ABSTRACT
Online anonymity is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, studies show that anonymity gives users a sense of security, and a way to share honest thoughts and feelings without judgement. On the other hand, this provides users to say or do things online that may be harmful to others, without fearing the consequences. There is extensive current research on both the benefits and negatives of online anonymity, in general as well as across multiple platforms, as well as whether anything posted online is even anonymous at all. To my knowledge, there is not as much research conducted on the potential individual consequences for those who carelessly post something offensive or malicious anonymously online. My paper explores the similarities between the internet and the fairy tale world in terms the weight words have, from casual promises, wishes, and curses. In fairy tales, there is most often an unseen force that responds to the careless words of characters, and holds them accountable. Similarly, the internet is a place in which any comment or post can be retraced by large companies and governments, thus there is no real anonymity. Without real anonymity, there will always remain a possibility of being held accountable. I argue that fairy tales remind us to remain vigilant in thinking before we speak and post lest we are one day held accountable for our carelessness.
INTRODUCTION
The advent of social media, though positive in many ways, has created a space like a masquerade ball. Everyone wears a mask, though some choose not to obscure their faces too much and some can be recognized despite their masks. When one wears a mask, however, a phenomenon occurs where the masked feels free to say and do things they normally would not, unconsciously believing that they will not be held accountable for their actions. It seems the world has forgotten that the clock will still strike midnight, and that is when the person underneath the mask will return to reality, to face the consequences of their carelessness the night before. The fairy tale world informs internet users on the false perception of online anonymity through wishes and woes lamented in privacy, detached promises, and incidental and intended curses with severe repercussions.
BACKGROUND
“The notion of anonymity is related to freedom from identification, secrecy, and lack of distinction”(Scott 875). It is the removal of all factors that can identify an individual. Anonymity has been involved with the internet since the mid-1990s when the internet was first opened to the public after being developed and used as a weapon during the cold war (History.com Editors). With no strict identification policies at the time, essentially all users could have been considered either anonymous or identifiable. This paved the way for deception, trolling, and cyberbullying, due to the impression of detachment and lack of accountability that anonymity provided (Sharon, John 4179). Then, around 1999, the internet started being commercialized by various companies, shifting internet communication culture from anonymous engagement to cooperative engagement (Scott 876). The debate concerning online privacy and anonymity continues to this day with little progress made. It was as recent as 2019 that Facebook went under fire for violating user privacy and in April 2021 they came under criticism again when hackers exposed the personal information of over 530 million users from 2019. Nothing shared or posted on the internet is completely private and, oddly enough, the same goes for anything spoken aloud in the world of fairy tales.
WISHES AND SUPPORT GROUPS
Wishes are granted in the fairy tale world in the same way that anonymous internet users find support from other anonymous users online. A wish is a desire for something likely unattainable and it’s presence confirms a feeling of lack or discontentment, for no one would wish for more if they feel fulfilled. Both Grimm’s fairy tales Snow White and The Juniper Tree start with a woman, sitting alone in winter, who accidentally cuts herself and bleeds and then wishes for “a child as red as blood and white as snow”(245). The lack in both cases was the lack of a child. What is notable is that both women were completely alone when they made their wishes. Meaning that there was less of a magical power granting their wishes than the wishes being the power itself. In a study done on the mobile app, Secret, used to anonymously communicate with facebook friends and phone contacts, participants reported that the anonymous platform gave them a chance to interact without the filters of social pressure used in Facebook communication (Sharon and John, 4183). In other words, where facebook highlighted the best of users lives, Secrets revealed the worst of it. Despite showing the worst instead of the best, Secrets fostered a community of genuine care. One participant reported seeing the anonymous community come together to provide emotional support to a suicidal user. Another study sought to identify the number of anonymous users on Twitter and what types of account content were more likely to come from an anonymous user and found that accounts supporting the LGBTQ community and accounts openly discussing relationship and health issues were more likely to be anonymous (Peddinti, Ross, Cappos, 87). Similarly to Secrets, these anonymous accounts were able to form communities of people with similar sexual orientations or personal dilemmas that provided users with solace. Just as a wish is a desire to fill a lack, revealing personal dilemmas is implicitly a wish for the dilemma to resolve and despite being alone or unidentifiable, there is someone or something listening and responding. In certain cases, one is met with love and support from people and powers unknown to them. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY
