Anonymity in public space presents a multiplicity of problems for anthropological and ethnographic work. Individuals become impossible to differentiate, rather they exist as a single, anonymous
multiplicity of individuals. The Fox News bulletin and the subsequent response by "Anonymous" on youtube.com illustrate this empowerment through anonymity. These users participate in a completely open internet discussion board with similar lack of identifiability called 4chan.com. As shown by this news bulletin, they exhibit the vulgarity, intolerance and aggression that is a trademark of anonymous interaction. Furthermore, Fox addresses them as a singular collection of individuals, however, the process of deindividuation, as evidenced by “Anonymous’” video response, attests to a collectivization of these individuals under one identity. Whereas Fox News treats 4chan.org users on an individual basis, citing specific unnamed sources in their interviews, the users themselves view themselves as a embodying a single individual whose characteristics include an amalgamation or each separate “Anonymous” user’s actions.

Two months after I began my research on internet anonymity and JHU Confessions, I could not have articulated the philosophy behind this space any better than this post in response to a thread I started titled "Is JHU Really Like This?". Obviously, the allure of JHU Confessions is the chance to express feelings in a purely anonymous way. With this in mind, users are free to breach any topic they would like regardless of the repercussions.
 
In order to post frequently or receive private messages, users must provide a Johns Hopkins University email address to register for the message board after using 3 complimentary unregistered posts. Because these members are assumed to all attend Johns Hopkins University, the discussion is more pointed and personalized towards the users. The implications of this on the realm of
topics covered on JHUC are tremendous. Anonymous is a person with no shame, no identifiable past and no distinguishing characteristics. CollegeACB addresses this by requiring posters to register after three posts, but even so it is impossible to assume that every post
traces back to an "@jhu.edu" email address.

Gossip is a significant part of JHUC. Greek organizations and freshman serve as particularly frequented topics, but threads directed at a single, named individual are commonplace. Users, while anonymous, can name individual students and student groups for discussion and harassment by the larger group. Within the private school community, where access is theoretically exclusive and limited to students, individuals can attain a certain level of fame within the public space of JHUC.

However, the dialogue is by no means limited to name-dropping. While posters regularly attack the same few Greek, athletic and club organizations, posts about actual people are sparser than one might expect in such an anarchic environment. However, posts are most frequently categorized as appeals for advice. Loneliness, helplessness and dissatisfaction in Hopkins academic and social life are prevalent in many posts. Missed connections and stories fit alongside rants on politics, ethics, and religion. Many posts could be loosely labeled as advice seeking, asking for thoughts, opinions, advice or guidance on personal issues relating to their lives or campus life in general. I even experimented with using JHUC as a place to seek advice, asking the community which of two classes I should enroll in during the spring semester.

Sexuality, usually exhibited in overtly vulgar or desperate terminology, is also a popular topic.
Obviously this environment is extremely caustic, to the point where most serious discussion is replaced by threats, personal assaults, snark and spam. But there are diamonds in the rough. The same anonymity that allows participants to verbally assault each other allows them to post extremely personal and revealing content. The post-secret thread received thousands of posts and is a striking example of how both sides of anonymity can exist simultaneously within JHUC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This showed me just how hostile of a space JHUC could potentially be. Obviously, it did not lend itself easily to intrusion. However, the more I thought critically about the notion of entering this space, the stranger it seemed to me. First off, I am a student at Johns Hopkins University. The notion that I could not access information on my own message board seemed odd. Furthermore, is it even possible for these users to bar my entry to JHUC? The space is open, accessible and filled with interest in the immediate sociality of campus life. Rather, I felt as though by breaching the anonymity of the site within my original post, I had violated a social norm of the website. While it may have increased the credibility of my post, it also drew a line between the responders and myself. This was part of my original goal, almost to maintain a didactic presence on my thread. However, it obviously lent itself to parody that undermined my logic in naming myself and the success of my interview as a whole.

I decided to change up my strategy for my next JHUC post interview, this time using the anonymity to my advantage. As cited above, in "Is JHU really like this?" I assumed the role of a prospective student inspecting JHUC as per the advice of a peer currently at Hopkins. I figured this was a good avenue because it claimed naïveté rather than knowledge, allowing the posters to lead the discussion whereas in my early attempt I clearly dictated the progress of the discussion. I was simultaneously studying anonymity, and using it to assume an identity different from myself, thus animating the way that users of JHUC can assume identities on site largely separate from their real-world selves. In fact, the thread produced two of the best responses I recieved to my interview attempts.

