Anonymous apps are so scary, they might just put us in touch with who we really are. 
Tavis Coburn
You're a person known only to yourself. The fears and loves and hates that most define you are often the things you cannot discuss openly. But sometimes we need to let others see our secret selves—without revealing our true identities. A wave of new applications aims to help us do just that.
It’s a renaissance, of sorts. We flirted with real names online, but our love of anonymity, one of the Internet’s best and most resilient features, is suddenly born again. All it needs to reach adulthood is a higher calling.
Apps like Secret, Wut, Confide, Whisper, and Yik Yak all share a common goal: to let us broadcast to the people around us without exposing that we’re the ones talking. They suck up your contacts or check your location, then pass your messages along to friends and nearby listeners, stripped of identifying information. The format is new, sure, but the experience itself is a throwback.
The services that made it possible for us to post online in the first place—IRC, Usenet, chat rooms—are all friends to the pseudonymous. Websites like craigslist and 4chan also embraced anonymity to great effect. Protest movements sprang from it. Commenters used it to attack and despoil.
Maybe it was because of the nasty comments or the realization that it’s hard to trust a stranger, but in recent years we’ve sought identity online. Facebook and Google both tried to shoehorn us into real names. And on mobile there’s never really been a widespread channel for speaking to a broad audience without tying your message to some identity.
Recently, though, something has become apparent: Contrary to our hopes, real names haven’t actually made online discussions more civil—or even more trustworthy.
And young as they are, anonymous apps have begun to earn our grudging trust. We learned on Secret that Nike was laying off much of its hardware team and that Google+ boss Vic Gundotra was looking for a new job—and we heard it well before the traditional media reports. The comfort of anonymity, it turns out, can foster truth. Still, these new services scare the bones out of people. CNN, the AP, and The New York Times have all written hand-wringing fright pieces. Über-investor Marc Andreessen wrote that they’re “designed to encourage negative behavior, tearing people down.”
Sure. People talk a lot of shit. But maybe that’s because the platforms they’re using aren’t about anything. Anonymity works when it serves a larger purpose. That’s why capital-A Anonymous is an effective protest organization and why you’ll buy something based on a craigslist post. We like to see a reason behind masked identity.
Whisper, Wut, Secret, and their peers are upending this structure. They’re anonymity in the service of anonymity. For a public weary of being tracked, this has been a mostly pleasant development. But that’s a short-term boon; if the apps want to continue to thrive, they’ll need more of a mission than just spreading tantalizing information.
Here’s a secret: If Internet history is a guide, one of these apps will become greater than itself. It will find a cause to serve—maybe something as simple as community. When that happens, these apps will cease to be scary. Instead of working for anonymity, they’ll be putting anonymity to work.
