Why I almost don’t read anonymous blogs

There is much discussion in the Indian blogosphere about anonymous bloggers. [ Digression: I am amazed that wordpress is flagging the word “blogosphere” as a spelling error – what irony ! ]. The issue is about commenters and some elements trying to ‘out the identity’ of these anonymous bloggers, presumably for the sheer pleasure of it. While it is bad manners, discourteous and all that, I think we will need the expertise of someone like Judge Richard Posner to convincingly argue why such practice might be tantamount to invasion of privacy and hence must invite legal consequences. Anyway, thats not what the post is about.

Its my inability to bring myself to be a reader of anonymous blogs. I respect their right to stay anonymous and won’t even require them to give reasons why. But I respect my own right to not read anonymous blogs and will give ‘reasons’ (prejudices is probably a better word) why :-).

To state upfront, great content might come in from anywhere. Occasionally when I am done reading that some really interesting post someone linked to/emailed, the next thing I do is see who the blogger is. It is important, or better yet comforting for me to know where the blogger comes from. I may not really care about the blogger’s real name (as long as the pseudonym can be easily pronounced 🙂 ) , but other things – place, primary area of expertise, education and training, homepage would be great. I want as much context as possible. Without much of this information, my interest quickly vanes and I am unlikely to return to the blog.

To make things clear, its not a matter of policy to not follow these blogs, which means the next time you send me this link to a great post from an anonymous blogger I will still read it. Except I may not continue to return to the blog. This of course does not apply to ‘anonymous bloggers’ whose identity I know through personally knowing them. I think this is consistent with my view that while I respect their right to be anonymous to the world, I can’t bring myself to read blogs from bloggers I don’t know about.

One might argue that all the information that I sought above can be derived from reading a few posts. Very well likely, but I won’t do that. Why that extra cognitive load ! After all,

a) Elasticities abound – there is no dearth of good content out there.

b) there is a real dearth of time anyway.

In an attempt to find a real-world analogy for this discomfort, I wonder if reading anonymous bloggers is akin to speaking to a person “face-to-face” while the other person has his/her shades on, or worse still, a mask on. How long can you do that ?

In reply to Amrita who says:

These people are not your bitches, they didn’t call and ask you to visit, they didn’t hound you into giving them your custom, you are not doing them a favor by visiting their space, you do not own them or their material – and they’re not making an extraordinary request of you by informing you that they don’t wish to share their identity with you. If the lack of a real world name bothers you so much, don’t visit.

Okay, I will take that last option 🙂

In summary, sorry anonymous bloggers, although I understand that many of you are compelled to remain anonymous, I can’t bring myself to read your blogs. Which of course means I can’t bring myself to ‘out’ you or urge people to boycott you or bother you in any other way either.

Peace 🙂