There is a certain obsession with anonymity in recent years that has led to a new trend online – the anonymous blogger.

There is an obvious plus side to this – saying whatever, however, to whoever - without the concerns of a future employee, old school friend or even parents reading it. But is that a good thing?

Unfortunately there’s been a recent backlash to anonymous blogging, due to an ongoing battle between industry leaders and smaller minority groups. These smaller groups, most likely on the inside of the advertising/marketing industry, write insulting, ruthless and at times heavily emotional comments usually at the expense of their competition. 

The irony is that anonymous bloggers are now turning off their “hide my identity” button to participate in the debate. The Communications Council got the ball rolling by starting the conversation on anonymous blogging and trying to ban trade press from publishing such comments.

The argument is that perhaps rather than banning, we should moderate what is considered appropriate or even enforce a type of registration.

From a personal point of view, I think I sit on the fence on this issue. The argument of free speech is an obvious but boring one. More importantly I see it like this – if I asked for someone’s opinion (face to face) on a recent ad campaign that I worked on and they didn’t like it, it’s unlikely they would curse and shout profanities. So why do it online?

From a professional point of view I think the more people who do it anonymously, the less credible each unconstructive comment becomes. So there aren’t any winners because the commentators are left anonymous and useless and those who the comments are directed to are left aggravated and annoyed.

So what’s the outcome? I think there is a lot of work to do to find a happy medium between healthy constructive opinions and low blows to the competition. However the recent trend in the media appears to be pro-anonymous blogging.

Let’s look at it this way – Julian Assange has a lot of supporters, especially within our industry, but where would he be if it wasn’t for his “anonymous” helpers?