Anonymity has no argument

The world changes slightly with each innovation, and we are seeing the results of the last major change, which was the rise of social media. Social media has done a lot of damage, but it has also done some positive things, allowing people to question companies online, for example, and forcing them, through public pressure – to live up to their commitments and standards.

You can’t just fob off the customer any more without the whole world knowing you’re doing it, so in this way, social media has helped make people accountable.

But there is another side to social media, and that is the anonymity it gives people, and what they choose to do with this anonymity. Anyone who has a community WhatsApp group or a sports club Facebook page knows how people can abuse that resource if it’s not managed properly.

Terence Cosgrave

But real anonymous trolls on social media are an even more serious danger. There are now ‘troll farms’ to double, triple or multiply by hundreds the numbers of people on Twitter who, for example, think the war in Ukraine is totally justified, and Putin is a loveable teddy-bear, not the actual war criminal and butcher that he is.

And yet, other social media is more resistant to his charms! How strange.

My point it that anonymity has no argument.

What I write in Irish Medical Times is down to me, my publisher, and ultimately the company for which we work. “It’s there is black and white,” as they used to say, back in the day when that was a winning, unbeatable argument of proof of truth.

People said this because they knew that nothing could survive long in print that was untrue, because you can sue ‘untrue’. Print, for all its failings, doesn’t disappear into the cybersphere – always for it to remain disputed that it was said or written at all.

But before we ever had the Internet, we had the anonymous letter. Letters still exist for some older parts of the population (of which, I must admit, I am a member).

And the anonymous letter is simply an analogue version of anonymous trolling on the Internet. Imagine that you, a doctor, are accused of hideous crimes and malpractices. A letter circulates accusing you of vague and unspecified actions that have led to damages.

You can’t simply say ‘So what?’ since these charges have now appeared and then slipped out to the public sphere. And yet, neither can you defend yourself.

Such a letter has appeared – if not in the public sphere quite as yet – into the hands of several doctors, and particularly members of the Irish Medical Organisation pointing accusations at people involved in the Organisation.

The letter claims that a ‘terminal diagnosis’ has forced him or her to tell the truth. That has a certain emotional appeal, but you can’t believe all you read on the Internet. This is the same. Anonymous people can claim they are a doctor, your next lover, your long-lost cousin or your best friend. It is the equivalent of graffiti.

Which reminds me of the record company executives who wrote ‘Clapton is God’ on a few walls around their offices as a kind of joke to humour him, and after he mentioned it in an interview, it took off as a piece of cult graffiti and inspired many copiers.  For the record, Mr Clapton is a good guitarist, but no Hendrix. He’s certainly not a deity of any kind. Even if that’s painted on a wall.

Nonetheless, people still think of him as a ‘guitar god’ at least, partly because his own people have repeated that message often enough.

And so it is with anonymous accusations and the dubious reasons for their origins. Every argument and theory must stand in the daylight at high noon and defend itself. Otherwise it is not an argument at all – merely abuse shouted in anger and hatred that says more about the vocalist than it does about the accused.

So how do we treat this particular…disease?

Can we completely ignore it and go on with our regular affairs?

The answer is ‘Yes’.

Sometimes I am tempted to follow a particular rabbit hole on the Internet to see if any of the thinking makes sense. To see if, for example, there is some proof that a certain historical fact I know to be untrue exists. It always ends unsatisfactorily in flimsy ‘facts’ and unconclusive evidence. People want it to be true though. So they make it true.

It’s the same with anonymous accusatory letters. It could be a bitter ex-lover who has chosen to embarrass this person. It could be child at home using AI. It could be the Russians. But’s it’s all unbelievable – and therefore wrong – because no-one is willing to say it openly and fairly where the person accused can defend themselves.

And therefore, this case doesn’t even require a diagnosis.