To start this off I’m just going to say that I will be away from the game for about a week or so starting now. I need to have a bit of time away since life has gotten fairly demanding over the last month for a variety of reasons (uni, moving, and the virus have not been particularly kind all at once). This sort of activity is a low priority so I'm putting things on hold. If you want to contact me with something important in that regard you can DM me on Discord.

That was the notice part, now for the confession. It’s going to be fairly vague as I would prefer to keep the details on Discord as much as possible. That said, I'm fairly certain most people will be able to understand.

Here it is: I'm not really that new of a member. In fact, I first joined in late 2018, a time when /u/TheNoHeart was still PM and people actually cared about Brexit. The Quad (and some others) have known about this for some time (though they did not know this initially--I did not plan on anyone knowing then). No rules were broken if anyone was wondering. I have realised that it is increasingly untenable to keep this information confidential so I have decided that I may as well disclose this and lighten the burden on others. I imagine many of you have suspected that I am somewhat anomalous but I want to make it absolutely clear.

Some of my old accounts needed to be deleted and looking back, the way I handled that was rash. I was afraid at the time and did not necessarily use my best judgement. I do regret deleting all files associated with my account without having made backups, as I believe that has led to some needless link rot (one of the things that I have always despised in meta). More importantly though, I regret leaving in an abrupt way as this may have hurt people and it almost certainly made things more difficult for many people I respect. At that time, I still wanted to participate safely but it did not seem possible to reconcile this with explicitly maintaining all my old connections.

I will say that it was difficult to maintain my new identity. What I did was naturally a dishonest and backhanded thing and it always made me feel guilty. It felt strange having to try to disassociate myself from my past affiliations. That said, I have always tried to be honest as possible during this time, especially about what I believe.

Rumours about me, my identity, and my nationality have abounded and these have been difficult for me to challenge or correct in clear terms from my current state as a “concealed” account. Part of the reason I decided to make this post is because I did not want to have to occasionally feel a degree of shame when dealing with a place that I am supposed to enjoy.

I can confirm that I now feel safe doing this. I was lucky enough to have recently resolved the issue which led to the deletion of my old information.

If anyone wants to contact me on this matter I of course will welcome DMs.