[ryandv]

One of the issues with removing traces of yourself online, when identity in the postmodern digital era is almost totally determined by those artifacts or representations of ourselves we publish, is that you are effectively performing an act of digital suicide. With no representations of yourself on the net, you may as well not exist, and people are free to project anything whatsoever unto the tabula rasa of your nonexistent persona.

While this is an excellent Rorshach for exposing the internal biases of others and demonstrating that even the staunchest progressives are also readily capable of misidentifying others or failing to recognize their "self-identification", the issue of not being seen for who one is and constantly "misidentified" also presents its own challenges.

[Yodel0914]

> With no representations of yourself on the net, you may as well not exist, and people are free to project anything whatsoever unto the tabula rasa of your nonexistent persona

I think this is only as issue if you are a “known” person in some regard. For most of us plebs, receding into anonymous nonexistence is likely a very healthy thing.

[ryandv]

Even while writing pseudonymously and innocuously you are at risk of being doxxed and subjected to mob "justice;" as an example of this see Scott Alexander's writings on Slate Star Codex.

In light of this the safest recourse is to simply not post anything online at all, for fear of being doxxed at some point in the future (an inevitability given modern standards for and cultural attitudes towards privacy) and subjected to invective for years' old posts and writings. This is the culmination and terminal state of "anonymous nonexistence" you refer to.

In this way the chilling effect achieves totality, and nobody feels comfortable sharing genuine thoughts online at all. It's arguable that this is a societally healthy state of affairs.

[watwut]

Scott Alexander is not an example of that at all.

[Yodel0914]

Scott/SSC is an interesting example. In my dichotomy of “known people” vs “plebs”, even behind a pseudonym Scott is far closer to the “known people” end.

He writes about (sometimes) controversial stuff for a large(ish) and influential audience. He wants to be known and influential. I think he deserves the right to do so pseudonymously, but that’s tangential to my actual point.

Most of us plebs do not want to be famous or influential, and therefore it doesn’t make a ton of sense to leave a trail of possibly regrettable or easily misinterpreted bits of data attached to our real names.

[seanhunter]

The Scott Alexander thing is interesting to me in terms of how online dramas work because the drama assumes its own momentum and the facts struggle to maintain the pace.

Scott Alexander was not in fact doxxed. He said in his final post before deleting his blog that the NYT planned to reveal his name, deleted his blog and the NYT published their article three weeks after he had already revealed his own name.[1]

The pros and cons of whether they would have revealed his name became this massive hoo-hah and maybe they would have revealed his name given the chance but the fact is he was not in reality doxxed by anyone other than himself.

[1] eg this article cites an anonymous source saying that none of the proposed article about him had yet been written at the time he took his blog down https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/16/21325678/venture-capitali...