More from the author of this talk topic:

I recently got a bit burned in my attempts to poll sifters about their attitudes concerning this site for use in a paper I am writing. At the start, I could not decide on the most ethical and impartial way to go about my polling here and, having guessed wrong, I was again uncertain whether or how to continue. Kind words from Dag and Burdturgler have encouraged me to ask the last two of five planned poll topics using my “real” account (this one).

Please ignore this topic if polling bugs you. I have noticed that people generally enjoy using SiftTalk to share their thoughts on various aspects of the Sift community and I continue to hope that you all will enjoy reading and writing here in that same spirit, even though I have created the topic with an outside agenda. I assure you, this has nothing whatsoever to do with marketing, it’s just my dopey homework. The questions I’ve been asking basically reflect the thoughts I already have concerning this site and it is interesting for me to see community members address these directly.

Answering my own question: 
Interestingly, though, this account is basically just as anonymous as the other one was. There is very little to connect the person I am at work, at home, at school, running for office (which I’m not) or anywhere else with the things I post and say here. I have only ever been a minor character here in the community, so I don’t suppose people here actually “know” me. Regardless of that, I do tend to take comments thrown “my” way a bit personally and I generally try to be cool to others by being helpful and positive, even though I can sometimes also be sarcastic and wrong. In other words, my personality here is pretty much like my personality in real life. However, being anonymous means that I might occasionally admit to things (either tacitly or literally, through votes or comments) that I would not otherwise do somewhere like LinkedIn or even FaceBook. I suppose a motivated investigator could pull it all together though.

smoke some of this.

I am familiar with that cartoon. It's starting point, is the suposition of normal people.
For VS this suposition does not hold true.

It really depends on which website you're talking about. I'm fairly trusting of siftopia, which means I'm very relaxed and break the anonymity pretty explicitly (full name on my profile an such). In a way, I know that no one from here will ever come to haunt me outside videosift - maybe except a certain someone from poole - and thus I can be pretty open with what I think and feel.

In a way then the pseudo-anonymity adds a layer of protection from the dangerous world out there and the crazies in it.


As Thylan notes, I don't think that the cartoon is the norm here, but there are certainly users it applies to, such as all the trolls. No one would be a troll if dag tracked them down and called their parents every time. (Yay, way to quote precedent).

>> ^Thylan:
I am familiar with that cartoon. It's starting point, is the suposition of normal people.
For VS this suposition does not hold true.


I agree, BTW. I just thought it was a funny cartoon.

My online persona is, by and large, my real-world persona, or at least the one I use when I am with casual acquaintances or close friends. I have never felt a need to play up to some image or conform to some ideology. If other people happen to share my view, so be it. If I say something outside the bounds of the ideology people have pegged me with, so be it.

I don't have to lie to you people. I feel comfortable around you all. Enough to where I can share a good majority of my actual personality.

If I want to be a severe dickhead though, I tend to frolic in the meadows of youtube. There are so many trolls there that it doesn't even matter.

I behave the same online as I do in the real world, although I am a little more assertive when roaming the vast expanses of the Internet. But that cartoon doesn't apply to me well. Either its my general goodwill towards humanity or my paranoia that dag is tracking me.

I do wish to preserve my anonymity, so I don't leave any personal information out, but if you comb through my comments you'll learn some things about me. Now if you figure out what "Fjnbk" means...

irl, i'm actually 300 lb female liberal feminist

I wouldn't say that there is a divide for me, either. A quick google search on my handle easily finds my real name, pictures of me, recipes I've written, videos I've sifted, photos I've taken, etc etc. What's more, my DJ name in real life is Sunkid, so I'm known publicly by that name as well.

I consider my djsunkid persona and my real life persona to be largely contiguous.

anonymity doesn't change who you are, it reveals it.

^wrong again.

Indeed, as MINK says, anonymity doesn't really reveal who you are... Who ARE you anyway? Are you the person who people know in 'real life', are you the one who is known by your work/classmates, or the one known by your family? Or the one know only to your lover?

The difference with what I say online in places like this is that I will say things about my life I wouldn't necessarily say to all people I interact with in public as it'd be a little bit too much info... but online you can do so as it doesn't affect idle chit chat and personal meetings.

Having said that, online I'm not anonymous at all, in that I use the same handle EVERYWHERE... the spoco2 you'll find pretty much dang near anywhere online will be me. Plus I have posted to files hosted on my own server, which without much snooping around will show more about me... So I try not to be a prick from that point of view as I know that it's a known name. Also, there are people in real life who always call me Spoco, so they'd probably be able to read an awful lot of ramblings by me based on that too.

So, in the world of anonymity I don't go for full, and so I guess that might influence what I say?

I think the main thing with the anonymity really works the other way for me. I can give some fairly terse responses to comments on the sift because ALL I know about most people are their comments, so you have this narrow view of someone and don't know all that other information that helps shape the place they make their comments from. As such you attack the comments more directly I think, and with less regard to perhaps offending some other thing about the person who said them, because you don't know anything else.

If that makes sense?