There are times when I think that everyone who steps out of line on the Interweb should be — totally unexpectedly, caught red-handed — called on the carpet. I mean, the full deal: whether you’re lying about who or what you are, using the 0s and 1s to create a full-body mask for yourself, or perhaps you’re just being an asshole, stirring up negativity because you can. Maybe you’re leaving posts on someone’s blog that disagree with them, and you take it a bit too far, make it personal.

Whatever. I think everyone should have to work fast food or retail when they’re young. I think everyone should have to wait tables or bartend at least once. And I think everyone should have their online identity revealed at least once, if only to show that it can happen, so maybe you ought to be a little nicer.

I’m not anonymous on the web. Not here, certainly and perhaps a bit stupidly. Not in comments — at least, no more than a total stranger can be anonymous — or emails. And honestly, if you want to know about me and have enough brain to read between the lines, when appropriate, I’m out there. Google it.

So, am I using this moment to pull a “holier than thou” on the majority of the web? Damn skippy I am.

Okay, not really. I mean, not entirely. Some of the people linked in my little sidebar of joy are anonymous, and I don’t give them grief, right? Why? Because they’re not misusing their nameless/facelessness. They’re telling stories — and well — and don’t want to draw undue attention to either themselves or the subjects of their stories. I can dig that. For the same reason, I’ve psuedonym’d someone Bree, and stopped well short of telling stories involving a few people who value their privacy.

And I don’t care if you disagree with my politics or my religious beliefs or my choice in friends or my taste in music. That’s the joy of being human; we’ve all got opinions, and odds are good mine won’t match yours. Your loss.

No, seriously. You can either agree with me, or you can go to hell and burn for eternity.

That’s just crazy talk! Sounds weird when it’s not your god saying it, yeah?

But really. Me <- right. You <- with me or wrong.

But if you expect me to give your opinion any weight, why don’t you have the balls to tell me whose opinion this is? Are all opinions created equal? Fuck, no. And floating at the bottom of the cesspoll of taste and preference is that of the man too afraid to admit to the world who he or she is.

Even a full revelation of name isn’t always enough. And this is a large part, I think, of why I’m not afraid to use my name and photo and whatnot: revenge very rarely travels through optic fiber.

It’s akin to prank calling, only you’re taking even the distance one step further by completely removing the human element from the interaction altogether. For all you know, that email or comment — hell, this post — were conceived and created by ghosts in the machine, a Turing test gone haywire. You can’t hear my voice, you can’t see my face — how do you know I’m an “I” and not a we, or an it? And I can assume the same of you: whatever you are, you’re separated from me by glass and light beams and capacitors and a motherboard and a PC card and a network of wires and cables and fiber.

Which makes it pretty unbrave of me to call you a shithead. Hey, what are you gonna do? Punch me? Spit on me? If I want, I can prevent you from ever responding by simply never reading your emails and blocking your comments. Especially if I don’t use my Insomniactive email (which is intentionally easy to trace to me) but rather a hotmail or yahoo account. What are you gonna do? Tell your mommy?

It’s this kind of thinking that has led to a very Wild West feel to the Interweb these days. And occasionally, you see the web live up to it’s name, constricting and tangling around someone who has woven him- or herself into a corner. But more often than not, it’s more of a do-as-you-wish atmosphere, leading to verbal assaults from the shadows and thievery justified by as lack of loss or materialism.

The one thing that the web is lacking — not missing, as I know that it’s out there, but not enough to complete the metaphor — is vigilantes. The guys on the white horses but wearing black, of dubious character and probably carrying more than a fair share of skeletons in the closet, riding from town to town and meting out justice the old-fashioned way, the right way, karma given form and substance.

Seriously, if you’re gonna tell me I’m a sinner, don’t you imagine Jesus would have the balls to say it to my face? If it’s not worth taking claim, is it worth even doing in the first place?