Although I started by reading Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community by Judith S. Donath, its date of publication made me drift towards reading and reviewing the other paper, 4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community first. The crux of discussion in both papers was identity, or the lack thereof, can do to the content of a social community. Both papers also talked about Deception and Ephemerality of content, but I would first like discuss my thoughts about identity in the virtual world.
Although having an identity (whether in the form of real credentials or pseudonyms) plays a role in content formation, the driving force behind content creation by people is different in different domains. A blogger or content writer on LinkedIn will most likely prefer having his/her credentials against the publications since the motive behind posting them is to get more followers who know who they are, subsequently helping them in scoring better career opportunities. People posting pictures of family vacation or graduation ceremony on Facebook also choose to post with their real world identity so as to direct respect and awe gained by such postings to their real world persona. Whereas someone who is seeking advice on their personal problems, looking for a way to fix their broken or non functional appliances, or attempting to find someone who can help them with their code isn’t too keen to reveal their identity, or to go through the hassle of entering bona fides since they can get away with getting what they want without it.
This brings gamification into the picture, which uses elements of game playing such as point scoring to promote gratification in helping others while elevating one’s own online status. A good example of it is Stackoverflow, where users don’t necessarily have to use their real world identity, yet they have a status associated with their pseudonym that they thrive to maintain. The first paper defines this phenomenon as reputation building. After comparing the instances of choice between remaining anonymous or choosing identity in both papers, the question that I felt like discussing with someone is : “Can gamification become the middle ground between identity and anonymity by being an ulterior motive for content creation?”
Moving on, the other thing that particularly interested me was the mention of “signals” in both papers. While the first paper talks about the use of assessment and conventional signals to authenticate the identity and prevent deception, there is also the use of signals in a seemingly anonymous platform (assuming the fact that majority of people persistently avoid the adoption of identity in 4chan) for maintaining status, status being the only level of identification for them. The use of signals (a.k.a triforcing) is more of a trolling or dejecting gesture. If one was to advocate for pseudonyms, it brings another question in mind: what other signals can be developed in order to promote healthy unification among users of an online community?
Although the product of anonymity in 4chan seems to be more of a vicious nature, the question that needs to be answered is “does developing and sticking to identity prove to be a bugbear for real life introverts who find virtual world to be a better mode of communication, thereby limiting their interactions which constitute a large amount of content on the web?”
Lastly, the use of Ephemerality in 4chan seemed not only to promote active user engagement and the quest to produce posts with longer lifetimes, it also obstructed the deep rooted fear of ones digital footprints being on the web forever, which triggered the thought whether the surety of our posts being off the scene after a while help us get over the anxiety of them coming back into our face later in life. “Is this the thought behind the launch of Facebook, Snapchat and Whatapp stories, which are there for only a short while?”. Or does that fact that they are short lived make them more in-demand?