• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 19, 2024

A new show adopts the anonymity of social media for a competition in which contestants who maintain their anonymity win the game.

In real life, many hide behind their anonymity to troll others with the kind of abuse they would not otherwise level at anyone if their identities were known.

In the new show -- titled “The Anonymous” and premiering on USA Network on Monday -- duplicity such as misleading and talking smack behind peoples’ backs is rewarded. 

“USA Network is making dishonesty the best policy this summer,” USA Network says of the three-episode “social-competition” series. The show also gets simulcast on co-owned Bravo and Syfy.

“The Anonymous” is “the ultimate game of covert deception. Twelve players [including Jack Usher, 31, of Brooklyn, pictured above] will manipulate, mislead and do whatever it takes to secure up to $100,000,” says the network. 

A press release describes the show as “a strategic competition played in two worlds, the real world and anonymous mode.”

Sometimes the scenarios of shows such as this one that are particularly intricate leave the TV Blog fumbling for the right words to describe them. 

For example, the show takes place in some sort of digital domain presumably concocted for the show. Let us call on USA Network’s own press release to explain the rest in a way that I cannot.

“The Digital Anonymous Networking Interface, or ‘DANI’ for short, has invited 12 players to live in her domain and work side-by-side to raise a prize fund of up to $100,000,” the USA description says.

“Despite their close quarters, all players will have their own private underground hideouts, where each is completely anonymous and can say anything and everything behind the mask of a unique handle.”

That sounds like the way so much communication is done today. We do live in a two-faced age.

“In their hideouts,” continues the press release, “players can provide raw, unfiltered takes on their fellow contestants. They will scheme, connive and deceive to build influence and advance their game. 

“The question is: Can they stay anonymous while doing so, or will the other players guess their identity?”

In the real world of social media and online “discourse,” people hide behind masks of anonymity in digital hideouts.

It is reasonable to wonder what form social media would take if users were all required to fully identify themselves. Would social media suddenly become friendlier, kinder, gentler? 

“The Anonymous” premieres Monday, August 19, at 11 p.m. Eastern on USA Network.