anonymity

I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

But people in masks were always assholes. It was a scientific law. Give someone anonymity and all social niceties break down. The Internet had proven that.

I am free, anonymous man. My flights and falls occurred while I was wearing a magical cap of of invisibility, my successes and sins sailed on in invisible corvettes, and films and books flew off into the abyss in invisible strongboxes. I am free, anonymous.

Online life is so delicious because it is socializing with almost no friction.

Many of the bravest never are known, and get no praise. [But]that does not lessen their beauty...

She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.

This was his first trip on the Ossifar Distana, his first real splash in life. Look what it got him. Mister Smiff liked anonymity. He kept a low profile, often traveling under assumed names, claiming to be anything from a banker to a (very) successful life insurance salesman. Heâ__d never broken the law, at least not irreparably. He was quite generous, well liked, sponsoring many charities anonymously â_ which is why it was so surprising to find him floating face down in the private spa in his apartment, murdered. He had been murdered, unless it was a freak shaving accident. Those old razors werenâ__t called cut-throats for nothing. Yikes.

Modernism isn't a design ethos any more, it's an economy of scale, and a marketing tool to sell the ordinary as something special, the sexless as erotic. A technological device without a specific, personalized identity has a subtext: it asserts the value of instrumentality. Its design is a reflection of its role... The anonymity of these objects is part of what they are: interchangeable commodities whose uniqueness in so far as they possess any is created by what is done with them. Function is an identity. And that identity is something we are encouraged to incorporate into our perception of self, that anonymity is proposed as something to emulate. Whimsy and uniqueness are indulgences.

The wise oyster stays in its shell.

Men like that _ when they know they won__ be found out _ they will do anything.

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

Who are you?""No one of consequence.""I must know.""Get used to disappointment.

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody__ going to know whether you did it or not.

Anonymity beats fame. One cannot undo fame.

I simply decided once and for all to liberate myself from the anxiety of notoriety and the urge to be a part of that circle of successful people, those who believe they have won who-knows-what

We don__ necessarily need to know each other__ name, age, profession, drug of choice, childhood trauma or recent tragedy to understand what pain feels like and offer comfort. We are strangers drawn together by a shared desire for lasting peace.