Why Some Writers Carry Tasers and Pay to be Unfindable

The security measures we don't talk about

Some time ago, someone restacked my essay, “I Followed Jesus But My Life Didn’t Get Better” with a scathing comment about how if I didn’t have an audience, I wouldn’t have written such a “Christian-y,” tidy post. “Just look at all the likes and sickly sweet comments you got from it.”

Though it was clear she didn’t address me in good faith, I still replied, “Hi (name). I guess you didn’t read my letter at the end saying this was my very first post published here when I had an audience of zero. I suffered for many years in silence, alone. Best wishes to you.”¹

Her response: “You didn’t suffer alone because you were with your husband on mission trips. Either way, you posted it for validation and you got it and you got more of it. Win.”

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I’ve intended to write on this topic for some time now—the risk of having a public online presence, that is. It’s one many of us are sadly all too familiar with: strangers acting in bad faith, taking your words out of context, making assumptions and judgments of who you are based on the tiny sliver you choose to share of yourself.

The opposite is also true, of course. It’s just as dangerous to put someone you “know” online on a pedestal. In both cases, we diminish a whole person into a one-or-two-dimensional cut-out figure, onto which we’ve projected our own complexities to fill in the gaps.

Writers of personal essays and memoirs tend to be especially vulnerable to this, as they share just enough details of their lives to cause readers to believe they know them. I must disabuse you of this notion.

“Sometimes people say they feel they ‘know me’ after reading my Substack or reading my book. It’s not really true. You know the small part of my life that I share. As Kevin Kelly writes in his compendium Excellent Advice for Living, ‘You see only 2% of another person and they see only 2% of you.’ With writers, you can bump it up to maybe 4 percent. With memoirists, 20 percent or 30 percent. But 70 percent remains inaccessible (sometimes even to ourselves). Still, it’s unsurprising for readers to develop parasocial bonds with authors.”

—

Rob Henderson

, What I’ve Learned After Two Years on Substack (April 2024)

While all writers share at varying levels, I personally share very little. I always give careful consideration to anything I share, even behind the paywall.

Is this detail the one that will put my family in danger?

If I share this, will there be repercussions?

Will I be safe?

Will my family be safe?

Which brings me to why I am writing about this at all. I’ve mentioned on previous occasions I never intended to write under my real name. From childhood dreams of professional authorship to now, my goal was always to write under complete anonymity.

I only started using my name two years ago—not for recognition, but in order to better advocate for Renley, my son². It was also the first time I allowed my personal circles and online creative life to merge.

I knew this decision would come with risk, so I kept trying to promote Ren’s work without putting myself in the spotlight.

Even though my marketing manager at the time told me the best way to market his books was focusing on our relationship.

Even though a good friend who is also an experienced marketer said the biggest draw of the books would be my story as Ren’s mother.

My efforts didn’t get very far, as they predicted. To allow Ren’s work to reach further, I had to make a choice.

Ren chose his new legal name when we adopted him. He hated his old one for the past connections and trauma it gave him. To publish his work, I chose to respect him by using his true name. This was something he had discussed with me even before he died unexpectedly.

To honour our bond, I chose to take the risk and publish under our shared Chu surname, to solidify the fact that he belonged to our family.

Beyond my extreme introversion and aversion to attention, something deeper was at play: fear.

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I point to

naked and stunned at the end of the world

’s article, “The Online Crucible: Who Gets to Have a Byline and Who has to Get Burned,” where she wrote about “when claiming our work is a privilege, when it is a courageous choice, and when it is simply not an option.”

What I want to highlight is not only that of getting cyber-bullied or mobbed like Rachel was, though certainly I have also experienced that. I’ve had people screenshot DMs and posts out of context, twist them, and spread lies about my character. My anonymity and ability to disappear is what protected me.

You need not look very far for “The Mob.”

