So – my roommates just had a dance party/lip synching party on UStream.tv.  It was pretty funny – although an hours worth of it kind of got annoying.  It was pretty funny some of the comments that were in the chat.  This was the second UStream we’ve done recently and the anonymous chats are pretty interesting.  That, of course, lead me to start really thinking about anonymity on the web.  I know I’m not the first person to think about this topic – nor do I expect to come up with any new observations – so I won’t go into too much detail about my thoughts.  Still, it is something strange to think that people will revert to ugly behavior when they can not be identified.  The socialization of the Internet – whether through OpenID, Facebook Connect, or the next form that develops – will help alleviate some of those concerns.  You can start to see it now – with people wanting real pictures, real names, and no hidden identities on the various platforms that develop.  Hopefully this will bring about the best behavior from web citizens, but it probably won’t change everything.  And while I know the anonymous people on the UStream line were friends just teasing – these thoughts still came up.