wowie! kids who frequent the joint and their insight.

We are told what to want, what to think. How to dress, how to act, how to speak.
We are told what we want to do with our lives.
We are given a mask, and we gratefully put it on.
It is insidious.
Most people don't even think about it, and when confronted with the facts, they deny it vehemently, call it paranoia.
The fact is, though, that every facet of our lives has been designed. By the mass media, by propaganda, by a million different influences.
And if we challenge it, we're the villains?

Identity. It is who we are, isn't it. Without it, we'd be nothing but a faceless mass, like ants. That's a good thing, isn't it?
Emergence, though, what about that. A complex system from nothing, order from chaos. Intelligence, purpose from nothing.
Anyone who's been on the *chans will surely see that it is possible for people, although admittedly, online activities will differ from a situation in real life.
Anyway, back on topic.
Identity.
I don't like it.
So I've decided to try and immerse myself in anonymity. Throw my identity away for a while. It's been enjoyable so far. And I've come to some interesting conclusions.

As Nietszche once said, God is dead, and we killed him.
But an addendum is, we've replaced God. With ourselves, and with the mass media and related cultures.
We used to sacrifice lives to the old, fearsome gods. Now we sacrifice life to the Television, that magical alter, in the form of time.
As for making ourselves Gods?
What are Gods, but memes. Perpetuated ideas, concepts, shaped in the minds of people to suit what they require. Guides on how to live our lives. Terrifying, vengeful demons to keep us from straying to evil. We made them in our heads, assigned them identities. They were clearly defined concepts, each of them. Almost elemental.
Now, however, we have killed God. Science has killed God, we live in a clinical, cold world. That's an improvement, of course, I for one have no faith in a fictional deity.
So what could we do, but find a replacement?

We now assign identities to other people. We make them what we need, out of what we know about them. We have friends who are our shoulders to cry on. Friends and family who are our models for life. We each have as many faces as people we meet. We are no longer solid individuals, if we ever were. Now, we are shifting, changing things. We don't even create our own identity, thanks to the media culture of self-improvement and perfection. No. No no no. We try and compose and nurture an image as we would like the world to see us; limited of course by our physical and mental limitations.
So, what's the situation here?

Second-order simulacra. No longer can we tell the difference between the real self and the manufactured identities. Hyperreality, when we don't even know there was a difference. We are creating reality ourselves, now, a fake, plastic one. A simulation of the real thing.
Conflict, for example. We don't even know what real conflict is any more, for the most part. We see it on the television and assign it an identity from what we know.
We are making little clay worlds, and believing in them.
It's horrifying, to me, at least, because by doing so, we have become little clay people. We are so easily used, now.
But what can I do but laugh?

What is an identity?
A name is a nation. A name is an island. A name is everything that divides you from others. A name is a colour that taints everything you say, everything you do.
A name is convincing yourself you are different. A name is being alone in a crowded room. A name is convincing yourself you are singular in a world of billions.
An identity is how they define you. An identity is the way they need you, the way they want you, to be.
An identity is a portrait of you. Everything you are ashamed of, everything you are proud of, everything you don't want to think about, laid bare on the canvas that is you.
I laugh.
Your world is a maze; a labyrinth of divisions, of seperations, of conflicting rules and laws, of names, of slavery.
I am not my name. I am not my identity. I am my ideas. My thoughts. I am nothing more than those, and nothing less.
My world is one of a vast sea, where I am free. I am free to seek knowledge. Free to be something more than myself.
I am anonymous.
I am more than I.
I chose something more than nations. More than singularity.
I am anonymous, and you can never meet me, you can never find me, you can never stop me, you can never catch me, you can never kill me, for I am many.
I am anonymous.
Leave identity to me.