I’ve been writing on the Internet since middle school, starting with the now-defunct Xanga. The first time a church parent found my Xanga blog and reported its contents to my parents, I was reprimanded and punished—not just by them, but by other adults in the church. That was relatively minor compared to what some people experience these days (death and rape threats), but at the time, it felt catastrophic.

In the years following, if I realised people in my personal life had found my online writing, I would delete the thing and start over again under a different name. This has been my pattern my entire online life.

I grew fearful of being seen.

When Myspace rolled around, I joined many of my high school friends there, though I did little with it beyond posting a few innocuous photos, some of myself. After some time, a friend discovered my photos had been stolen and uploaded onto an anonymous “sexy Asian girls” account. I immediately deleted my account.

By the time Facebook opened up beyond college students, I was already wary of social media and visibility. One of the last of my peers to join Facebook, I implemented stringent privacy practices, regularly culling my friend list and checking privacy settings.

Some people thought me paranoid. I don’t think I was.

These anecdotes are snapshots—the tamest examples of many of the predatory practices I endured in the early 2000s as a young adolescent.

Circumstances for teens and those belonging to other vulnerable groups have only gotten worse since then.

It taught me enough of how there are many people who do not act in good faith, who, like the person mentioned at the beginning of my article, go out of their way to find someone to antagonise.

And how many people are downright predatory.

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Jumping ship and starting over has never bothered me. I have never had a problem keeping the few loyal readers who have followed me from platform to platform, username to username. Once my real name was involved, though, there would be no erasing it.

There is no going back.

It’s even more terrifying now because I’ve never had such a large audience before. Even when I made a public Instagram account for the first time in 2020, I deleted followers whenever the count got close to 200. Truth be told, I never, ever expected to get past 100 subscribers.

The issue with attaching my real name to my work is dangerous people. I had at least one in my life, and Ren had many in his.

The reason my husband and I have been paying for DeleteMe for years, to remove all our data from data mining sites, so no one can find our personal information. I even include our extended family’s information so no one can trace us through them, either.

The reason I used to walk with my keys between my fingers, look behind me constantly to make sure no one was following, unlock the front door when I got home, then shut and lock it as fast as I could, then check behind every door, under beds, in closets, before being able to relax.

The reason my husband still sleeps every night with a baseball bat and a taser gun by his bed. Why I walk around with pepper spray and a handheld taser at all times.

And a host of other things we do to keep ourselves safe.

There are whole topics I steer away from because of what might happen if they are seen by the wrong people. When working with my editor on both mine and Renley’s memoir, I chose one with specific knowledge on legal matters, and who could advise me on when I should seek protection from law enforcement and a lawyer—what content I should not include so I could stay safe.

These are all issues I have not spoken openly about.

They are important because I want you to know something: signing your name to your work is a privilege.

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I write about this now because in my personal life, yet another instance of people taking my words out of context and using them against me is playing out yet again. While it doesn’t reach the level of personal danger I fear most, it reminds me yet again of the ever-present danger of writing in a public sphere. I’ve been tempted more than once to simply disappear from the online world, at one point with my mouse hovering over the red “Delete publication” button in this very space.

I’m forever caught in the tension between sharing stories I believe must be told, and safety. The worst that can happen has not happened, but that does not mean the in-between violations are not painful.

It begs the question: what is worth the risk?

For me, my son is worth it. Because he wanted to be heard, and his death did not change how much he deserved that.

As for my own words, I share them in hopes they would help others feel less alone in their struggles. At times like these, however, I am less thick-skinned than I wish I was. I’ve decided: I don’t want to have to be thick-skinned.

I’ve explained my reasoning for my paywall before: a protective cocoon for me and my fellowship. For the sake of my freedom to continue writing honestly, I’m shifting to paywalling most of my work—at least for this season.

To be an author in this modern world is to expose ourselves. In exposing ourselves, we run the real risk of sometimes brutal attacks by bad actors.

I don’t ascribe to the argument that having a public presence means you must open yourself to attack. “You asked for it,” some callous people do say. Existing in the world, even if it is online, does not delete the necessity of basic humanity or compassion.

