Relentless toll of the anonymous online troll

The second great age of anonymity has again been made possible by a technological revolution. Picture: iStock

In July 1993, when The New Yorker presciently captioned Peter Steiner’s iconic cartoon with “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”, the implication was obvious: to be online is to be anonymous.

Now, nearly three decades later, as swarms of nameless individuals form electronic lynch mobs that surge, search and destroy, the government’s Online Safety Bill 2021, which provides for fines of up to $111,000 on “internet trolls, bullies, abusers and anyone who threatens another person online”, lies before the Senate.

It remains to be seen whether the legislation, if passed, will prove effective, given the immense difficulties of enforcement. And legitimate questions have been raised about its compatibility with freedom of expression. What is certain, however, is that the tidal wave of anonymity that the internet has unleashed challenges not only our laws but our culture.

There are, in effect, few elements more foundational to social life than names and naming. Nowhere is that clearer than in the biblical account of Genesis, where it is after the fall — and only after the fall — that “man” (“adam” in Hebrew) and “woman” acquire proper names as Adam and Eve.

That transformation is hardly accidental: on the contrary, having obtained the capacity of “knowing good and evil” by eating the forbidden fruit, “man” and “woman” become responsible for their decisions — a responsibility slated through to them by their names, which define them as individuals and endow them with continuity.

Little wonder then that “the erasure of the name” is so devastating a biblical punishment: as the name vanishes, so must the person, since to act in this world is to be accountable. And little wonder, too, that in Judaism, God has a name — the tetragrammaton — which is unsay­able, thus sharply dividing the realm of human action from that of divine causation, with the third commandment enjoining us from using that name to offload the blame for our conduct.

“Responsibility is the essence of language,” wrote the great philosopher and Talmudist Emmanuel Levinas — and it is bearing a name known to others that makes it inescapable in our own lifetime.

But the biblical tradition was not alone in connecting names and accountability. In the classical world, too, namelessness was the ultimate in ignominy, as the root of the word attests: in-(g)nomen, that is, no name.

Every bit as important, the Romans carried the link into the public sphere, describing works, documents and evidence that we would call anonymous as “nullus auctor”; that is, as not merely lacking an author, in the modern sense, but as devoid of authority — and hence reliability.

To be an author was not simply to generate an act or a text: it was to shoulder its consequences. As a result, slaves and servants, who were excluded from the public sphere because they could not act under their own authority, were also excluded from legally “owning” a name, instead acquiring new names whenever they changed master.

Far from weakening, the link between names and personal responsibility strengthened as the Renaissance merged the biblical and classical traditions. The Humanists’ renewal of learning, the growth of commerce and the rise of printing sparked an outpouring of works on civility — which Tudor humanist Thomas Starkey defined as “living together in good order, with rules of honesty” — and, crucially, on how to acquire what soon became known as “a good name”.

There were, however, more ominous developments under way when the word “anonymous” entered the English language during the 16th century’s last decade. As the Reformation got into full swing, dramatic reductions in the cost of printing provoked a flood of publications, almost invariably unsigned, that fanned the wars of religion — wars that in England alone caused proportionately more deaths than did the two world wars. By the early years of the 17th century, this first great age of anonymity had triggered a vicious spiral in which vitriolic unsigned pamphlets fuelled religious tensions, provoking repressive measures that made the pamphlets even more extreme and drove their authors further underground.

With a succession of licensing acts, which prohibited seditious publications, proving ineffective, horrific punishments were routinely imposed — such as that inflicted on Alexander Leighton, author of an anonymous pamphlet, who was sentenced in 1630 to be pilloried, whipped, his ears and lips cut off, his nose slit and his face branded, before being imprisoned, should he survive, “during life”.

“What’s in a name?” asked Juliet in Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy, highlighting the Bard’s obsession with names and naming; the answer, which contemporary audiences would have well understood, came in Richard II, when the king, facing death, decried the fate that had left him with “no name”.

The lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 did not completely end the campaign against anonymity: as late as 1720, an 18-year-old apprentice was executed merely for helping print an unsigned pamphlet that supported the claim to the throne of James II’s son, the so-called Pretender. But more out of exhaustion than from any theological resolution, the wars of religion were over, and a more tolerant mood started to prevail. As that happened, anonymous publication, be it in books or in the flourishing newsletters, became both less necessary and less socially acceptable.

Even free speech’s staunchest defenders — John Milton and Daniel Defoe — had argued that anonymous publications should be banned as they made freedom of expression difficult to justify and sustain; their harsh criticism (if not their proposed remedy) was endorsed in the 19th century by John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope, who all thought anonymity bred reckless irresponsibility.

After that, anonymity persisted mainly as a literary affectation, at least in the liberal democracies. It had its advocates — typically early modernists such as EM Forster, who in Anonymity: An Enquiry (1925) claimed anonymity highlighted the work, rather than the author — but even they scarcely relied on it; as a mass phenomenon, it entirely disappeared.

Now, however, we are in a second great age of anonymity, this time, too, made possible by a technological revolution. It has, no doubt, empowered many who would otherwise be reluctant to speak, enriching the public sphere. But like its predecessor of four centuries ago, it has also unshackled a vicious incivility that tears at the social fabric and threatens the norms of restraint, tolerance and mutual respect that allow people of opposing views to live together.

Can an open society survive if those norms are allowed to crumble? History suggests otherwise. As the venom of this age of anonymity corrodes our institutions, the angry, perpetually agitated society it leaves behind may well remain liberal — but in name only.