The responses to this post depicted an intricate view of JHUC. Regardless of my initial difficulties in attempting to have these users engage in forms of reflexive study, JHUC is a surprisingly self-aware space. It is self-aware in that users are cognizant of JHUC as a force in real-world sociality and because they were able to recognize the ability for the two worlds to bleed through to one another.

 

 

Although this poster on "Is JHU really like this?" disagrees, virtual worlds often bleed into reality in unforseen ways. In his ethnographic work on Second Life, a massive multiplayer online computer game, Tom Boellstorff addresses the same notion that virtuality and reality are not two mutually exclusive realms of social interaction. This was evidenced in the post above, as in my real-world discussions with friends and peers about the impact and perception of JHUC. However, reconciling these two separate and distinct roles of JHUC and how they are relevant to real-world and online sociality required a deep look into how the JHUC posters viewed the role that their posting had on real-world events.

Relevance on JHU was expressed through accumulation of social commodities. The commoditization of social interactions has become especially prevalent with the rise of forms of internet sociality. Facebook is a commonly cited example, as it counts the number of “friends,” “likes,” “events,” “groups,” and “notifications” you have. JHUC operates on a similar platform, however, its only form of commoditized interactions are votes and replies. A vote enables you to save the page on a user’s “saved” screen. Every time this button is clicked the site will tally the vote and display how many votes each main thread contains within it. Replies are the more relevant of the two commodities that are doled out to express the relevance of a thread. Aside from facilitating the discussion of a thread topic, replies are counted and displayed in the JHUC home menu underneath the thread’s title. Most importantly, a thread is placed at the front of the list immediately after it is replied upon, so the thread becomes more likely to be looked at and replied upon again.

When I was conducting my ethnography, I was constantly worrying about the replies that I got because I knew that only a steady stream of replies would put my discussion to the forefront long enough for the conversation to really take hold and grant me useful ideas. But this issue is relevant with all posts: those that receive the most attention will continue to do such as long as the conversation continues to appeal to those on the site. Participation is paramount not only because it allows users to engage in conversations, but also because it shows which conversations are the most recent and popular at any given time. Posting then drives not only what is talked about, but also the order in which posts are presented, which in turn determines which posts are most likely to appear and be viewed first.

The user responsible for the last post, under a thread labeled “Who are you people?” addressed an issue central to my ethnographic research, yet completely unknowable in any sort of objective or quantitative fashion.

Who are the users that create the content for this site? The lack of identifiability associated with JHUC makes this question impossible to know, however, actual identity in this case is not nearly as important as perceived identity in this instance. My work was not so much concerned with who was actually posting on these threads, but who was thought to be posting on them and what was thought about them. This dictates not only the tone of social interactions online, but they resonate in the way that JHUC fiction metamorphosizes into real-world fact. By that, I mean that the way named, real-world participants in JHU sociality view the posters of JHUC dictates the way that they engage this community either through speaking about it, or, in extreme cases, altering their actions because of it. In that definition alone, JHUC bridges the gap from virtual to real as my analysis implies that students judge the statements made on JHUC message boards in accordance with their perceived notion of JHUC’s collective character.

As this user implies, through evocation of stereotypes commonly used in JHUC and the larger Hopkins social community as well as idioms more exclusive to the structure and dialogue present on JHUC, the person is unknowable. However, the statement “I’m you.” Is of significant importance. It implies that JHUC is not only comprised of posters and creators of content, but its consumers. Commonly, a real-world discussion or JHUC post will begin with the qualification “I don’t usually post on JHUC, but…”, “The people who spend all of their time on JHUC creep me out, but…”, or even “I never read JHUC, but…”. An odd double-standard seems to exist, especially among named individuals in the real world, that creating content for JHUC is the only true form of participation on the site, and to consume these posts is ethically, morally, intellectually or socially better than to produce. This reflects a definite stigma attached to participation on the website as most individuals see it.

However, the notion of a communal social space includes within it the idea that consumption is a form of participation. By reading the site, users are tacitly participating in the dialogue of JHUC. While their interaction with the content remains unquantifiable unless they decide to post or vote, there remains the possibility that a user who reads a post will reference it in the real world and propagate the topic that way. Consumers play the most important role in the real-world perception of the website community as well.