There just isn’t any good reason to use your real name anymore

The youngest adult generation and the most online generation is frustrated with being surveilled and embarrassed by attention-seeking behaviors. This has instigated a retreat into smaller internet spaces and secret-sharing apps, as well as a mini-renaissance for Tumblr, where users rarely use their full names. (The majority of new users are Gen Z, according to Chenda Ngak, a spokesperson for Tumblr’s parent company.) The voice- and text-chat app Discord, known for a culture of anonymous and pseudonymous discussion, now has 150 million users; anonymously run hyper-niche meme accounts are suddenly the coolest, most exciting follows on Instagram. The group-therapy app Chill Pill offers a “world of future friends and better days” but does not permit the sharing of any personally identifying information. (I downloaded the app but can’t make a real account-I’m over the age limit, which is 24.)

Something has shifted online: We’ve arrived at a new era of anonymity, in which it feels natural to be inscrutable and confusing-forget the burden of crafting a coherent, persistent personal brand. “In the mid 2010s, ambiguity died online-not of natural causes, it was hunted and killed,” the writer and podcast host Biz Sherbert observed recently. Читать далее →