Most people who follow The Yarn still have no idea who is behind it. That has always been deliberate, and as this platform grows, I have become even more certain that I want to keep it that way.
There is something incredibly valuable about being able to speak without first asking what speaking might cost you personally. I can challenge governments, politicians, institutions, corporations, media narratives and ideas I believe deserve scrutiny without also volunteering my entire private life to strangers on the internet. I can share information that makes people angry, question things others consider untouchable and say exactly what I think without needing my face attached to every word.
More than anything, anonymity gives me peace.
People sometimes underestimate how ugly the internet becomes when you build an audience and refuse to stay inside acceptable lines of opinion. Most people who disagree will argue, swear at you, unfollow and move on. That is part of publishing political content and I have absolutely no problem with it. There are others, however, who become obsessed with the person behind the opinion. They want a name. They want a workplace. They want an address. They want your family. They want something they can use to make speaking carry a personal cost.
I have seen enough to know I have no interest in making that easier for them.
There are genuinely sick individuals who would rather frighten someone into silence than defeat what they are saying. People who believe disagreement gives them permission to threaten, intimidate, harass or destroy another person’s life. When you understand that those people exist, privacy stops being something mysterious or theatrical. It becomes something worth protecting.
That protection gives me freedom. I can close the computer and return to an ordinary private life. The outrage stays on the screen. The political arguments stay with The Yarn. The people I love do not need to become public property because I decided to build a platform and speak openly about what is happening in this country.
It also protects The Yarn from becoming something I never wanted it to be.
I have watched countless platforms eventually become inseparable from the person running them. The face becomes the brand. The personality becomes the product. Every story becomes secondary to the individual delivering it. Eventually people stop following the information and start following a character.
I do not want that.
I want someone to be able to discover The Yarn without knowing whether they would like me personally. Read what is published. Check it. Challenge it. Agree with it. Tear it apart. Send it to somebody who disagrees. The information should have to survive on its own merits without my face being used as either an endorsement or a reason to dismiss it.
What you see today is also nowhere near the finished vision. I am building The Yarn into something much larger than another Australian social media page. It has taken considerably more time, work and money than I imagined when I started, but I know exactly what I want it to become. If I get this right, the identity that matters will be The Yarn.
There is a real person behind every post. Someone reading the documents, watching the speeches, writing at ridiculous hours, arguing over details, getting things wrong occasionally, correcting them and coming back the next day to do it again. You have probably learnt plenty about how I think without knowing much about who I actually am.
I like that balance.
I am not hiding from what I say. I stand behind what I publish. I simply reject the idea that having a public voice creates an obligation to surrender a private life.
Perhaps one day circumstances will change and the mystery will disappear. Perhaps eventually the face behind The Yarn will become public.
For now, this is enough.
You know the voice.
You know the platform.
You can have a glimpse of the person behind it.
The rest is mine.