A normal person, given anonymity and an audience, becomes a thoroughly obnoxious one.
The webcomic Penny Arcade stated it as an equation on a green blackboard in a strip titled Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies) on 19 March 2004: Normal Person plus Anonymity plus Audience equals Total F*****d. It reportedly referred to behaviour in online games such as Unreal Tournament. John Suler's academic account of the same pattern, the Online Disinhibition Effect, appeared in the same year.
In practice
- A polite player becomes abusive in a voice chat of strangers who cheer him on.
- A mild colleague turns vicious in an anonymous company forum, where a crowd reads every post.
- Possible explanations
- The equation names two conditions. Anonymity removes the cost of being identified, and an audience supplies the reward of being noticed, so the pair encourages performing for onlookers rather than conversing. Researchers working on the SIDE Model make a related point, that anonymous people tend to follow the norms of the group whose identity is salient to them, so an audience that rewards cruelty would be expected to produce it.
- In its favour
- Research on online comments supports the role of both ingredients. Rosner and Kramer's 2016 study found that anonymity and the tone of the surrounding comments both affected aggressive language.
- Against it
- It is a joke rather than a measurement, and it assigns no weight to its three terms. The research it is usually cited alongside finds that the result depends on the norms of the setting, so the same conditions produce kindness in some forums and cruelty in others.
- Standing
- A webcomic's version of the Online Disinhibition Effect. The original name uses a stronger word, masked here.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind