To write a column is to court response, to bid on communication. A columnist—I now know—must live with the certainty that what they produce will often be misread. The responses I have received over the past year have ranged from the rigorously thoughtful to the brutally dismissive, from the earnestly engaged to the lazily sarcastic. Some have revealed a desire to think alongside my words; others have exhibited the reflex to undermine or reduce them.
One sees, in this arena of digital discourse, a study in communicative postures. The medium shapes the message, yes—but more than that, it shapes the speaker. The sheer variety of responses has illuminated something more than the substance of their content: they reveal the modes of reaction that characterize online public exchange today.
Anonymity and the license of brutality
The anonymous comment is an expression of reactive response. It is, in many ways, a performance of opinion rather than an engagement with ideas. ‘Cringe. Again.’ writes Jonge Collega, eschewing the necessity of an argument. Another reader, under the pseudonym uh h, delivers this critique: ‘Cocaine did not need a story with a language this extravagant, suuuch a try hard 💀.’ This is the mode of the contemporary heckler: theatrical, offhand, and above all, disposable.
The anonymous commenter operates within a world of pure consequence-free speech. No name means no responsibility, which means a kind of permission—to mock, to dismiss, to negate without the burden of argument. It is not that the anonymous voice is inherently cruder; it is simply freer to indulge in crudeness. Anonymity removes the friction that refines speech, allowing the spontaneous and the ungenerous to dominate.
Pseudonyms: The mask of semi-engagement
There is another category of responder: those who choose a pseudonym. These figures exist in the interstitial space between presence and absence, between exposure and concealment. They engage, but with detachment.
TryingNotToBePretentious writes in response to one of my columns, offering a reference to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, a gesture of thoughtfulness wrapped in self-conscious irony. History Understander delivers a more measured assessment: ‘Thought-provoking piece, the subtle process by which established powers coopt dissent is hard to describe, but you nailed it.’ The name itself—History Understander—is a performance, a playful assertion of authority.
Pseudonyms allow for participation without risk. The result: comments that are engaged, sometimes insightful, yet always buffered by an awareness of their own constructed identity. They can provoke, but they rarely expose themselves.
The named commenter: Care, gravity, and the burden of presence
And then, there are those who sign their full names. These are the responses that tend to be the longest, the most rigorous, the most accountable. There is a particular weight that comes with speaking under one’s own name—a burden that fosters thoughtfulness, a deliberateness that tempers speech. Here, I will protect the identity of these commenters.
One eponymous commenter, for example, offers a meticulous rebuttal to RUG hoogleraar’s critique of my stance on grading and assessment. ‘There is so much to say in response to your comments, highly learned colleague, that I truly don’t know where to begin.’
The opening sentence itself is a gesture of engagement—an acknowledgment that argument is not merely about asserting, but about reckoning with the positions of others. Said reckoning unfolds in a multi-part response that is respectful yet firm, dissecting the arguments one by one and challenging assumptions in a way that invites further discussion rather than shutting it down.
Similarly, another eponymous commenter writes with an investment that anonymous commenters seldom display: ‘Please keep talking and helping us make education more meaningful and liberating. We need engaged students capable of pointing out our blind spots and giving us opportunities to reflect on our educational system. Paulo Freire would be proud of your civic courage.’ What marks these responses is not simply their content, but their tone. They are invested. They write as though words matter.
The name functions as a tether. To sign one’s words is to take responsibility for them—to make them an extension of one’s self, rather than a throwaway performance of opinion.
Sarcasm, humor, and the game of intellectual superiority
There is another dimension to online discourse that reveals itself in the tone of certain responses—the performance of authority through irony, the rhetoric of condescension.
Take RUG hoogleraar, who comments, ‘This is borderline stupid, excuse the statement.’ Or, in a different tone, but with the same intention: ‘Super. What other metrics than ‘numerical’ do you propose? Using what? Vibes or so?’ The structure of the comment is itself a form of argumentation—it does not need to engage with the idea, because it has already decided its verdict. This is a particular breed of rhetoric: sarcasm as a mode of dismissal, irony as a means of asserting intellectual superiority.
But sarcasm is not always a tool of negation. Here is a different kind of humor, playful rather than cutting: ‘Head to YouTube and search for ‘RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms’. You’re welcome.’
The limits of discourse
Some comments do more than respond; they interrogate the function of response itself. Ole writes: ‘This is such a nice analysis of the situation we are facing, I think. Criticism or reform have become yet another genre – just another type of output to be reviewed and tracked.’ A striking observation—one that questions whether critique is merely another product, another consumable text in an endless cycle of intellectual production.
Similarly, Concerned Teacher moves beyond my own arguments to lament the inertia of academia itself: ‘No critique, but a plan of action is what we need. It’s time to properly democratize the UG and get students and staff to actually vote to have someone that actually represents them […]’ Here, discourse is not the end—it is the obstacle.
Final thoughts
What has this year of engagement as a columnist taught me?
Anonymity frees speech but removes its burden. It allows for raw reaction, often at the cost of accountability. Pseudonyms create a liminal space—engagement without full exposure, critique without risk. Named commentary bears the weight of presence. It fosters care, depth, and investment.
But these are only the mechanics. The more essential realization is this: public writing is not a dialogue; it is a performance, met with counter-performances. There is no stable audience, no fixed interlocutor. To write is to hope for resonance. Some will listen, some will dismiss. Some will engage in good faith, others will scoff. And yet, the fact remains: words have their own life. Once written, they belong not to the writer, but to the world that receives them.
And for that world—for every reader who has taken the time to respond, to challenge, to think alongside me—I am profoundly grateful. Whether in agreement or disagreement, every comment, every engagement has been a hopeful reminder of the possibility for communication.
VALERIA CERNEI
This was Valeria Cernei’s final column for UKrant