There is no doubt that the average person is willing to speak much more candidly in an anonymous online situation than they would be were their name and face associated with what they were saying. This means that in the online world, we are typically faced with far more shocking, radical opinions and statements than we are in the real world. For example, sitting in the library if a stranger next to me were to start spewing some racist opinions at me, I would probably be pretty shocked. Conversely, if I saw a random username posting the exact same opinions online, I wouldn't think it to be strange at all. The same concept also goes for humour and jokes online; people can joke about absolutely any topic online and offending people doesn't seem to matter.
Memes are a very popular style of online humour, with many websites dedicated to them. 9gag.com is an example of a website where any user can anonymously post meme type files for all to see. It is very common for the most viral memes to be racially offensive, however no one really seems to care. More and more the online community has been adopting a kind of "it's all okay, or none of it is okay" attitude, and I believe anonymity is the foundation of this. If you can't tell what the person who posted this racist meme looks like, you can't really identify how offensive it is. It's not considered racist if Chris Rock, or Eddie Murphy are on TV cracking jokes about black people, but society would have a very different reaction if a caucasian comedian were to be making the same jokes. Since we are unaware of the author of online jokes, we're not sure if it's racist or not; if the joke is funny, we just laugh at it without feeling bad.
The following image was posted on a meme website.
(http://memes.survivedavis.com/details.php?image_id=594)
This meme could be taken as being fairly offensive, it's definitely racist, however no one posted any angry comments about it. I'm sure people of all ethnicities saw it, yet no one seems to have gotten offended. No one knows who posted it, or whether they're black, white, asian, or a unicorn; the author doesn't matter, people just saw the joke, and took it for what it is.
Racism has been a very touchy topic for the duration of my lifetime, although it seems now that racism itself is becoming the joke.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-racist
This particular meme is clearly making fun of Mexicans immigrating to the United States, but it's also basically saying "racism...hahahhahaah". Because of online anonymity, most people are just willing to laugh off stereotypes, without getting offended. Anyone can make fun of anyone in this form, it's open season, and it has to be; if we can't laugh at all of it, then we can't laugh at any of it, and no one wants a humourless internet.
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