A friend just sent me a link to his blog. He’s been writing wildly candid stories for more than a year – all under the thin veil of anonymity.

It’s clear from his writing that anonymity affords him a great freedom – the freedom from pressure. No pressure to impress. No pressure to self-serve. No pressure to be consistent.

This freedom improves how his writing flows. His stories don’t feel contrived in the slightest. It’s rare to see a non-anonymous blog that flows so freely. To be sure, they exist, and that’s what makes a great blog. But it’s rare.

So despite also being a bit of an experiment in free-form blogging, this post kind of begs the question, can anonymity improve blogging?

To be sure, anonymity can lead to fuckwadism. But I see great value in it, as least for those first few steps into the deeply open world of the web.