Cancel Culture is At War with Anonymity

When you start writing online, you may find yourself getting trapped by your own success. The simple math of risk vs reward means as you gain more success, you’ll become less risky and controversial.

A new brand or person will often enter the scene being hyperbolic and confrontational. With such a small following or audience, there’s little risk in offending your meager following. Of course as you gain an audience, you will find yourself becoming more measured and politically correct with your rhetoric.

I have faced this problem multiple times with more projects I’ve created online. Which is why I don’t share my name on this website. It affords me the freedom to share whatever I feel like. Even if that means offensive language, controversial topics or ideas that don’t flatter me.

The downside of that is this website has little focus or direction. Yes it is getting respectable traffic already. I tend to write about whatever I feel like which is not very friendly to advertisers. But neither are some of these topics so maybe the point is moot?

Online anonymity afforded us the ability to flesh out sides of our personality or show our true self. Now as anonymity is under attack, we find our social media image is the bondage to uphold “correct” social values.

As Jia Tolentino writes in Trick Mirror:

"Where we had once been free to be ourselves online, we were now chained to ourselves online, and this made us self-conscious."

Self-conscious leads to self-censoring. The fear of cancel culture combined with social pressure leads to us portraying our lives under an extremely curated mask. We must obscure our true nature out of very real fears of social justice mobs who may come for your very livelihood.

Writing is a great practice for self-discovery, even when done online. And by writing anonymously, you’re free to treat your blog as a digital journal of sorts.