Anonymity serves a major role in the online community. The purpose
of posting anonymously is to hide the identity of a person who posts online. It
gives people comfort and a sense of security to post and say whatever they want
because no one would know who they are. As time progressed, internet use grew
increasingly popular, and its growth has then created multiple purposes of
anonymity. Internet trolls exploit anonymity by harassing others. They lack concern because they feel that
anonymity protects their reputation. Other people use anonymity as way to
express themselves without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. These people are highly
concerned of what their peers think, and thus they are caught in a dilemma – a
battle of staying true to who they are or facing judgment. Their solution? Anonymity.
It gives them a middle ground; they are
able to express themselves without revealing their identity.
Although the applications
of anonymity may differ, internet users primarily use it as a means of self-expression by
hiding their identity. Anonymity has relieved internet users of their accountability and
ownership on their posts. It has granted them blind confidence; they get
to post what they want, yet they are afraid claim their speech. I believe that
if a person truly wants to truly express themselves or their interests, they
shouldn’t hide it. Also, if someone truly wants to say something hurtful they
should own up to it and not hide behind anonymity; if they don’t, it just
proves that they are weaker. Not to discredit the other useful reasons of
posting anonymously; however, as people we have the responsibility to own up to
what we say. If we don’t, it means we didn’t really mean what we say. 
I completely agree with you, however, humans as a whole feel much safer to share their ideologies under a veil of anonymity. This anonymity that people are privileged to have on the internet allows them to find groups and people they can truly relate to. Everyone from social marxists to national socialists exist in real life, and this anonymity allows them to express themselves freely. So this anonymity does in turn have its downsides: terrible people may spread horrible misinformation, they may share dangerous beliefs such as their "right" to enforce genocide or the enslavement of peoples due to innate traits, and the list goes on. But, without such anonymity and freedoms being granted to these people, I in turn are given these privileges; in other words, I would rather allow these small factions of people contain and retain their beliefs and allow them to spread their terrible ideologies so that we may all have such freedoms than being left without said freedoms where what is said is to be controlled and what ideologies differ from others cannot be persecuted due to what they believe. The hurtful things that are said on the wide web can be directly put towards specific people, it has happened to me before, and sadly I had to back off from Twitter because of I had received a death threat and people had disclosed my address; I was quite intimidated, yet I realized that it was likely to never be carried out. These things were said to scare me off of social media, I could have stayed on Twitter, but I just deleted my page and forgot about it because it didn't impact my life whatsoever beyond an exchange of words. Words only offend those who become offended; on so many occasions, I could have been so mad at others making the "white kid shoots up the school" reference to me because I'm a nerd, but I choose to not be offended because I know these things are not true about myself. If we allowed insecurities to ravage our minds, we would be a group of screaming harpies never having intellectual discussion; the best way to react to a joke, comment, or threat given to someone over the internet is to refute it or laugh with it, your "haters" will be hard pressed to spark an emotional explosion out of you so they will in turn leave you be due to them having no physical interaction between you two.
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