The Anonymity of Conformity

In class, we talked about anonymity as it applies to groups interacting online but in the general sense of the word, anonymity has to do with your identity being unknown to other people. When it comes to social media, I’m sure we can think of quite a few platforms that allow people to remain anonymous. One that immediately comes to mind, for several reasons, is Yik Yak. While you know where the people who are posting on Yik Yak go to school, you don’t know their gender (unless they specify in their yak) or who they are. Essentially, what gets posted on Yik Yak are nameless thoughts. So it almost seems like the thoughts people share are floating messages that could belong to anyone. That yak that you took the time to upvote or downvote could have been posted by your roommate, a close friend, someone who sits next to you in class or maybe even an instructor. The possibilities are endless. Nonetheless, it is not that hard to find out who posted what on Yik Yak or any social media application that encourages anonymity, for that matter. With the right technology and resources, the poster of a yak can be found. This was proven much recently with a certain incident that happened here on campus that I’m sure everyone is familiar with. The point is, Yik Yak and platforms like it are popular because it allows people to feel like they are free from the constraints that come with having your identity displayed publicly as well as it gives them freedom from responsibility.

When people see your face, know your name, and can find out anything about you just by following you on Twitter or any social networking site where your thoughts and feelings are not separate from your identity, you are responsible (unless you don’t care) for what you say or what kinds of pictures you post because you never know who might see it. A potential job or internship or graduate school you’re interested in might see something that you post online publicly and think it is inappropriate. Things like that can really mess up your chances of getting a certain position or gaining admittance into your dream program. This is why, I think, social platforms like Yik Yak have become so popular among college students across the country. College students are able to say anything they want (within reason, of course) and they don’t have to worry about the consequences that come with saying something completely racist or something that is hurtful to someone else.

I only downloaded Yik Yak because a friend told me that I should check it out. Me being curious about the craze over this application, I put it on my phone and immediately became one with the thoughts of the people around me. While there were some yaks that were funny, there were also ones that were mean, racist, and a lot of them had a similar tone. You would think most of the things posted on Yik Yak were written by the same person because quite a lot of them are similar in topic and they seem to play off of what other people are saying. This reminds me of conformity, the tendency for one’s beliefs to be affected by prevailing beliefs. I can’t say that people are automatically influenced by other yaks because I’m not there whenever people upvote a particular yak or post one that is similar to the one that they liked. I do, however, believe that there is a sense of public compliance. This term falls under the umbrella of conformity and basically, what I think happens is: people may not really agree with what’s being said but they’ll go along with the popular opinion because they get rewarded with upvotes and while this kind of compliance isn’t public (in terms of your identity being known), the ability to leave comments to interact with other people makes it public enough. A few weeks ago, one of my friends showed me one of the yaks she posted and it was about Rutgers. She thought she had came up with something really witty but when I asked her if she really disliked Rutgers, she told me no and that she only posted it because everyone else was doing it. Take from that what you will but, ultimately, anonymous compliance exists.