The personal diary of …
A few days ago I received an interesting email from an unknown sender. He kindly agreed with posting its content here, such that I can skip introductions and you can get an idea yourself about this unusual request (I’ve omitted some personal details):
<REDACTED> Wed 6 Aug, 03:57 (4 days ago)
Dear Ansel,
My name is <REDACTED> (actually, this is not my real name but I’d prefer keeping my identity secret).
I’ve always desired publishing a personal blog, but my technical skills are quite limited, it’s already a success the fact that I’m sending you this email ahah. I see that you are not very much active; I was thinking that maybe you could host in your website a section with my personal diary? This way, I don’t have to learn how to create a website, and at the same time my story might attract more people and your site will finally be worth its cost (money and effort wise).
This is an example of what my journal will look like, of course you are always free to censor any kind of contents.
[…] <I’ve purposely omitted this part, because it will be published in the diary pages
With the hope I’ve stimulated your curiosity, I wish you a nice day, and I hope to hear from you soon.
What a curious request. Not worth mentioning that his digital illiteracy is real: Not sure if you have watched Citizenfour, or read No Place to Hide, but for sure he’s not a senior government employee in the intelligence community, and his identity was easily unveiled with a dummy query on Google.
But there is something from his email which is triggering my interest, something that’s not so easy to explain, but that I hope it will become more clear in the next months. And I hope that you might experience similar curiosity and engagement, should you decide to give him a chance.