The Anonymous Post: The Psychology Behind Online Anonymity

by Joe Lazauskas

Thursday April 5, 2007

While few things in life are certain, every conference week Sarah Lawrence students can rest assured that the Sarah Lawrence LiveJournal anonymous post will materialize. With gossip, gab, confession, crushes and outright conflict, there has been no underground community event quite like the anonymous post since its inception in the spring of 2004.

LiveJournal is an Internet blogging community which features a smallery community of Sarah Lawrence students wihtin it. An anonymous post occurs when students post a sucession of anonymous entries under various topics, the most popular of which are secret crushes, people you love, people you hate, first-years you hate, overrated hotties, and underappreciated hotties. Students also post secret confessions; in an anonymous post this past Decembe which garnered an amazing 1602 comments, a male student admited to once performing fellatio on his twin brother. Anonymous posts appear at random intervals throughout the year but do not attract nearly as many responses as those posted during conference week.

While many Sarah Lawrence students consider the anonymous post to be a valued distraction during conference week, students on the receiving end of the anonymous insults find them disconcerting. Sophomore Rina Frankiel, whose appearance was criticized after being previously complimented as an “underappeciated hottie,” believes that the post is “a way for people to revert to their evil selves.” Likewise, first year Krisin Bohannon, whose fashion sense was harshly criticized, feels that “it’s horrible; it’s a vicious cycle. No one wants to contribute to it, no one wants to read about it, but we all do.”

Many students wonder why the anonymous post contains so much gossip and so many confessions and insults. Online network phenomenons like the Sarah Lawrence LiveJournal anonymous post are a source of great psychological intrigue. Dr. John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider Unversity, has written an extensive hypertext book called The Psychology of Cyberspace. Dr. Suler writes that “the disinhibition effect may not be so benign. Out spills rude language and harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats. That anonymity works wonders for the disinhibition effect. When people have the opportunity to separate their actions from their real world and identity, they feel less vulnerable about opening up. Whatever they say or do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives. Some people may even experience asynchronous communication as ‘running away’ after posting a message that is personal, emotional, or hostile. It feels safe putting it ‘out there’ where it can be left behind. In some cases, as Kali Munro, an online psychotherapist, aptly describes it, the person may be participating in an ‘emotional hit and run.’”

Dr. Linwood Lewis, a psychology professor at Sarah Lawrence and an expert on race and sexuality, believes this. “Some students using LiveJournal and other livejournals may think their postings are more private than they are. Other people may be disinhibited by the invisibility and/or the intimacy of your audience. You are writing in the privacy of your own room, so you may feel comfortable in saying things that you would never say aloud to another person. When one feels that one is a part of a community, you post things that you may say among friends.”

“But I would lay odds that most people are being intentional when they right about sexual behavior on LiveJournal,” Lewis continued. “People love to gossip about sexual matters or brag about their exploits, and this is another way to do it. Also, what better way to send a message to someone that you are interested in, or not interested in, without worrying about a face-to-face rejection? You can also find resolution of guilt in anonymous postings, a similar impulse to the use of the confessional by Roman Catholics.”

While, as Dr. Lewis believes, “the reasons why people expose more of their personal experiences vary from person to person,” the psychological motives for the Sarah Lawrence LiveJournal anonymous post are certainly intriguing. When the Anonymous Post emerges this May, some students will see it as a cherished diversion from bounties of conference work while others will view it as a nuisance; regardless, the anonymous post will provide a fascinating glimpse into the psyches of our student body.