Meaning of on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog | Babel Free

Definitions

Phrase. [C2]

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

“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’.”

“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).”

““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.”

CEFR level