The Multiple Author Quandary
I was looking around the blogsphere when I ran across a post asking about the ethical issues of setting up fake accounts on blogs. That one was specifically about setting up a news blog to look like it had multiple authors so that the blog would be picked up by Google News. I don’t plan on doing that, but I have pulled a few similar tricks in my time.
Back when Waffles Radio was a blog for my radio show, I would leave comments as other people so it looked like people were listening and leaving comments. Some of these comments were based on people I know in the real world where I would write what I’m pretty sure they would have said. But there was one alias I used, Steve, that was totally fabricated.
I’ve also been paid by a few people to make posts on a forum so that it would look populated. The posts were real, but when I fulfilled my end of the contract I stopped visiting.
It reminds me of a story I read in my social psychology and sociology of sport classes last semester that goes something like this:
A man has reached the last chapter of his life, and is starting to wonder what in direction his life will go. Then one day, a group of children starts to play in the street outside of his house. After a few days, he realizes that this is one of the happiest times that he now has.
He calls the children over and offers to pay them each $1 for everyday that they play outside of his house. The children accept, and everyone is happy with the situation.
But as time goes on, the man starts to run out of money. He tells the children that he will only be able to pay them 75¢ a day. The children aren’t exactly happy with the pay cut, but they’re still getting paid to play.
More time passes, and the man runs even lower on funds. He tells the children that he’ll only be able to pay them 50¢ now. The children are sort of annoyed, but they accept it and go on.
Even more time passes, and the man has run extremely low on money. But he still wants the joy of watching the children play. So he calls them over, explains his situation, and tells them that they will only be paid 25¢ for playing.
But this time, the children do not accept his offer. They decide to go play somewhere else.
I think there are two things to take away from this story. The first is that paying somebody for doing something that they would be doing anyway tends to take away from the joy of the activity in the first place (hence why I couldn’t even tell you what the fora were that I was paid to post in). The second is that times sure have changed since that story was first told. If that happened today the police would become involved to see if that guy is a pedophile.
With some things, I wonder why I would want you to think there were multiple authors anyway. For example, my stuff over at Sapid Existence was all done by me, and I want the credit for it. Even if I am sharing with an imaginary person, I’m still sharing and I don’t like that. But also, I wonder why having multiple authors makes anything more reputable. Sure, there are most likely different opinions. But I’ve also known some people who have such similar thought processes that it’s scary.
Are two authors better than one? Would you take anything on this site more or less seriously if you thought it was written by different people?
Please let me know in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
@A User - In this case, it did. I know that it won’t be the case for everyone.
Because being paid to post on forums completely obliviates the wonderful bliss of posting experienced otherwise.