i’ve wanted to say this for a while because i genuinely find the way some people use the anon feature bizarre. and i want to be clear that i’m not talking about the people sending anonymous messages because they’re shy, asking genuine questions, seeking advice, or discussing something they may not feel comfortable attaching their name to. anonymity can of course be useful, that’s literally what the feature is there for. i’m talking about the people who use it as a shield to be needlessly cruel.
especially in writing spaces, where writers are putting hours of their time, and actual personal parts of themselves into their work and sharing it publicly for free. you can dislike a fic, or a take, and you can completely disagree with someone. you can even offer criticism if it’s actually constructive and relevant. but some of you seem to think the anon feature gives you permission to say the most unnecessarily hateful, condescending shit imaginable and then disappear before anyone can ask you to stand behind it. and i seriously do not understand the appeal of that.
if you have something so horrible to say to someone that you would only say it if you could guarantee they had absolutely no way of knowing who was saying it, maybe the problem is not that you have an important criticism that needs to be heard. maybe you just wanted to be cruel without having to experience any personal accountability for it.
it genuinely appalls me that some people seem to interpret anonymity as a complete absence of responsibility. you are still talking to another person. there is still a HUMAN BEING on the other side of the screen. the fact that they cannot see your username does not make your words somehow less mean-spirited.
if you want to be rude and cruel and unnecessarily hateful, at least have the basic decency to let people know who the fuck is talking to them. not because these ppl need to be “brave” enough to expose themselves, but because if you are going to subject someone to your contempt, the absolute bare minimum you can offer is the possibility of being held accountable for it.
anonymity is supposed to protect people from scrutiny. it should not be a free pass to treat other people like they are not human.
and to anyone who has been on the receiving end of this: please know that a person going out of their way to send you something of that nature, completely unprompted, has infinitely more to do with them than it does with you. some people are full of hate and have nowhere to put it. that does not make their words true, and it does not make their hatred your burden to carry.