Read a rant & rave section of almost any craigslist city and it will show clearly how many truly sick individuals we have running loose.

I have to say I love the concept of being “outed” as a feminist or abortion-rights supporter. As if those are such essentially corrupt and/or scandalous political philosophies! Isn’t it sad, Janice, to reflect on our lives and to realize how very, pathetically little it takes to make us seem really out there as feminist women?

Dr. Righteous, thanks for your comment and explanation of the two-blogs concept. Yes, training commenters on a blog is much like training dogs or children: reward the good behavior, don’t reward or reinforce the bad behavior. Every time I ban some jerk, I get more comments because the lurkers appreciate a little police action when someone is making the space unsafe (or is just being obnoxious.) My commenters come here for a conversation, not to be attacked or insulted by some a-hole.

I’ve only had a few real trolling attempts on my blogs, mostly coming from my more political posts regarding abortion rights or feminism. Those subjects get some trolls all hot and bothered.

I mostly get threats that these commenters will “out” me to my university. Trolls of the world? My dean and chair both know about all of my blogging identities and are cool with that. Still, if someone threatened my family, I’d be talking to the police and post-haste because there are, sadly, far too many crazies in this world to take that lightly.

Righteous Rants is for being mad when I want to be without appearing unprofessional to patients and colleagues. I can bust managed care’s chops without worrying about getting booted off panels. I can muse on the therapist’s experience without spilling my counter-transferential guts all over my reputation. Also I can, if I wish, get real radical without freaking out my practice partners or my more politically conservative patients. Best of all, I can use cuss-words.

I have a personal one which is anonymous and mainly serves the function of (a) giving me an identity under which I can respond on a personal, “me, too”, level to others’ posts, and (b)a personal diary of sorts which serves as a nice vent for me. There are also a couple of pseudonymous small special-interest/hobby blogs. Patients don’t need to know anything personal about the therapist, so these are pseudonymous more to protect them from boundary breaches than to protect me from the general public.

Finally, I have one under my real name, at which readership is mostly limited to colleagues, students, and patients. There, I stick pretty close to the persona I present at the office–which is to say, it’s never personal. This is the only one that connects to Twitter or Facebook. The Facebook connection is one-way: I cross-post blog entries to Facebook, but do not have a Facebook badge on the blog. Tweets go to the blog, so I never Tweet anything personal.

Isis recommends that anonymous blogs each have their own blogger accounts and e-mail addresses, used ONLY for that identity. This not only makes it harder for people to track you down, but also helps prevent cross-contamination between identities.

I would never “friend” anyone I only “knew” through my pseudonymous blogs because, obviously, that would blow my anonymity. Nor would I ever friend someone who was just a commenter: S/he’d need a well-established track record of hir own blog and I’d need to have interacted with her/him there under my own name for months, at least. After which, they’d have to be Facebook friends and Twitter contacts for a good while longer before I’d ever consider meeting in person.

Ironically, the only one of my blogs which has attracted an Anonymous troll is the one in my name, and he is someone I know professionally. At work, he is always polite to my face but makes snarky comments about me behind my back. He tries to put other people up to calling me out. If he is at all typical of the Anonymous subspecies of troll, then we might theorize that trollism is primarily about hostility and cowardice more than it is about particular political or religious views.

I only publish my troll’s comments when he actually addresses the topic (a rare event, but it does happen) in an appropriate manner (even rarer). Red herrings, straw men, and similar intellectually dishonest tactics get deleted. And I only reply when we have some point of near-agreement (rarer still!) that I can use as a springboard, because of course a fight is what these jerks want. In other words, I try to be careful to reinforce behaviors I want repeated, and not to reinforce unwanted behaviors.

Some pseudonymous bloggers have told me that they’re still quite circumspect with respect to what they blog about their work environments, and I think that caution is appropriate. I’ve noticed that male bloggers sometimes write freely about their family members, without considering that their family members probably don’t enjoy the same personal safety that they do as adult men.

I just want people to consider some of the worst-case scenarios that could happen when you open an electronic portal onto your life and perhaps that of your family life, too.

Losers.

Susurro, I hear you on the “targeted trolling.” As you say, it can happen whether you’re “out” or using a pseudonym–people get your number and they just won’t let go!