Adam Ferrier, rubbers, anonymous comments, and a storm in a thimble

Call me paranoid - it's okay, all my friends do - but I have what I consider a healthy fear of the intertubes.

And in particular the power of the intertubes to upset your personal privacy.

First you need to understand that despite the surface gloss of anonymity, there are very few places to hide, and any that are effective hiding places will imply some kind of collateral criminality (ah yes Russia, land of the free). In the end, if someone wants to track you or your postings or your comments down, there are ways and means and tools to do it.

And if you go to the dark side regularly enough you will see all kinds of activities that make you fear for your computer, and certainly your bank account, and perhaps also your identity.

Over the years we've had a bit to do with internet security and the tendency of people not to guard their privacy or their personal lives, especially on social media sites, and seen some of the damage that can be done if things leak on to the intertubes and can never be called back.

There's always that first point of fear and a kind of astonished horror when you see the pointer moving around on your screen, and you nowhere near the computer, but the firewall's been breached and someone's rifling around your digital goods like a thief come over the back wall John Safran style in search of a pair of knickers to sniff.

The notion that putting up opinions and private insights under your own name, not expecting either professional or personal kick backs is one of those indulgences only loons in the mainstream media righteously trumpet, as they busily recycle whatever gossip and kick backs they can find about their target for the week (ethics when it comes to digging up the juice or photos from a Facebook site, to recycle in the likes of a Daily Terror type tabloid? Forget it Jake, it's Chairman Rupert's Chinatown, not to mention the gawkers of the world).

That's why this blog is anonymous, and while the opinions are designed to conform to the law of the land, they have to be taken as ideas either worth reading or not, without worrying about the person or the personality behind them. And why comments working to the same template are expected to be anonymous.

Fortunately most of the time no one bothers about searching out a name, and putting the name to an idea or a comment, perhaps because the odd bit of loonacy isn't worth the effort, and because in the end a combination of regulation and self-regulation takes care of business. Most blogging services for example offer the chance to either moderate or disable comments, and most bloggers spend their time having anxiety attacks about not getting any comments at all.

Only a deluded blogger would expect the faithful to run around the intertubes sprinkling comments like benedictions on the ramblings of the plus one hundred million souls who pour their hearts out to strangers on the full to overflowing web, and only a deluded soul would expect a damaging comment to survive without comments from others, or be whacked by a deletion.

Similarly only a truly delusional blogger would think a pen name sufficient to keep them hidden if someone decided to have a go at them for defamatory or criminal scribbles. Which is why the only terrorist activity we urge is a refusal to buy a hard copy of The Australian.

What's brought on this bout of introspection?

Of course it could only be The Paunch, and it's latest attempt to curry hits, this time with Adam Ferrier's delightfully silly Massive fail - the anti-social world of social meda.

Apparently traumatised some time ago by being hit on the head with a rubber, poor young Adam has decided that kind of schoolroom brutal bullying is a metaphor for anonymous behavior on the web:

Today I see something similar happening on the Internet, and today’s ‘rubber’ is ‘the anonymous comment’.

The anonymous comment is the bastard child of the Internet and social media, and is akin to giving the back row of the classroom an endless supply of rubbers, and perpetual amnesty. They are free to attack an author at all levels while remaining completely unaccountable for their actions. The impact of this is a constant fear of a pelting, and therefore suppression of speech and expression.

It never seems to have occurred to young Adam that perhaps instead of living in constant fear of a pelting, he should pick up the rubber and when the teacher's back is turned, throw the rubber back. Three things might happen: he can get pinged by the teacher, and excused from class, he can hit the rubber thrower, or he can hit an innocent bystander, and then a free for all rubber throwing fight can erupt, to the joy of all.

Because in the end an anonymous comment on the web hardly passes for a rubber to the back of the neck. It's either right, half right, or just the standard bit of loonacy that we accept in a world where Godwin's Law is made to be broken, and trolling can become a way of life for embittered wastrels with access to a keyboard.

Does it make any difference, or somehow affect the capacity of others to write or make comments? Only if they're utterly fey or thin-skinned or hapless or suffer from some other ailment, such as a teenager desperate to belong and therefore set up for a bout of cyber bullying (and if that leads to problematic consequences, see how long your anonymity lasts when the authorities come knocking).

But poor Adam is determined to feel maligned, persecuted, and put upon and calls down his universal right to be heard without anonymous comment:

Most people need to feel safe before expressing their opinion – especially if that opinion is new, controversial, or open to judgement. Therefore Under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the right to freedom of speech is in part “the right to hold opinions without interference.” However, ‘the anonymous comment’ is direct interference and intimidation. Many people will be reluctant to express themselves for fear of ridicule, judgment, or derision. There are little bullies sitting behind their computers everywhere throwing cyber rubbers at people’s heads everyday.

Oh the poor petals, the precious blossoms, the fragile little popsicles, melted in the glare of the noonday comment. Why he sounds as thin-skinned as Tim Blair.

Funnily enough he's writing for The Paunch, which is littered with anonymous comments - which gave up real quick on its early request that people use their real names - and somehow the thought of a barrage of comments by 'anonymouse' didn't stop him in his scribbling, or his ranting about intimidation and cyber rubbers. But then who's scared of anonymouses, or meeces in general?

Hey no, nonny no, never mind the irony, on we go:

The ugly effect of this is twofold a) those with certain views will stay quiet, leading to an increasingly homogenized world, one where difference to the norm isn’t tolerated, and b) the loudest voices will belong to those with the thickest skin. The sensitive person won’t put their hand up under these conditions.

