About a month ago when our “Online and Anonymous” unit was introduced, I didn't have much knowlege of all the ugly occurring on the internet. I knew that people were bullied on social media but I didn't know to which extent. I have learned so much. When I first heard ‘trolling’, I didn't think of it as the serious word it is; I thought it was a term for joking around on the internet. I now know that ‘trolling’ is a multifaceted word that is sort of an understatement for all the malicious behavior online. We have gone back in forth between thinking that anonymity bread bed behavior and that there are positives to anonymity too.I have come to the conclusion that anonymity is something we can’t go without. It does have some terrible side effects, but I can’t imagine a world without anonymity where everyone has to be accountable for whatever they say.
When I think back on our last month in ERW I realized how much work we’re really done. We did a few quick writes, which lead to the reading of a few articles, then a couple more, three blog posts and now a paper to finalize our thoughts on anonymity. This unit has been really interesting, but I think I’m ready to put anonymity behind me. Keep pushin’, monsoons, Winter Break is just around the corner. 
I feel you Riss and I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree that this unit has been quite interesting but at the same time, all of the information is a bit overwhelming since there is so much of it to consider, especially when writing. The topics we read about are so relevant to our everyday lives, which makes it compelling. Anonymity is a powerful thing and in my opinion, similar to yours, should not be taken away from us. In the end, it's up to Internet users to use anonymity in the proper way.
ReplyDeleteI feel you on this post. There are many ugly people out there. I didn't really know what Trolling meant either, but I've learned that it isn't a good thing to be called a troll. There really isn't a way for us to stop anonymity, so we will just have to learn to deal with it or ignore people's rude comments. I like the motivation at the end! :)
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly how I feel Yarissa, I really had no idea what we were talking about when we were asked what internet trolls were. now I feel like we all learned something and have something to take away from the unit.
ReplyDeletePrior to our unit, I had some experience with trolls, in fact I was truly harassed, rather than "trolled". People can be horrid, they may send death threats, your address(es) to others, or even post images of dead relatives (e.g. Zelda Williams), but we have to understand that their has to be moderators in place in order to control the tonality and formality of speaking or messaging other users; sadly, some sites don't have this feature, so we will have to deal with this in another fashion until then.
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