on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog
Language: English
Part of speech: proverb
Senses: examples: text: He sometimes picks wrong battles and chooses wrong targets. An example: a few months ago he led a verbal assault on Silicon Valley for not hiring minorities. Now the high-tech industry, which I know intimately because I’m also somewhat technical, happens to be virtually postracial and postnational. As they say, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” (Of course, I don’t mean to equate minorities with dogs.) A close friend of mine, an African-American woman of Creole heritage from Louisiana, is a highly skilled software engineer and platform developer who won a scholarship to MIT and started out her career with Apple.
ref: 2000, Biodun Iginla, “Paris: Tuesday, July 6, 1999”, in Love in This Time of Silicon, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, pages 102–103:
text: The quality of Internet content continues to be generally poor. It is still the case that ‘on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog,’ and so one cannot trust Internet relationships.
ref: 2008, Lee Rainie, Janna Quitney Anderson, Susannah Fox, quoting anonymous respondent, “[Where Has the Internet Fallen Short of Expectations?] Anonymous Comments”, in Up for Grabs: The Future of the Internet, volume 1, Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, →ISBN, part 17 (Looking Back; Looking Forward), page 251:
text: Is not technology neutral and colour-blind? Far from discriminating on ethnic grounds and creating divisions, they say, technology enables people to override the old distinctions and discriminations, to lift themselves out of externally imposed boxes, to reach out to and engage with others of the same or vastly different characters – indeed to be anyone they want. As the saying goes, ‘On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog’.
ref: 2008, Phil Wood, Charles Landry, “[Emerging forms of segregation] Segregation in cyberspace?”, in The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage, London; Sterling, Va.: Earthscan, →ISBN, chapter 3 (Living Apart: Segregation), page 86:
text: As suggested by [Anders] Gronstedt (2007), “Never has the adage that ‘on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog’ been more true” (paragraph 5).
ref: 2010, Caroline M. Crawford, Marion S. Smith, Virginia Dickenson, “[Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’s Recognition of Industry Applications within Virtual Worlds: […]] Background”, in Holim Song, editor, Distance Learning Technology, Current Instruction, and the Future of Education: Applications of Today, Practices of Tomorrow (Premier Reference Source), Hershey, Pa.: Information Science Reference, →ISBN, section 2 (Applications and Practices of Distance Learning Technology), page 133, column 2:
text: “Who is the top dog for the Earth First Isolationists in Georgia?” I asked. / “An initial review indicates that at least two of the individuals liking their SpaceBook page may be canines,” said my phone. “Though I am uncertain whether or not there are more, because…” / “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” This was as bad as having to figure out a foolproof way of wording three wishes.
ref: 2015, Dave Schroeder, chapter 14, in Xenotech Rising: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support; 1), Grayson, Ga.: Spiral Arm Press, →ISBN, page 132:
glosses: Alternative form of on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.