Wednesday, September 27, 2006

The masquerade



In olden times, they would have masquerade balls where you could dress up as someone else complete with a mask. The point being that once you are anonymous you would be less inhibited to do things that you would normally not do.

The internet however has brought this 'charade' to a whole new level.

You can write blogs and pretend to be someone else, more extroverted, more bold than you are in real life or be more knowledgeable, more sensitive than is fashionably allowed.

You can have profiles on Orkut with fancy names like Microchip, or Supernova Shockwave or some totally random hep name. The name could reflect your research interests, other interests or something you love

With this anonymous ID you can proceed to conquer the world or demolish it as you like.

And your real persona hangs behind in the shadows - quite unassuming and unaware.

Anonymity is a great thing. Wearing a mask even greater. At this point the more pragmatic would say that all people in life wear a mask but that would be too much philosophy for a day.

Then there are the commentators who leave anon comments. Funny thing is that most of the times (99.9%) they have nice things to say. If only I knew who they where I would thank them properly. But it’s alright. I suppose.

So if you are new to blogging or the internet,

Put on a virtual mask and join in the modern masquerade ball!

(Picture obtained from here)

5 comments:

kray said...

fun thing abt blogging is u can be perfectly honest with ur name and still there's be tons of ppl who wud'nt know u :D sometimes..

Anonymous said...

Funny thing is that most of the times (99.9%) they have nice things to say.

Hah, it won't make sense to take the pains of writing something nasty when you don't even know who you're writing about, no? If you don't like the stuff, just move on - much easier :)

If only I knew who they were...
You like writing anonymously, someone likes reading anonymously. Fair Trade!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 2 agrees entirely with anonymous 1.

Anonymous said...

Yeah..people frame themselves to be _superman_ but blogs and profiles lets our inner most wannabeez to come out though not in real but may be digitally....I guess you love anonymity....even i do.

Anonymous said...

nice observation