Truth Lets You Send Anonymous Texts | TechCrunch.

Just in case you have something you need to say, but lack the courage to let anybody know you’re the one saying it. Now you can send an anonymous note to someone without having to worry whether they’ll recognize your handwriting.

I suppose it was inevitable. We need to be heard, after all, and some of us want to say things we don’t have to be accountable for.

At best, I can see this app used as a venue for harmless flirting–a conveyor of secret admirer notes for the twenty-first century. Of course, one person’s harmless flirting can quickly become another’s hostile work environment, especially when there’s no accountability.

At worst–well, this just seems like a tool tailor-made for cowards and bullies.

I suppose one could argue that this app, and others like it, make it easier to speak truth to power. One could use such an app to send anonymous texts to one’s boss, or one’s preacher, or one’s senator to demand accountability for some transgression, real or imagined.

But how likely is it that the powerful individual in question, if they were inclined to commit the transgression in the first place, will change their behavior because of an anonymous text? And how much more likely is it that tools like this will be used to commit transgressions rather than punish them?

It’s much more likely, I think, that the obnoxious adolescents (and not-so-adolescents) who now troll comment sections will use this app to troll phones. And we won’t be able to simply shake our heads and click away from them.

Seriously, if you have something to say, have the courage to attach your name to it. If you think you need to say it anonymously, think twice about whether you need to say it at all.

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