Anonymous accounts created within the very recent past I found just from skimming the posts and comments from the past few days for, like, five minutes:
If you have time to have a look at my post and recent comments, would you say that this account creeps you out, or only the more EA-critical ones?
The alternative is not really to post these things under my real name, but not to post at all (for various reasons: don’t want the pro-EA posts to be seen as virtue signaling, don’t want to be canceled in 26 years for whatever will be cancelable then, don’t want my friends to get secondhand reputation damage)
Pro-EA posts made anonymously creep me out 98% as much; I personally would rather (most) anonymous posts not happen at all than happen anonymously. See above for my caveat to that general position.
I have a job outside EA where reputation is a concern, so as is normal for people in such industries I post mostly anonymously online, and start new accounts periodically to prevent potential information leakage. If the only way to engage with EA discussion online was under my real name I wouldn’t do so.
That’s probably on the extreme end, but I think lots of people exist somewhere on this spectrum and it would probably be bad for the movement if discussions were limited to only people willing to post under their real names, or persistent identities, as that would exacerbate problems of insularity and group think.
Another example: here’s a comment created with a new anonymous account, I think so they could use the “username” field as a subject line for their comment?
Anonymous accounts created within the very recent past I found just from skimming the posts and comments from the past few days for, like, five minutes:
BurnerAcct
OutsideView
whistleblower9
anonymousEA20
Sick_of_this
AnonymousAccount
temp_
Burner1989
AnonymousQualy
ConcernedEAs
If you have time to have a look at my post and recent comments, would you say that this account creeps you out, or only the more EA-critical ones?
The alternative is not really to post these things under my real name, but not to post at all (for various reasons: don’t want the pro-EA posts to be seen as virtue signaling, don’t want to be canceled in 26 years for whatever will be cancelable then, don’t want my friends to get secondhand reputation damage)
Pro-EA posts made anonymously creep me out 98% as much; I personally would rather (most) anonymous posts not happen at all than happen anonymously. See above for my caveat to that general position.
I have a job outside EA where reputation is a concern, so as is normal for people in such industries I post mostly anonymously online, and start new accounts periodically to prevent potential information leakage. If the only way to engage with EA discussion online was under my real name I wouldn’t do so.
That’s probably on the extreme end, but I think lots of people exist somewhere on this spectrum and it would probably be bad for the movement if discussions were limited to only people willing to post under their real names, or persistent identities, as that would exacerbate problems of insularity and group think.
Another example: here’s a comment created with a new anonymous account, I think so they could use the “username” field as a subject line for their comment?
Wow that’s really hard-defecting on forum norms