[The Lizard of Oz]

Here is a useful piece of framing by the founder of 4chan, as part of an NYT online discussion about whether "social media are making us narcissistic":

Quote:

There is an alternative though. Anonymous or pseudonymous posting can relieve us of the burdens of social media, and the resulting narcissistic behavior.

Many of us have become so concerned with maintaining our carefully crafted online presence that expressing our true feelings and ideas often takes a back seat. Anonymous posting enables honest expression, unencumbered by identity. Narcissism comes about when we hunger for the attention and applause of others. Try taking away your identity and expressing yourself online as a stranger, and what you'll find is a unique sense of community and an outlet that embraces and encourages freedom of thought. This is why I founded and have maintained 4chan for the past decade, because its completely raw and unfiltered discourse is unlike any you can find on the Web.

I wouldn't say narcissists don't exist there, they're certainly as welcome as anyone else. But they'll have to leave their identities -- and the associated baggage -- on their Facebook pages.

Good job fighting fire with fire here. We need to use the contemporary cant idea of "narcissism" which these people take very seriously and turn it around to argue for continued anonymity on the internet.

Because there is nothing -- nothing -- the feminists and their allies want more than the end of online anonymity, so that they can shame others into acquiescence with their evil ideology and destroy the livelihoods and reputations of the non-conforming. We need to fight this with every rhetorical device at our disposal and this is a good one. And we need to cultivate our own allies wherever we can find them.