The Effect Of An Anonymous Idea

Since its creation, the Internet has been the place where millions of people have been able to share information mainly anonymously. Anonymity is, and has always been, a fundamental characteristic within the concept of the Internet.

In part, this same idea of anonymity is as revolutionary as the idea of the Internet itself, because although anonymity has existed since immemorial times, it is on the Internet where it has been maximized.

It should be understood that when I refer to anonymity, I don't mean "Anonymous", that is, the group of hackers who carry out various activities on the web, and I don't mean either the simple act of expressing something anonymously using pseudonyms or unidentified accounts, because really, almost everything we do on the Internet can be tracked and localized, so that this type of anonymity probably does not exist, or in its absence, is very restricted. What I am referring to is that ability to express ourselves fluidly without our interlocutors really knowing who transmits the message.

It is something simple, the less information the interlocutor has about the person who expresses a message, the less assumptions and prejudices he will have about what is said.

When I create an account with the objective of sharing ideas in different places of the web, be they forums, pages or social networks, I have always tried to keep as far as possible, all kinds of personal information. And this I have not done because I am afraid that they know who I am, or because I distrusted the intentions of other people, no, this I have done mainly to avoid conditioning the interlocutor with different prejudices.

The fact that the interlocutor does not know who is addressing him, the fact that he simply does not know whether it is a woman or a man, whether he is young or old, whether it is black, white, asian, amerindian, mestizo, tall or small, fat or skinny, a person or a group of them, etc. In short, the absence of information about who emits the message, even with the negative things that may have, inevitably brings with it the absence of prejudices, leaving the interlocutor the possibility of judging only after hearing the message, and not before.

In fact, just as an idea identified with a certain character can have a great effect on the correct community, for example, a thought expressed by Socrates would have much more acceptance within a community of philosophers, than if it were any other person or from any other community, in the same way, an anonymous idea, if it is good, may have a much wider range of influence.

How many are not the cases in which different politicians express the same idea but while one is praised another is vilified. In general, people tend to oppose other people or groups of people, but very few are those who oppose ideas, breaking the universal maxim that a truth will always be true even when it comes out of a liar's mouth. For this reason various negative and harmful ideas end up almost inevitably infiltrating the core of the values of our communities, and it is because we have learned to oppose the messenger but not the message, and if a smiling man gives us a fateful message, we will take it positively falling into the oldest trap of humanity.

An anonymous idea, as counterpart, can have a very powerful effect, let's see an example that is at first glance, and is nothing more or nothing less than Bitcoin; we don't know who was, or who were the creators of this undoubtedly ingenious idea, but even so we have adopted it, the question would be: would we support Bitcoin if we knew who its creator was?

Would you support Bitcoin if, hypothetically, you knew that Bernard Madoff is its creator? and although the answer may still be yes, since you probably now understand how Bitcoin works, we must admit that even technically understanding the operation of this, when an idea that requires the investment of our money appears, accompanied at the same time by the name of one of the biggest swindlers of recent years, doubt and distrust are present, to such an extent, that if before you had made your first investment you were counted with such information, you probably would not have ever invested, and the intention to learn the operation of the cryptocurrencies would probably also be vanished.

And that's how anonymity, under the right circumstances, can have a very powerful effect.

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