only to look in his mirror.
The Vanquisher does reveal the identity of anonymous commenters, but there has been no shortage of them, either vicious or otherwise.
He creates them. People love to see if he can guess their identity.
I was wrong.
The Vanquisher is brilliant and talented, to be sure.
But he is completely unnecessary.
"If you are anonymous, it means you have something to hide."
I do wish this was not true, as though it is not infrequent that anonymous people are hiding something, this is essentially the equivalent of taking any discriminatory statement and using it as fact.
Many jocks are not, in fact, unintelligent, just as many anonymous people have nothing to hide.
Case in point: the mad quoter.
The mad quoter is probably the most innocent serial anonymous commenter there is (in this case I'm referring to the original mad quoter, Andrew, and not the knock-offs). The mad quoter posts only on Tim's blog, quoting various people, giving us little gems of wisdom.
The x-factor in the equation is exemplified here: what are his purposes for being anonymous?
There are a few common reasons.
First, it is enjoyable to know that you're confusing others. The mad quoter, to use our example, had the comfort of knowing he was a mysterious figure whose identity it would have been almost impossible to find out. Even the Vanquisher had no idea who he was.
Second, a particularly nasty comment is rarely accompanied by a name, for the obvious reason of not wanting people to know who said it.
The Vanquisher (and the commenters that try to imitate him by taking guesses) do not distinguish between these two reasons.
In fact, the majority of commenters that the Vanquisher decide to reveal the identity of are completely innocent, and merely comment anonymously for the sake of comment anonymously. The blog with the most anonymous commenters is probably his. By revealing anonymous people, the Vanquisher is pandering to the masses. He is not a hero. He is a circus freak, albeit a dignified one.
He was useless from the beginning, when he decided to reveal that "Rob Rhet" was an anagram of "brother". Not only was it obvious, but it was pointless. Rob Rhet was a trivial commenter, and if someone wanted to get rid of him, they only needed to ignore him. By paying him attention, we created an entire series of anagrams. If the Vanquisher really wanted to find out why there are so many anonymous commenters, he needs only to look in his mirror.
The Vanquisher does reveal the identity of anonymous commenters, but there has been no shortage of them, either vicious or otherwise.
He creates them. People love to see if he can guess their identity.
I was wrong.
The Vanquisher is brilliant and talented, to be sure.
But he is completely unnecessary.
posted by Sam Austin at 7:43 PM
1 Comments:
Actually, the reason I came up with the mad quoter think is because I wanted to comment a quote on Tim's blog, but Tim had already yelled at me for commenting several times on the same post so I posted under a new ID so he wouldn't know it was me. Same with the whole "Rob Rhet" thing.
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