Anonymous Comments

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Rob, Welcome to the show.What's on your mind? Thanks? Thanks
taking my call. Yeah, Ijust heard your comment about post an anonymous
all line and you feel like thatleaves the content that we don't need.
But if I asked, how isthat any difference than voting, So voting,
you know, you'll want people toknow what you vote as maybe because
of your business, or your familyor or I just I think it probably

(00:24):
if you're if you're going to sayI don't want people to vote here closer
animus online, you're taking a lotof opinions away that people would be scared
to talk. Yeah, yeah,no. And this is why like Twitter
and Elon, he was like hewanted to get bots out. He didn't
say he wanted anonymous accounts done.Uh, but this is why it's kind
of become a cesspool. And I'lltell you how it's different, Rob,

(00:46):
at least from my perspective. I'mwilling to accept other opinions on this,
but my opinion is it's a cesspool. People are not afraid to say stuff
that is incredibly outlandish and will becompletely unchecked if they post anonymously. Online.
Voting is an anonymous thing. Ifyou decide to make it anonymous.
I mean, we used to allkind of be anonymous in that way,

(01:07):
right We didn't talk about politics andour political beliefs, even with some of
our close friends and family, becausewe respected the fact that we may not
agree on this and it's none ofour business what other people think about this.
That's changed in the last fifteen twentyyears. And I understand that,
and that's no problem for me.I just feel like the contention isn't necessarily
with people in their backgrounds and politicalideologies. It's that you can go online,

(01:30):
not have to be held accountable forwhat you said, and then get
the heck out of Dodge without havingto listen to anybody else's opinion. I
could go online right now, andI could use the name Matt Case on
social media accounts, and no nobodyhas that name on social media right now,
so I can go to I canjust make myself Matt Case on social
media, be a completely anonymous,you know, profile, picture and all
this stuff, and I could doall that right and I could go and

(01:53):
post something insane like the Atlanta Hawksare going to win the NBA Championship next
year, and before anybody can say, why do you think that is,
or come at me and tell methat I'm stupid, or tell me all
the ways that I'm wrong. Ijust log off and I don't pay any
attention to it. And now they'reall arguing amongst each other. It's a
sesspool. If that was me,if I did that under the Emery song
Er account, that's going to hurtmy name, It's going to hurt my

(02:15):
brand, it's going to hurt myemployer potentially. So you know, I
use an innocent one about a basketballopinion, insert any sort of legitimate news
issue, any sort of issue amongstAmerican voters right now, I take an
incredibly stark and maybe radical perspective onsomething, and then I would be held
accountable if I use it under myname. If I do that completely anonymously,

(02:38):
You're right, I'd be a lotless shit. I'd be a lot
more likely to share it. Butit also doesn't make that a good idea
or healthy in that regard. Youknow what I'm saying, Like, if
you and me were having a conversation, Rob, you know that opinion came
out of my mouth. Now onsocial media, you don't have to worry
about that. It's just like Icould just say this and nobody knows who
I am, and that I thinkis somewhat damaging to the way that we
talk to each other. Hey,well, let's just see one example.

(02:59):
Let's just say there was a womanthat believed in emotion writes polar opposite of
her brother who is a Catholic priest, and they have a great relationship.
They you know, share things online, they share family pictures. Well,
she doesn't really want to have thatconversation at Thanksgiving with her brother and get
into that debate with her, butshe still wants to be able to put

(03:20):
her opinion out there, and theonly she could do it is do an
anonymous post. So, okay,look at it. Yeah no, but
Rob at the same time, it'slike, okay, so what's more important
to you? Right? Do youdo you want to you do you not
want to have your political views exposedwhile still having your voice out there?
Because until recently, I mean,you can talk about like silence do good

(03:40):
in some of the anonymous writings ofguys in the past that literally putting stuff
in the newspaper was the only wayyou could communicate with people on a on
a grand scale. But nowadays likeI I to me, I'm looking at
that and it's just like, well, if she has a hard time with
her family specifically and not wanting tohave that discussion, I would hope that

(04:02):
her family could understand that she doesn'tneed to talk about that with them and
she can still have her own personalopinions and be respected when she goes into
an online forum with other people.I feel like there's a way that you
can have that conversation and that behealthy than her having to have like a
burner account somewhere so she can justsay stuff that's on her mind. I
feel like that again, is likeshe's living two different lifestyles essentially, one

(04:27):
in front of the family and onebehind closed doors, and that to me
is just it's unnecessary. I thinkwe should be able to talk to each
other about even not talking right,Like I should be able to talk to
you Rob and say, hey,when we're together, let's just not talk
about this one thing that we disagreeon, and you can make that understanding,
and then they can also have theability to respect your perspectives when you
post that stuff on the internet.Does that make sense? Am I being

(04:48):
clear? I? I don't knowif I am you are And I understand
about the bots, but I thinkthis could really be looked at both ways.
And I just I think post anonymouslycan be beneficial for for a lot
of people for different reasons, andnot all of those reasons are are bad
reasons. No, Rob, youknow what, I totally understand. And

(05:09):
if there was no meritor, employeris you know, your employers are the
or the other thing. You know, people have to after you know,
all of our stuff is on onsocial media, and even if you're on
some kind of you know, obscurepolitical website, there's always a chance your
boss, your coworking with you,and it gets spread around. So it

(05:30):
really does It really is a goodtool for someone to be able to post
their opinion, just like in thevoting boot without having to be scared of
saying what they believe. Like Isaid, it can definitely go full way.
Yeah no, and Rob, Iappreciate you calling it. Yeah no,
thanks for calling in. Did Okay? So here's where I'm at.
I understand what he's saying, andI understand the merit that he's saying that

