On Oct. 12, Gawker writer Adrian Chen published a lengthy article outing 49-year-old Michael Brutsch as the infamous Reddit troll and moderator Violentacrez, who created, contributed to or moderated threads such as “Chokeabitch,” “Rapebait,” “Hitler,” “Jewmeria,” “Beatingwomen” and “Jailbait.” The last of these threads, which Brutsch and thousands of others used to share provocative photographs of underage girls, drew so much criticism last year that Reddit was forced to shut it down. As the self-described “creepy uncle of Reddit,” Violentacrez used anonymity and “free speech” to promote racism, sexism, violence and myriad other things offensive to the general public.

The massive fallout from Chen’s article included Reddit’s institution of a site-wide ban on Gawker links (although this was later revoked), Brutsch’s termination from his job and Brutsch giving a disturbingly detached interview in which he expressed little remorse for his actions on “Anderson Cooper 360.” The closest that Brutsch comes to expressing regret is noting that his “sort of gallows humor,” which he said played to the “college kids” who frequented Reddit two years ago at the height of his Reddit activity, is no longer appreciated. Summing up the interview, Cooper noted that Brutsch only seemed concerned about his outing’s consequences for himself.

This month has been tough for the hyper-anonymous Internet as a whole. In the same week that Chen outed Brutsch, Jezebel lauded the efforts of a female Redditor who is fighting back against “Creepshots,” a Reddit thread on which anonymous users post photos of women alongside lascivious comments about their bodies, by outing its users. Outing’s effectiveness is proven by the examples of Christopher Bailey, a 35-year-old substitute teacher and CreepShots user in Ohio, and Kody Maxson, a man who harassed 15-year-old Amanda Todd to the point of committing suicide in Vancouver, Canada. Now that their real world identities have been linked to their virtual misdeeds, both men are facing potential legal consequences for their online antics. It turns out that users’ content can be tracked back to them, and ill-advised virtual words and actions can have real world consequences.

These events in the wider world are an opportune moment to consider users’ personal responsibilities in the context of our own Dartmouth-specific Reddit: Bored@Baker. While Bored@Baker’s hyper-anonymous format affords users near-unlimited liberty to troll and eviscerate others, it might be an interesting thought experiment to consider how others’ opinions of you might change if the rest of campus knew the content of your Bored@Baker posts. Could you still look certain people in the eye if they knew the thoughts you’d expressed under the veil of anonymity? And, more importantly, how would you feel about yourself?

Anonymity allows people to give voice to thoughts and opinions that they might not otherwise have the courage to bring into a public forum. The idea that anonymity offers people the comfort to admit and overcome personal shortcomings was the initial rationale for Alcoholics Anonymous’ adoption of anonymity. In some cases, anonymity is a valuable asset that empowers individuals and enriches public discourse.

However, the theory of de-individuation, by which individuals lose self-awareness in groups, applies to an extreme in anonymous group situations. To some people, spaces like Reddit are virtual repositories for a stream of vitriolic, tasteless and borderline illegal content to which they would never put their names in public spaces. In these cases, the separation of words from personalities is tremendously problematic when it allows faceless personas to disseminate material that violates good taste or endangers others. In these cases, it is imperative and necessary to take the comfort of anonymity away from these trolls and virtual menaces when their virtual actions cross the line into having real-world impact on the women — and, in Bailey’s case, underage students — whose photos they post online.

Sadly, while the revelations of these particular men’s identities are victories for their victims, these men are mere drops in the bucket. Given the breadth of the Internet, it would be impossible to monitor all of its content. Moreover, as many Redditors have pointed out in the wake of Brutsch’s outing, the revelation of anonymous users’ identities is both inflammatory and potentially detrimental to their real-world lives. Ultimately, it is only personal responsibility for and awareness of the impact of one’s virtual words that can make the Internet as a whole better for its inhabitants.