Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right so let's violate the privacy of every interesting person who posts things online. Oh wait, that's what was done with _why. Seemed to work out well, didn't it? I don't even want to think about how many interesting Ruby innovations were lost as a result. Bottom line: the information is meant to be read but decency and common sense should prevent you from probing deeper. If you don't follow these guidelines, inter…
I think you need to know going into posting an AMA that people will want to know who you are. I think if you use a pseudonym for anything people will want to know who you are. Just because _why couldn't handle it (as you say), doesn't mean everyone else is to blame for that.
We have this vision, we goddamned assholes, of _why as an entity that existed entirely online. He was TryRuby and Shoooes and the Poignant Guide and his Twitter account and his URLs and his Wikipedia page. Then one day he disappears and we treat him like he's a dead man or a ghost, never to appear again. That's pathetic enough without us actively treating it like some kind of tragic event.
Here's what happened with _why. He realized that his persona was limiting him in some ways. He was busy working to help people he never met who weren't grateful for his work, who expected him to remain some static unchanging persona. And _why, bless him, is a stable man with some reason about him, and he decided that all he'd amassed — all the fame, all the reputation, all the fans — wasn't worth it to him anymore. So he deliberately disappeared himself, so thoroughly that all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't even figure out amongst themselves if they'd found the right name to call him by. Now he can do whatever the hell he wants, and none of it ever gets tied down to him. He's a free man. Still got the wit, the talent, the verbal alacrity, the art and the music and the smile, but now he can have an off day without the world knowing.
I'd call that pretty fucking handled. Much more handled than the guy that slowly crushes himself maintaining images and aspects that he personally can't be bothered with. When he left we saw so many people ranting and hailing him as if he were some sort of mystical, incomprehensible being, and nobody whatsoever saying that perhaps he'd quit his job like anybody else working long hours for no pay. For _why, leaving a job meant killing your alias. Nothing incomprehensible there.
But, Mr. Human, you've got to have some nerve to accuse somebody else of something just because he stopped working very, very hard in the public eye for little reward.