Personally I take a twofold ugly effect from Ferrier's musings: a) he hasn't shut up, despite the best efforts of anonymous commenters, showing that difference to the norm continues apace and b) clearly this means he has a very thick skin and a very loud voice, since he's clearly not a sensitive person, since he's put up his hand under these turbulent, troublesome conditions.

Oh I see we're back on an irony riff. Hey ho, never mind, on we go:

The irony is that social media was going to give everyone a voice. However, in the new world order where everyone is anonymously policing everyone else’s behaviour there will be no one left brave enough to use this new found tool. Under such conditions scary things start to happen; without freedom of expression we soon lose freedom of thought. Social media may well be killing our entire society one anonymous comment at a time.

Oh yes, the intertubes are just like East Germany when the Stasi were at the height of their powers. Scary, whooooh. Soon we'll lose freedom of thought, killed by a flurry of cyber rubbers. But back to Ferrier's cry for freedom of expression:

As Voltaire said “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write”. Although the platform for freedom of expression is provided - no one is defending our right to use it safely.

Um, but actually did Voltaire say it? Here's Wikiquote on the subject I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it:

Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.
Another possible source for the quote was proposed by Norbert Guterman, editor of "A Book of French Quotations," who noted a letter to M. le Riche (February 6, 1770) in which Voltaire is quoted as saying: "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" ("Monsieur l'abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire"). This remark, however, does not appear in the letter.

Oh no, ironies of irony. Writing under a pseudonym, as women used to do all the time because bloody men couldn't stand the thought of an uppity woman having an opinion worth airing (go George Eliot, go baby go).

Now comes for me what is the obligatory plug, wherein we learn that young Adam is in marketing, and therefore any kind of exposure or any kind of publicity is good, and therefore any comment that is anonymous cuts to the quick, the very heart, of marketing:

In my industry, marketing, the two main blog sites (Mumbrella and Campaign Brief) are rife with negative commentary from ‘the anonymous comment’. I am sure it’s the same in all walks of life.

His walk of life? Here's the profile for his first publication at The Paunch:

Adam Ferrier is a Consumer Psychologist and a Founding Partner of Naked Communications, Australia. After completing university with degrees in Psychology and Commerce Adam began his career as a psychologist working in maximum security prisons before making the natural, seamless, move into advertising. During this time Adam also managed to complete a post-graduate thesis into what makes people cool, and create a psychological board game ‘The Analyst’ (apparently selling well in the Benelux countries). Now at Naked, Adam works with the countries most ambitious marketers and some of the worlds most desired brands. Adam writes and talks about consumer behaviour, living in a branded world, and what it means to be cool (or not).

Eek, too much information. Couldn't he have done his post anonymously, or at least not put up a profile? Maybe a nice avatar - I'm thinking of a polar bear to give weight to the 'cool' angle.

I keed, I keed. Hopefully this gentle rubber ribbing won't traumatise Adam for life, because chances are he'll never read it, and what's not known never carries any weight. Yep the intertubes are unknowable, infinite so Miranda the Devine tells me, a comfort to us all, but back to Ferrier's heartfelt plight and a final plea for the nerds:

So to the editors, and contributors of these platforms I implore you to out the anonymous and don’t accept their comments. Take away the bullies rubber supply and let the intelligent, sensitive, nerds in the front row have their say too.

His piece was of course followed by twenty seven comments - a pretty good response for a bit of trolling (at time of writing), with the vast majority of responses decidedly anonymous, and the anonymous Eric leading the way:

Eric says: 06:42am | 27/10/09
I bet you knew that anonymous commenters would tell you this article is a crock—but you wrote it anyway. So much for your theory that differing opinions will be suppressed.

The Internet has indeed made it easier for people to share their opinions. It’s a bit tougher for those who don’t like dissent.

If you don’t like negative comments, simply post somewhere that doesn’t allow comments. You may not get many readers, but that’s your choice.

And no, this anonymous comment doesn’t prove your point. In fact it’s the opposite—you haven’t been silenced.

Well I'd like to call the whole thing a storm in a teacup, but I think that's really over-stating things. How about a storm in a thimble? Still it gave the punters a work out, in much the same way as they've been exercised on forums and communities since the days of usenet. One even got existential:

Mark Reid, what makes you think people who use a surname with their first name are using their actual surname? How do I know your Mark Reid? And who is Mark Reid?
Daffy Duck

Yes and nothing is but what is not. But at least it reminded me of that great Chuck Jones cartoon Duck Amuck, made in 1953, where the cartoonist applied the rubber with some real point and malice (you can watch it here, for the moment at least). Bloody anonymous surrealist animators:

Meantime, be very careful about your privacy on the intertubes, and make sure you preserve your anonymity as appropriate, because there's no doubt that cyber bullies - including Chairman Rupert's minions - are waiting to pounce - and anything from passwords to your actual identity can be stolen.

If the only price you pay - the one paid by Adam Ferrier - is that your name is attached to a very silly article, and circulated around the world in digital form, then you'll be lucky, because that's a very small price to pay. There are much bigger rubbers out there than anonymous comments, or anonymous scribblers, and what a useful insight that might have provided on The Paunch, Australia's most useless conversation ...

See, and I got through the whole piece without making a joke about condoms being rubbers. By golly, the intertubes is turning into a civilized, genteel place ...