On the Idiocy of Anonymity

by Tom Roberts, April 2017

The spread of anonymity is closely related to the spread of irresponsibility. Being—or remaining—anonymous allows one to avoid being associated with whatever is being presented. Being an unnamed individual within a mob allows one to pretend to remain unstained by the mob’s actions. Being the unnamed source of a rumor allows one to escape from its consequences.

Of course there are certain cases where anonymity is required for the continued survival of the speaker, such as when encountering oppressive institutions. I am not talking about that sort of survival-oriented anonymity. I am talking about the unintentional or irrational omitting of personal identities from innocent photos and even websites.

Did you ever visit a farm’s website, as I have, and read about all their great products, where they sell, find beautiful photos of baby animals or rows of gorgeous crops, but nowhere can you find out who the heck these people are? Are they ashamed of what they look like? Or how their names are spelled? Are they in the witness protection program? Are they introverts who wish to try to hide from the public while promoting their own work? Do they think the farm is real, but the farmers are not? Is the whole website nothing but a scam?

Such websites never fail to amaze me. Most, I assume, are put up by honest and hard working folks who are proud of their farm, yet want to keep the spotlight off of themselves. I feel that this strategy is a mistake, since it leaves the viewer with a sense of hollowness by presenting the farm without the farmers. An artist and their art are not as separable as one would think. The same farm run by other folks would not be the same farm. The farmers and their farm are a single ecological entity, and it is folly to try to promote one part while obfuscating the other. Farmers who want to promote their farm need to stand in front of their farm stating clearly and proudly “This is our work. We did this!”.

And on a vaguely related note…

A related peeve concerning anonymity is the lack of captions or descriptions of any kind on photographs that are presented to the public. Again, I am not talking here about artistic photography, most of which will indeed stand on its own sans explanation—hence the artistry. What I am pointing to here is photos that are intended to perform the function of elucidating other content.

These may appear in a website or on a Facebook page, and presumably their purpose is to show, promote or explain something. However, many fail to perform this function completely because of the silence of meaning that surrounds them. At best they fall into the category of “pretty picture” or “another shiny thing” while the story that they once spoke loudly to the photographer remains unheard. I find such photos extremely frustrating to look at precisely because I understand that such photos did have a story behind them, often an intriguing one, but the picture now stands alone, abandoned, naked of most of its meaning for the majority of its viewers. The loss of these stories seems akin to a fire in a library that no one cared to extinguish. Life could be so much richer if folks would just tell us what we are looking at. So we can perhaps understand in the way someone else did.

So please, go back and identify who you are, add a photo or two or yourselves, even if you’re just sitting in a chair. Bring the imagined image of you into reality for your viewers. Show ‘em who made this farm what it is. Go back and look at all those textless photos you’ve posted. Half the story is there, now you need to tell the other half, perhaps the more interesting part that shows your depth of understanding of what the photo displays. Become the teacher who knows best what the picture can show and explain that to your viewers. There is no better promotion.

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