Mindfulness
3 Reasons People Refrained From Displaying Their Photos Or Being In The Limelight
some of us wanted a safe space and peaceful life doing what we love, right?
I read a lot from our writers on this platform. I noticed a pattern that some writers would not display their photos in their profiles. Some others used a pen name instead. Why?
It brought me back to the days I lived in Indonesia.
The teacher shared with me what he overheard in his daughter’s prayer. His daughter was one of the teachers too. She said she had surrendered from inviting a person to come forward to face the mass of people for preaching.
He asked me, “Do you know what she meant by that prayer? Because I couldn’t understand.”
That person whom his daughter referred to was me.
He saw the potential within me to be either a teacher or motivator for schools. However, the struggle and confusion came to me. It was like being a contemporary religious teacher out in the public. I refused public speaking a lot of times.
I considered that being in the limelight can be very noisy. If we want fame, then we must welcome the noise. But if we know ourselves well, what other people say wouldn’t matter.
People will always have something to say. And when it doesn’t matter to us, the noise could disturb our loved ones. It is tricky.
Life is full of hurdles, and we are all tired at the end of the day. The very last thing we ever need is to welcome others who harm or bully us. It happened anywhere.
Let me share with you another real story some people do not display their photographs online.
Sometime 8-years ago, I frequently spent time with one of my guardians. He was a caretaker of a mausoleum in my country. The grand saint of my country had his tomb on the hill at palmer road.
Non-Muslims visited the mausoleum and looked for my guardian, Habib Al Bar, for advice too. People who came to him were all filled with lots of problems every day.
One of the frequent issues was black magic and spells or evil eyes. For that reason, many people stopped posting pictures of themselves in public or on social media. Why? The sorcerers used photographs for casting spells.
Spells or Evil Eyes are not the only reason some people lessen their publicity. There are some reasons why people refrained from displaying their photos or using their real names on social media.
1 — Some people are still hurting or recovering from trauma or bad experiences.
They wanted a safe spot to protect themselves. They might be people who have lesser supporters. Victims of trauma and abuse tend to move away from the limelight and publicity to be in a safe spot.
Their writing content tells us they are hurt or still going through healing. Sometimes we can pick out cues from their bad memories that they needed help. Writing is a therapy, so they need lesser judgment and cyberbullies.
2- Some people used pen names for privacy and less judgement.
It is not because they are afraid of the mass public, but it is one way to separate writing life from their privacy. The pen name automatically sets them as professional workers when they are writing.
But going back to their daily lifestyle, they can be themselves. The people have no pressure to remove themselves from the spotlight of attention whenever they want. They can move on better in life.
3- Some people wanted the focus to be about what they wrote, not themselves.
They used logos and created pages with titles instead of using their names. They wanted readers to have the attention solely on the writing piece, not on the writer. When the content is good, the traffic builds faster.
In many scenarios, when you want people to know your products and services, you will need some marketing strategy. You got to show up.
Here, should anyone cyber-bullies you, remember, we have the Medium Help Centre. Report and block them. Save your mental health.
All we want is a safe space and peaceful life to do what we love.
Zulie is one of the writers whom many people followed and read. This is one of the articles which resonated with me. I wrote my book and published it under a pen name as advice by a scholar in a seminar.
