This is a question I've had for a while. Why do people post anonymously? Do they really get pleasure from this? Obviously they must, or they wouldn't do it--but doesn't it diminish their pleasure by not being able to take credit for their witty (or snide or whatever) comments?
I was reminded of this question again recently when I saw some particularly nasty comments over at abovethelaw. Wow, this guy (I'm guessing) is impressed with himself:
Now, before you tell me to just stop reading this site if I don't like SEN, let me remind you: this site is designed for me-- for lawyers at top tier firms, accustomed to high quality work and play. It caters to topics I care about and I like that. I like to visit and take a quick break every few hours to enjoy the ATL distractions.
But, take this to heart, Lat, I ONLY like to visit because I can rely on you, a peer with excellent taste and fine judgment, to present something worth my time. If you continue to compromise that essential ingredient, this blog will whither and die or, worse, end up a haven for inane law students and the otherwise unimpressive.
What an insufferable, self-important person. I've rarely seen anything like this. But really, wouldn't the poster get a lot more pleasure out of putting (I'm guessing it's) his name on this? I suppose he doesn't out of fear for his legal career. All of which makes me think it's a good thing we have to own up to our opinions in public every now and then.
Then there's the recent comments about Deana Pollard Sacks' "Intentional Sex Torts" article (also discussed by me here). I actually think the article's pretty mainstream in terms of its torts analysis. (And so does at least one of the comments--who says at least part of the article isn't all that new.) Her primary focus is on people who materially misrepresent their health or marital status. Sounds like pretty straight-forward intentional tort analysis to me. Anyway, there's disturbing stuff in the comments over at abovethelaw.com, like this. If I were Deana, I'd write a separate essay on the responses to her article and what they say about the need for the kind of lawsuits she's talking about.
I wrote much of this post a while ago, but I thought that I'd dust it off and post it when I saw some of the comments over at the Wall Street Journal law blog attacking Dan's post on Latham.
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