It’s that old saying “On the internet nobody knows I’m a
dog” that gets people thinking about anonymity and identity on the internet.
This cartoon was printed in The New Yorker in 1993 by artist
Peter Steiner, but has since been seen virtually everywhere on the web. Over
time that one simple cartoon has created many other ‘On the internet nobody
knows you’re…’ including ‘nobody knows you’re a bot’, ‘nobody knows you’re not
in America’ and ‘nobody knows you’re a journalist’. All of these articles
discuss the issue of identity on the internet and how easy it is to create a
false one.
‘Nobody Knows You’re A Bot’ discusses online games and particularly
poker where robots have been designed and created to join, and more importantly
to win, games. It is skilled in knowing when to hold and when to fold to ensure
a high winning record, however, no-one else around the poker table will know
this is a robot that is virtually impossible to beat.
‘Nobody Knows You’re Not In America’ is an article that highlights
how people have been masking their locations for years simply by their IP addresses.
Although this is mainly to see web content that may be limited to your location
it brings to light another way in which anonymity can be achieved on the
internet.
A YouTube video was created with this same logic that shows
is an animation starring a cat using a false identity to search the internet
for a mouse. You can see the not so happy ending below:
Most recently, in America, Catfish was born. Catfish is the
true story of a man (Yaniv) falling for a girl he met on the internet; his
brother and a friend filmed the whole thing as they spoke online, on the phone
and when he went to meet her in real life. The movie revealed some pretty dramatic
truths and brought into the open the deceit that is possible on the internet.
Following the success of the documentary style film many
people contacted Yaniv, or ‘Nev’ as he is known, to tell him their stories of
falling in love online and asking for his help and advice. MTV helped as Nev
and his friend, Max, travelled around America to meet these people and investigate
their stories.
In the first episode, which airs in the UK on 21st
January, Nev and Max meet Sunny. Sunny has fallen in love with Jamison ‘RJ’
King, but is he everything he has told her he is? The series follows real
people and real stories with not many happy endings!
The tag line for the series is ‘They fell in love online.
But who with?’ I think this sums up the question of online identities,
obviously this show highlights the romantic connections but any connections you
make over the internet can be questionable until they are transformed into real
life.
There is always the warning of talking to strangers online
and the worry they might not be who they say they are. But, I think there does
need to be a middle ground. There’s no need to live in the mind-set that
everybody on the internet is lying and as far as meeting and talking to
strangers online you need to have some level of security and safety where you don’t
give too much information and more importantly don’t get too emotionally
attached to someone you just don’t know.
All the links I have used are listed below:
·
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/on-the-internet-nobody-knows-youre-a-dog
·
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/23/theres-no-i-in-tim/
·
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/pokerbots.html
·
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1584016/
·
http://www.iamrogue.com/catfish
·
http://www.mtv.co.uk/shows/catfish
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