This blog is about the choice people have in being anonymous versus using real information on the blog/CMCs. I would like to lead in with the fact that this study was done in 2007, though that doesn't seem like that long ago, with the pace that the internet evolves, thats light years. I did however find the majority of the information to be rather shocking yet again with how much personal information people will reveal online. A GREAT example would be, I gamble online mostly with sports. Well there was a pick-em contest on the site I gambled with that showed the top 50 best pickers for every week of college football. I noticed that one person was on the top of this list for many weeks in a row, so I googled the username to try to get an email address to ask for picking advice... What I found instead was his password... What he had done was created an account on an... "Adult" site and made it a public account using his real password. So after watching his account with over 2000$ in it for about 2 months I chose to actually look him up on facebook and tell him about it... And his reply was to cuss me out and say he was going to have me arrested... Needless to say he didn't appreciate my honesty. But this is a perfect example of how people get wrapped up in the internet world and air out more information than they need to. when viewing the statistics of the Qian & Scott study you quickly find that people think they are relatively anonymous or around a 3 in a scale of one being undetected and 7 being full access. I would agree that people probably believe this but what they don't understand is someone with any computer know how will cross reference any information they give and google the crap out of it. So if they are on linked in or facebook there is an instant link to find more information about this person. This is why I feel like a 2007 study is just too old to be able to apply to present standards. Facebook adds 100s of 1000s of members daily, this was not the case back in 2007, in fact it may have still be based more around college students only if I remember correctly. The information about gender is striking, finding out that women tend to display more information about themselves is just flabbergasting. I would think that women would be more inclined to lie about themselves for fear of some cyber nutjob. But then again I don't think that cyber crazies were quite as spoken of in 2007 as they are now.
The study done on disabled people on the internet was more what I would expect out of the majority of people that use the CMCs. They are restricted and don't give out much information, they tend to use email as a form of communication and try to reveal the least amount of information about themselves. This is the way the internet should be and shockingly this was back in 2003!! Disabled people in a strange way can live a normal life online. Nobody can see whats wrong with them and it's as if they lose their "disease" if you will. It's similar to the movie that we watched in another class on Tuesday, "Catfish" Where a woman falls in love with a man based on the fact that her pictures show her as a smokin' hot model that she most defiantly was not. You could say that she had a disabled outlook of herself and therefore created something that she wanted to be her entire life. In the process she kinda broke a guys heart, but hey... He probably made a ton of money off it so I'm sure he's fine with it now.
Thanks for reading!!
-Whizzle
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ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but that guy deserved to have all his money taken by you. After of course buying up all the "content" you could with his account. Teach 'em a lesson he'll never forget. Better yet, sell his account info and let someone else do it. Try to do someone a favor and they show their stupidity. Humanity, ya gotta love us...
ReplyDeleteThe movie Catfish is a perfect example of deception on the internet. Yes it is true that the women led a sad life and just wanted to escape into her online identity but it never occurred to her that she might hurt other people in the process like her family! Imagine how you would feel if you found out a family member had a secret online life to escape you and the rest of your family...
ReplyDeleteLife itself is a gamble, but people feelings are what really counts. We are all guilty of lying and playing games with people feelings, online and offline. We have to learn to treat people the way that we want to be treated.
ReplyDeleteMy first comment may have been a little harsh...well, I deleted my first comment because it _was_ harsh, but the second one may have been too, but some people you just want to feed them to the wolves because they are too dumb. You did the right thing but he was wasn't able to see the err of his ways. I still think you should have sold his account info....
ReplyDeleteI do think it is true that many, many people are not very aware of how their online information travels across the internet. But also, think about this way, in addition to people who are disabled, what other positive advantages might there be in being anonymous?
ReplyDeleteBeing anonymous have their good and bad when it comes to the internet. There are people who really express their feeling and their some who just destroy others for the attention.To me the internet is just one big game because ninety percent of the time it's hard to tell who's being real.
ReplyDeleteKris, there is a serious benefit from being anonymous. In the instance of the woman on the movie Catfish in which is referred in the post, her identity is hidden behind fragments of people she wanted to be in life. If she was exposed (which she ends up being) everything about her online world would dissolve..which it did. Her anonymous lifestyle allowed her to escape into a fantasy that freed her from her depressing life. However, she was so untrue in such a serious online relationship that she eventually was discovered...if only this was always the case.
ReplyDeleteBeing anonymous have their good and bad when it comes to the internet. There are people who really express their feeling and their some who just destroy others for the attention.To me the internet is just one big game because ninety percent of the time it's hard to tell who's being real.
ReplyDeleteOn this same note I think the problem with the internet is that more people are MORE real because they hide under the annon flag... Some of the worst things I have ever read were said in an anonymous forum. The internet makes people say what they really want to say but can't in a normal** world setting.