Although online anonymity can often help grant wishes, there are more cases where it fosters detachedness towards other users, and users are incognizant of possible consequences of what they say, just as how many fairy tale characters make promises in the moment, without thinking of keeping them or not. The presence of anonymity by definition means avoidance of responsibility for whatever was said or done while anonymous. In an article exploring the relationship between online anonymity and personal responsibility, Tim Jordan acknowledges this by saying, “Those calling in swats, or sending multiple pizzas to a tar- get, or making threats to kill or rape via Twitter, are usually not doing so because they mean to take responsibility for their actions”(573). This is similar to the Grimm’s The Frog Prince or Iron Heinrich. For the sake of getting back her favorite golden ball, the princess promises the frog offering to retrieve it to cherish him, let him be her companion, let him sit and eat with her, and let him sleep with her. Just the same as those making threats on twitter, the princess does not agree with the frog’s request because she means to take responsibility for her promise, but to get her ball back instead. When she tries to go back on her word, the King, her father, intervenes and declares that she already gave her word and must keep it. As for those calling swats, sending pizzas, and making threats, even if there is no King to hold them accountable there is data retention and preservation, which are government protocols used to track, record, and trace online activity (Crump 193-194). An alternate form of detachment can be seen in a case study of Iraqi-American artist, Wafaa Bilal’s, staged project Domestic Tension (Unger, 202-203). Bilal spent 31 days in a room at an art gallery with a paintball gun connected to an online interface and a low resolution camera. Anyone visiting the website could click and shoot at any part of the room, and anyone visiting the gallery was given access to a computer as well and could watch him get shot in person. Online visitors fired more shots than gallery visitors and were more likely to leave abusive, degrading, and Xenophobic comments. This result is largely due to the phenomenon that someone who cannot witness consequences in person will feel impersonal or alienated from the activity. A similar scenario can be witnessed in De Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast. The Beast gives Beauty permission to visit her sick father so long as she comes back within a week because he will die if she does not. Beauty is so distraught at the thought of his death that she not only makes the promise but bursts into tears while doing so. Despite her passion however, it only takes a little fake affection from her sisters to convince her to stay an extra four to five days. It is only on the tenth night that she decides to return and that is only because she had a dream where she saw the Beast dying. Again, it was because she saw the Beast. In both The Frog Prince and Beauty and the Beast there is conflict that arises due to feelings of detachment and impersonalness, just as there is impersonal detachment when regarding others online that is problematic in terms of loss of empathy.
ACCIDENTAL CURSES
Internet comments are often said in a fit of passion or on a whim in the same way that fairy tale curses are often accidentally spoken aloud and both carry drastic repercussions. In a study seeking to measure and compare levels of comment politeness on Youtube and Facebook for the same video of controversial Eurovision performer and drag queen Conchita Wurst, they found that facebook commenters, non anonymous, thought carefully about how their perceived audience might view the performance before commenting while Youtube commenters, anonymous, were more genuine but also more likely to attack other commenters and use profane language (Yun, 3431-3432). This conclusion reemphasizes the inhibition of social pressure on non anonymous speech versus uninhibited anonymous speech and also indicates and implies that anonymous comments were made faster, with less thought, and with more emotion. In 2019, in the UK, a discontented gamer called a swat team on another online player, however, the wrong address was given, which led to police shooting and killing an innocent young man (Jordan 573). Similarly, but less extreme than death, fake negative reviews on Trip Advisor can completely destroy a small hotel business (Scott 884). A fairy tale equivalent is Giambattista Basile’s The Young Slave, when the fairy trips on the way to bless the baby and accidentally curses the baby to die by hair comb at seven. When words are thrown about carelessly, whether in fairy tales or real life, it can cause great harm to others.
CONCLUSION
Watching the world through the screen can create a sense of alienation from everything. Especially during this time of self-quarantine. It is easy to remove oneself emotionally from another’s problems and say whatever one sees fit. However, now, more than ever, must internet users be vigilant in how they interact online. Fairy tales force characters to be held accountable for their words, and though real life does not offer the same luxury, internet users must learn from fairy tales on how to remain empathetic and attached in an increasingly online world.
WORKS CITED
Crump, Catherine. “Data Retention: Privacy, Anonymity, and Accountability Online.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 56, no. 1, 2003, pp. 191–229. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1229685. Accessed 2 May 2021.
GI WOONG YUN, et al. “Mind Your Social Media Manners: Pseudonymity, Imaginary Audience, and Incivility on Facebook vs. YouTube.” International Journal of Communication (19328036), vol. 14, Jan. 2020, pp. 3418–3438. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ofm&AN=149876389&site=eds-live& scope=site.
History.com Editors. “The Invention of the Internet.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 28 Oct. 2019, www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet. Accessed 3 May 2021.
Jordan, Tim. “Does Online Anonymity Undermine the Sense of Personal Responsibility?” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 41, no. 4, May 2019, pp. 572–577. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=136917590&site=eds-live& scope=site.
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Sharon, Tzlil, and Nicholas A. John. “Unpacking (the) Secret: Anonymous Social Media and the Impossibility of Networked Anonymity.” New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 11, Nov. 2018, pp. 4177–4194. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/1461444818768547.
Unger, Clio. “‘SHOOT HIM NOW!!!’ Anonymity, Accountability and Online Spectatorship in Wafaa Bilal’s Domestic Tension.” International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, vol. 11, no. 2, Oct. 2015, pp. 202–218. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14794713.2015.1084808.