---

Jon Ronson

wrote in his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, “We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.”

This problem won’t be going away. It’s up to each of us how we plan to handle it.

For some of us, the answer is paywalls and careful curation. For others, it’s complete anonymity. For many, especially those with the most urgent stories to tell, it’s silence.

I wonder how many stories remain untold because the risk is too great? How many voices do we lose because the cost of being heard is too high?

Today, I choose to write despite the risk, knowing that each word I share might be twisted, each detail might make me more vulnerable. I do this not because I am brave, but because I made a promise to my son. Because some stories need witnesses, even when witnessing puts us in danger.

But you know what? I’m also privileged to publish with my name in the byline because the risk is lower than it once was, albeit not eradicated. I’m privileged to have the ability to pay for services like DeleteMe, and connection to attorneys and individuals in power. I’m comforted that both mine and my husband’s names are so common that searching for us will turn up dozens of results, even within the same city.³

Without these, and other protective barriers in place, I would not feel safe enough to write under my real name.

Even in spite of them, some stories will never be able to be told.

I understand those who choose differently, who decide the risk to their safety, their families, their peace isn’t worth it. Who know their stories matter but choose to hold them close, waiting for a world that might be ready to hear them without causing harm.

Dear Inklings,

This is not a plea for validation or attention. I’m past needing either for decisions I make online. Rather, it’s an invitation to consider these questions and risks.

Why do we write? Why do we share it? Who or what is it for? What makes it worth it? How can we collectively create a safer world for voices that deserve to be heard? How do we hold those in power responsible for implementing and enforcing laws to protect the vulnerable?

If you are concerned about online safety, Rachel lists some resources in her article. These are the ones my family uses, including options for email and messaging that don’t sell your data (the only affiliate link is Protonmail):

• DeleteMe is expensive, but reportedly the best at removing your personal information. They regularly scour data brokers and send reports so you can see where your information has been removed. I also appreciate the emails they send with advice on steps you can take to protect your data.

• IronVest blocks trackers and allows you to mask your personal information when a site asks for it. You can also mask your credit card information. We no longer use this, since we now have a Proton plan that includes this kind of service, but it worked well for us for years before that.

• Mullvad VPN is nice because it doesn’t require an account. After you pay for it, they give a code you use to activate it. The Proton plan also includes VPN, but we still have time left on Mullvad, so I can’t comment on it.

• Protonmail is an excellent email service for protecting your privacy. Emails are end-to-end encrypted and even Proton can’t access your data. They’re based in Switzerland, which has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. You can even delete your sent emails from the recipient’s inbox.

• Signal Messenger for text messaging. Their privacy and security technology are so good that Meta and Google also use it. While you need a phone number to sign up, you can use a temporary Google Voice number for this. You also don’t need to share your phone number with anyone you chat with on Signal. Like Protonmail, Signal employees can’t access your Signal messages.

Proactive steps you can take:

• Read privacy policies and terms & conditions before you sign up for things. Yes, they’re very tedious, but they are important.

• Be wary of “breadcrumbs” you leave online. Bad actors may pick up little details you share here and there, put them together, and find out information like where you live, what you do for work, even your routines. You may think some things are insignificant but they may not be.

• Similarly, when posting photos, be careful of what is pictured in your background and the kind of information a predator might be able to deduce from it.

• Always double and triple check anything that asks you for personal information or tells you to click a link.

• Use webcam covers on your laptop and phone.

• From my husband: never, ever put an unknown USB stick/SD card/etc. into your computer.

• When in doubt, be awkward; be rude—stay alive.

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With Love,

If this essay resonated with you, you might also like:

I Didn't Want to Be an Author

1. Paraphrased interaction because the person deleted her comment shortly after

2. Interview with

Matthew Long

on his publication, Beyond the Bookshelf

3. Both of us even know others in mutual friend circles with the same exact names as we do, with the same spelling.