Bukit Kiara, 10 Feb
I must confess that at times I try to drift away from the cyber world. Blogging has always been toxic from the start but lately it has become really unhealthy! Bicycling provides a good means to help me escape and that's what I have been doing quite religiously with some friends these past couple of weeks, as some of you on my FB and Instagram would have noticed.
But over the Chinese New Year, as I was riding the Kiara Hills among the monkeys, I bumped into cyber "friends and followers" who were also sweating it out in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle, who also happened to not share some of my views on politics. One elderly chap said he could not stomach the fact that I was actually defending the Prime Minister on my blog! His idea of consistency and integrity (on my part) was for me to attack Najib Razak the same way I had attacked Pak Lah when he was PM! I tried explaining but of course he - like others like him - wouldn't listen. At least the young walking mom, even though she held different views and beliefs, thanked me for the couple of times I had taken the trouble to respond to her comments!
Thankfully, in real life we tend to be more agreeable to disagree ...
Because in real life, you have to be yourself and you deal with real people. In social media and the cyber world, anonymity is providing unscrupulous people a perfect cover to behave like the proverbial monkey. Some of us have long forbidden visitors to our blogs from commenting as Anonymous. A. Kadir Jasin, for example, requires his commenters to use a moniker. Of course, a nickname doesn't give away the real identity of the person who is leaving the comment but at least the blog handler doesn't have to deal with scores of Anons at the same time!
Me, I've allowed people to comment on my blog as Anons because I understood that there were some people who just could not afford their real identities to be blown. These people would leave intelligent and useful information, too. But in this cybertrooper and RedBeanArmy era, we have too many monkeys with fancy keyboards making use of the cover provided by Anonymous to spam your space.
So, what I will do is I will stop publishing comments by Anonymous. I don't need to. In the space of a week (my last posting was Feb 2) my comment box has been inundated by hundreds - yes, hundreds! - of "Anons". I don't think that's being fair to me so I'm doing a Kadir Jasin on you Anons and I will tell you: Leave a nickname, a moniker, a pen name ... or don't leave a comment!
Better still, leave your own real name when leaving comments.
What are you afraid of?
