flâneur

Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery. | Derek Sivers

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Because of my open inbox, I meet a lot of strangers. I love it. Almost everyone tells me who and where they are in the world. If they don’t, I wonder. Am I talking with someone from Australia? Philippines? Brazil? Are they 20 or 60? Male or female? It doesn’t really matter, but the brain can’t help wondering. It’s human nature to want to know who’s speaking. If they don’t say, it creates a mystery. Films do that to deliberately engage curiosity. A voiceover on a black screen says, “It took me a long time to get here.” You immediately wonder, “Who is ‘me’? Get where? What happened?” Once people start wondering, they need to know. Mysteries are intriguing. They’re unsettling. That’s a problem if you really want to be anonymous. If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can make people angry that you’re upsetting social reciprocity. You know who they are, but they don’t know who you are. It feels rude. An obsessive personality might make it their damn mission to figure out who you ar

Because of my open inbox , I meet a lot of strangers. I love it. Almost everyone tells me who and where they are in the world. If they don’t, I wonder. Am I talking with someone from Australia? Philippines? Brazil? Are they 20 or 60? Male or female? It doesn’t really matter, but the brain can’t help wondering. It’s human nature to want to know who’s speaking. If they don’t say, it creates a mystery. Once people start wondering, they need to know. Mysteries are intriguing. They’re unsettling. That’s a problem if you really want to be anonymous. If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can

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