The internet is for... anonymous blogging!

Last week Beth Harte posted an article about companies using false blogging personas to promote their products online. It's underhanded, it's dishonest and the response when a fake blogger is outed is never good - as the likes of Walmart have learned to their cost.

But a couple of the commentors on Beth's article took the theory one step further by calling for the end of anonymity on the internet. And no matter how I look at it, I can't make this a good thing.

Where would we be without Belle de Jour? Girl with a one-track mind? Waiter Rant? Barmaid Blogger? Each one built a huge and loyal following built while their "real" names were still unknown, built on the basis of the open and often graphically honest writing that gave us an insight into a world we didn't know about before. There's a delicious voyeurism in being given complete access to someone else's thoughts and experiences, and I'm not sure that any of them would have been able to do that if they hadn't had the protection of their anonymity to hide behind.

Sure, most of the early-days anonymous bloggers have been outed now. For some of them it was a shitty experience (I could cite Girl with a one track mind again here.) But how different would things have been if they'd started off under their own names? Wouldn't their experiences have been different, the stories they told altered by the fact that we could spot them in the street, their ability to be honest tarnished, to whatever extent, by the fact that their family/friends/colleagues would be watching and judging? Come to that, how can a call girl possibly turn tricks when her john knows that he's going to be blogged about that night? (Although I realise that might appeal to some.)

Anonymity gives you the chance to write without constraint and to write from the heart. It gives people who feel constrained by their own lives the opportunity to be completely honest about their experiences and their beliefs - and to do so without being haunted by it for the next fifteen years. As Beth says, the internet is a small and permanent place! When I look at my own "long tail" I'm horrified by the things that my teenage self posted cheerfully on the 'net, old Geocities sites and forum postings that make me want to swallow my tongue with shame. Would I want a future employer looking at the picture of me standing on a table at the Turf in Oxford wearing a long black coat and a red clown nose and waving a Bacardi breezer in either hand? No. But do I want to be able to share my life and my opinions with you here today? Yes, I do.

And yes, you only have my word that I'm a real person and not a secret corporate blogger with a Hidden Agenda. (Eat Kitkats. They make you a better person.) But if you enjoy reading what a nameless blogger has to say then why would you want to take away their anonymity and risk losing the very thing that appealed to you in the first place?

I think it would be a shame to lose anonymity if anonymity can grant freedom. And if it means that I have to treat my favourite blogs with the same pinch of salt that I use to read the tabloid papers, is that really such a bad thing?