Online disinhibition effect
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 9:15 am
A keyboard is a hood and a niqab at the same time. When singer Anouk is called a black slut, there is not a single hero who uses his own name. When Ebru Umar calls Mohammed 'that dead guy', she gets two thousand anonymous threatening tweets. Anonymity provides a new dimension to the conversations between people, that is for sure.
This behavior is called the online disinhibition effect , the phenomenon that due to the lack of social brazil mobile phone number list restrictions (you do not see each other, you are unrecognizable to each other, it does not have to be desirable) all socially acceptable inhibitions disappear, causing people to behave differently than in a classroom, pub or on the street.
utopia camera
That is perhaps what makes the experiments on Mars and in Utopia most interesting; we see how people who can only use one identity interact with each other. Anonymity or escape is not an option, it is like a panopticon, associations with George Orwell's 1984 . The television viewers are the guards of Utopia. The relationship between the prisoner and the viewer is completely unequal. We have come so far that we are curious about the behavior of people in a community where anonymous swearing is not possible.
This column was also published in Het Financieele Dagblad. Photo intro courtesy of Fotolia.
This behavior is called the online disinhibition effect , the phenomenon that due to the lack of social brazil mobile phone number list restrictions (you do not see each other, you are unrecognizable to each other, it does not have to be desirable) all socially acceptable inhibitions disappear, causing people to behave differently than in a classroom, pub or on the street.
utopia camera
That is perhaps what makes the experiments on Mars and in Utopia most interesting; we see how people who can only use one identity interact with each other. Anonymity or escape is not an option, it is like a panopticon, associations with George Orwell's 1984 . The television viewers are the guards of Utopia. The relationship between the prisoner and the viewer is completely unequal. We have come so far that we are curious about the behavior of people in a community where anonymous swearing is not possible.
This column was also published in Het Financieele Dagblad. Photo intro courtesy of Fotolia.