Comment by xmodem
6 years ago
Surely you'd agree that "trying to be pseudonymous but not taking it very seriously" and "being published in the new york times" are substantially different things, no? One can do the former and reasonably not expect it to lead to the latter.
Those expectations are reasonable when you are a blogger with little to no following. But at some point on the fame/popularity spectrum, those expectations become rather foolish.
At the point where the NY Times is reaching out to write an article about you, I think you have likely crossed that threshold. Scott's best move would have been to refuse an interview in the hopes that it would kill the story. But even that might not have mattered. If your goal is to be both famous/influential and pseudonymous, you probably need to work a little harder to protect your anonymity.
You mean he didn't expect to get so popular? Sure, I can believe that but he's been popular for a while. My argument isn't really that he should have foreseen this, it's his own damn fault and that he deserves no sympathy. He has my sympathy, I just find his response unpersuasive and (perhaps understandably in his moment of distress) overwrought.