Dead 2.0 is a funny tech blog. The author posts anonymously under the name ‘Skeptic’, and enjoys deflating the hype around Web 2.0 startups with posts like ‘Funding the Web 2.0 gravy train’ and ‘Secret to why you should invest in Dogster revealed’. One of his main targets has been Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch, the most prominent news source about these startups.

Now Nik Cubrilovic has discovered Skeptic’s identity, and so has Arrington. Apparently, he’s a VP at a prominent tech company that’s raised some serious funding.

Arrington’s understandably not happy about the Dead 2.0 ‘attack blog’, as he calls it. He writes, regarding the consequences of Skeptic’s possible unveiling:

Will his blog negatively affect people’s perception of his startup?

Yes.

Would he have written these things under his real name?

No.

Given that he’s an exec at a high profile startup, should he have thought twice before writing a blog that attacks and ridicules other startups, sometimes unfairly?

Yes.

Did he exercise good judgement and think about the best interests of his company when he did this?

No.

Should Will he be fired?

???

My guess is that this will blow over, and that we’ll see somewhat more measured and thoughtful posts on dead2.0 in the future. Freedom to say what you want is a good thing — but it’s also nice to see who it is that’s saying it.

To date, Skeptic has not yet been outed, but there’s what reads to me like a veiled threat in that last paragraph that he will be if he doesn’t tone down his comments.

In an earlier post, Skeptic’s mum asked him, “Are you worried people will find out you write your dead-twenty blog?”. After snorting coke out through his nose, he concluded:

…for those of you wondering why I don’t just ˜out myself” I really do have a reason that has nothing to do with who I am as an individual. In fact, there’s probably quite a bit of incentive to come forward at this point, as I haven’t really offended too many people and all. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit.

At this point, I think I have a lot more cache writing anonymously. See, if I am just some guy, then whatever I write here gets colored by that. If I am some industry guy, then my writing becomes associated with what I work and what I do for a living. Fundamentally, I would become a lot more boring than I already am. If you disagree, comment below, I’m curious to hear other viewpoints on this one.

So for now, I think I’ll just be ‘the dead-twenty skeptic’ and take it day by day.

So the Skeptic persona is just that. He wants people to take his writings at face value, without preconceptions about his agenda based on his biography. Yes, it allows him to poke fun in a way that if he wouldn’t if he was known as the VP of Megacorp. But a little fun, and a little scepticism is undoubtedly a good thing. It keeps the system balanced. I think that the ‘Dead 2.0′ name and the Skeptic moniker make it pretty clear that this is supposed to be a satirical blog. And it’s not as though Skeptic threatens or seriously insults anyone — he backs up what he says or presents it as his own opinion. Skeptic has also maintained contact through comments and email. People who don’t like what he says can debate or email him. If what he did was simply shower insults on people, then nobody would read the blog in the first place and what he said wouldn’t matter.

To me, anonymous blogs — even attack blogs — fortify the conversation. They allow questions to be asked that otherwise would not be. They provide checks and balances.

Alfred Korzybski: “There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”

Dead 2.0 readers don’t seem to think his identity is an issue:

Generally speaking, postmodernists deny the validity of claims to objectivity, the power of reason and what they call grand narratives. Grand Narratives are the stories we use to structure our lives. We also find the idea that the media creates our reality, that there’s no originality left, only copies of what there’s been before.

It’s a little bit flippant, but if that isn’t a description of much of the blogosphere, I don’t know what is. The idea that each of us can become a publisher. That every individual blogger’s thoughts have equal weight and validity. “We, the media”. And some postmodern ideas also seem an apt description of the continual annotation and comment on each other’s ideas — like this post. You might also think about things like digg and RSS — where the reader is also editor.

More seriously, Dr Byers notes that some parts of what we call Web 2.0 are better described as belonging to an alternative and very different ideology, collectivism. Collectivists can potentially believe lots of things, but we’re talking about the idea of an “emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity” (Merriam Webster). This would cover things like social bookmarking, networks and projects that depend on collective intelligence — be that a collection of people, machines or databases.

There’s a handy list:

Harnessing collective intelligence: collectivism
Data is the next Intel inside: collectivism
Meeting the needs of the long tail: postmodernism
Postcasting, narrowcasting: postmodernism
The perpetual beta: (arguably) postmodernism

Why does any of this matter? Who cares if it’s postmodern or not? In many ways it doesn’t matter. People will keep trying things — some will stick and some won’t. It only matters when we try to ask “what would be the web 2.0 approach to X?” Because it’s formed from two competing ideologies, you might end up with two very different, equally valid, answers. But that still doesn’t matter, you might say. Try them both and see which one works. That would be the postmodern answer, I guess. If you were a collectivist, we’d probably have a vote.

Here’s what a company spokesperson told me:

“Yahoo! opposes the punishment of any person on the grounds of what may be called free speech. We firmly oppose that. However, we have to abide by the local laws of whatever country we operate in. If we did not, it could lead to the imprisonment of our own employees. These are legal demands. We don’t give out any information except to accredited legal authorities. Also, they don’t typically tell us what the information is for. They have a warrant and we have to comply.”

So why operate in China, then, if it might lead to morally precarious actions?

“We believe that Chinese people are better off with Yahoo! than they would be otherwise. The benefits of having better access to the internet and the spread of knowledge that implies outweigh these concerns. But we have to obey the laws of the countries that we operate in.”

So what legal obligations are you under in China?

“You’d have to ask Alibaba about that. They have operated Yahoo! China since 2005. We have policies about what we will do, but we don’t know the exact restrictions.”

Satisfied? Sure you are…