Anonymity is critical for Democracy and humanity. As much as I used to hate the chan boards and loath chan culture, it has grown on me. Like any media, 90% is crap and 10% is worth listening to. There is value in listening (reading?) annons rant about bad families, crappy jobs, etc when they dare not speak in person. Some of these people have no place else to vent or rage. It is interesting from a sort-of outsider to watch a community build when all the participants enforce anonymity.

The one thing that I do love about the annon boards is that they fine tune your bullshit-o-meter to a finely crafted weapon. I can also fairly judge the age and national origin (English, Germanic, Latin, Asian, Japanese etc) just by the way they present an idea in writing. The annon boards also force you to defend your ideas. If you can't defend what you believe in against the mob online there is no way you can do that in real life.

I've bailed on just about all of my social medial. I've deleted my reddit, imgur, and other hang outs, I've been going through and finding old forums etc that have my name and email and removing them as well. Mostly due to me no longer caring about social media, but also due to job related stuff.