(05:53):
it would have At the same time, if you are that passionate about something
that you want to say it regardswardless of the consequences. Then I think
you should be able to say thatwith your name attached to it and explain
why you feel that way or understandwhat might come with that. My understanding
is there are people that have workedin the seat that I'm sitting in right

(06:13):
now that had that happen to thembecause they spoke up about something they felt
strongly about. I'm kind of theopposite. I want things to be as
genuine as possible, but because Iwant to make sure that I don't make
a mistake by posting something that willbe misconstrued or put me in trouble,
I am incredibly careful about the waythat I say things on the internet.
It allows me to be responsible forwhat I'm saying and how I feel,

(06:38):
and maybe decide this isn't a battleI'm that's worth picking right now. It's
not worth fighting this battle right now. Those are lessons I've had to learn
the hard way. So whether ornot there's a specific topic that you think
would get you in trouble but youstill want to have your opinion on it,
I'm not so sure it's healthy tojust make up fake Burner anonymous account

(07:00):
to say these things, even thoughanybody could say anything they don't mean anonymously
and not have to answer for it. You know what I'm saying, Like,
who's to say any of this isreally like legitimately anybody's belief And that's
just I don't know. There's somethingthat bothers me when an anonymous source runs
to somebody and says, well,this, this, this and this,
and I'm just like, you can'tsay that without being held accountable in some

(07:21):
cases. But the only reason thatthe media got that information is because they
kept that person anonymous to protect them. And to me, that's just that's
the cesspool part of what we're talkingabout. If everybody was accountable for the
words that they said, just likewe would be if we were all in
the same room, which is howI try to live my life, is
if we're all sitting in the sameroom. I mean, I don't have
a DJ name. My name ismy real name. You can find me

(07:42):
anywhere. The idea of like beingdisliked by something you said is just a
risk of saying something controversial, Andif you're willing to take that risk,
then I respect that and I'm morepower to you as long as you're not
being disrespectful. At the same time, there are going to be people like
myself. In some cases that battleis not worth fighting. I don't know.
We'll talk more about this if you'dlike for UR two five, five,
eight, eleven, ten, NewsRadio eleven ten KFA B. Emery

(08:05):
sunger on News Radio eleven ten KFAB. Chris, thanks for the call
today. What do you think aboutthe anonymous discussion we're having? Hey,
how you doing good? Listen.I understand your position, and I don't
know if I called the position,but certainly when it's not anonymous, you
really need to make people are goingto make better choices when it comes to

(08:28):
given opinions. I don't think yourposition is you know, the Nikky Haley
route, certainly, and everybody needsto be uh, you know, it
can't be anonymous. Yeah. No, I'm not saying that that shouldn't be
an option. I'm just saying thatthat is part of the demise of civil
conversation in our country. That's allI'm saying. Absolutely, And here's some

(08:50):
here's a difficult part something I wentthrough because I think, you know,
some people that don't have anything tolose are going to act one way social
media and the other people kind ofare going to be held accountable by well
if they want a business or thingslike that. Now, about ten years
ago, I got in a situationwhere with a personal with personal account sharing

(09:18):
my opinions ended up with me havingto start my business all over from scratch
again, because idiots out there wantto take things to the next to the
next level, whether it's coming toyour house, doxing you, or causing
trouble with your business. I don'thave money to get a retainer for a
lawyer to some kiddy saying they're tryingto argue whether the writer things like that.

(09:41):
So you know, if you havesomething to lose like that, I
mean, look at what happened totractor supply. I mean you got to
give a guy as some cahonies tohave the opinions he had on such a
scale. Of course he's also gotlawyers to back and does right it help
yourself? Yeah? Yeah, ithelps when you can defend you yourself legally.
Yeah, So it's nice. Ido have like a political account and

(10:07):
you know, obviously there's still opportunitiesand I don't really hide who I am
necessarily, but you can always findout. But it's nice to be able
to get your opinion out. Andwhen you get into uh Twitter, ex
whatever, and you start having conversations, you'll learn a lot yourself. And
you want to have the ability touh debate and without being harassed or docs

(10:33):
or what have you. So it'sit's really kind of freeing. I'm not
embarrassed of any of my opinions orconvictions, but I don't want to deal
with no and Chris, Chris,you're not You're not the person Chris that
I'm really talking about necessarily because you'redoing it because you want to protect your
identity while also having these conversations knowingwhat the conversation likely is going to lead

(10:58):
to. At the same time,there are people that just abuse the ability
to have those conversations and just getas radical as possible, even if they
don't necessarily believe that, and theydon't care about listening to anybody else's opinions
on that, you know what Imean. And that's more of my issue
with the ability for people to beas anonymous as they want with these burner
accounts, because it creates an environmentwhere you don't you're not held accountable not

(11:20):
just for talking to people right fornot just to saying something that could initiate
a bad interaction, but you're alsoon the hook to listen to people and
understand what their opinions are. Andwhen you're anonymous or you're even on social
media at all and your yourself,you're not on the hook for that.
You can literally run away from theconversation at any point and no longer keep

(11:41):
it, and that, to meis the unhealthy part of all the stuff
that we're talking about. I appreciatethe call, Chris, thanks for listening
to it. I appreciate to thankyou. Hey, no problem. I
want to talk change the topics completelyto the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court
have had very important decisions. AndI know that this is a Friday and
we'll get to the fun stuff,but I want to educate you, just
like I got educated talking to aSupreme Court expert about some of the decisions

(12:05):
and opinions of the Supreme Court thatwere made this week. And we'll do
that next on news Radio eleven toten kfab