Whence Anonymity

I've been asked this a few times: why keep my identity a secret (and a poorly guarded one at that, as yesterday's debauchle showed)? Am I someone of serious political or philosophical import who doesn't want to associate this with my more serious work? Am I deeply ashamed of what I have done (and if you've seen the production values in my first two movies, you know I have every reason to be) and fear repercussions?

Nothing of the sort. The real reason I keep up the facade of anonymity is for you, and by you I refer to the 5 or so people who've come across my work, actually wondered about who made it, and unlike Lew Rockwell, weren't able to discover my identity within a couple hours of presumably none-too-vigorous searching.

Not knowing in this case is much more interesting than knowing, trust me. If you don't already know that I made these films, its highly unlikely the answer is going to mean anything to you.

My identity was never a secret, it really wasn't. I put these movies out under my own name the only place I actually put them, and for a long time Google Video actually identified me as the uploader. Somewhere along the line, that changed, google removed the names of people who put up unlisted movies, and somewhere after that, Dr. Long stumbled upon my third movie and blogged about it, with no idea who actually made it.

That struck me as sort of funny, so I thought I'd play it up a bit, as though my identity was closely guarded from prying eyes. It seems like the sort of thing I'd find really interesting, not knowing who did something. If someone ever told Dr. Long who did it, and they may well have by now for all I know, the answer probably didn't mean anything to him. The question though, that probably was worth at least a couple minutes of interesting speculation.

I thought it might be even more fun when movie 7 came out, with new characters and all. Someone forwarded the video the Lew without the identity of who did it. Less than 3 hours later, I get an IM from work saying Lew had inquired about who I was. Less than 3 hours. That's resourceful. I mean, thank God he liked the movie and wasn't offended or something, that would've been kinda awkward.

Of course, the answer probably wasn't terribly interesting to him. Lew had no idea who I was, though a quick google search led him to where I work. That might've been vaguely interesting. What I'm hoping was even more interesting though, was the wondering, and the search.