“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth — anonymously and posthumously.”

—Thomas Sowell

Throughout history, anonymity has been a powerful tool for truth-seekers, heretics, and anyone pushing boundaries. In American politics, distributing anonymous writing has been a central force since the founding of the country. Publius was the collective pseudonym of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay when they wrote the Federalist Papers in 1787, which played a crucial role in the ratification of the United States Constitution and the shaping of the country as we know it today.

Today, political discourse takes place on 𝕏, where anonymous accounts can wield significant cultural and political power. As we approach the presidential election, we asked some key anonymous accounts —followed by prominent decision makers across politics, business, technology, and science— about their experiences behind the scenes.

The Rabbit Hole, i/o, and Crémieux are data-focused accounts that cumulatively have garnered billions of impressions over the last year. The individuals behind these accounts all started using 𝕏 as ways to express themselves and their beliefs, and despite facing threats on and offline, their rapid rise to prominence has led to meetings with Elon Musk, job offers at high-frequency trading firms, and interactions with intellectual heroes.

What is the origin story of your account? Why did you stay anon, and what were your initial goals? How has your experience differed from your expectations?

The Rabbit Hole: There were, and still are, trends in American culture that concern me: attacks on free speech, a disregard for truth in favor of comforting lies, and demographic essentialism. I started “The Rabbit Hole” (TRH) a few years ago with a desire to test my ideas and see how well I could navigate the discourse. For a few months, the account lay dormant before becoming active on 𝕏 in April of 2022. A lot of it was loose and fun, especially early on.

I started off as a reply guy for Intellectual Dark Web type accounts like Wilfred Reilly and Colin Wright amongst others and eventually found myself engaging with a wider variety of people. My approach as a reply guy was usually to post data-themed visuals that I felt were relevant to the original post and contributed to the conversation in a meaningful way; through this approach, I accumulated my initial following. One of my favorite early memories was getting my first quote tweet from a large account; I think this was an early hint that my style and interests might have broader appeal.

Eventually, my activity began to catch the eyes of Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Caitlyn Jenner, and other high-profile figures which further fueled the account’s growth. TRH finished 2022 with ~80k followers, 2023 with ~480k followers, and is currently sitting at ~730k followers.

I’m not completely sure what concrete initial goals I had so it’s hard to compare specific early expectations to how things have turned out, but I can confidently say the growth rate of the account has exceeded anything I envisioned. Early on, I thought I could (with consistency and discipline) achieve 100k followers within 5-10 years so achieving that goal in under a year of the account becoming active has been crazy to see. TRH will likely surpass 1 million followers by the time it reaches the 5-year benchmark I once had in mind for 100k followers.

i/o: Back in 2017, I started an online group devoted to centrism and free speech, with an emphasis on raw data and information in scientific journals, gained some followers and then decided in 2018 that I'd create an anonymous Twitter account to promote the group. When the Twitter account immediately took off, I moved my posting over to Twitter.

But on Twitter I was constantly being suspended for posting stats on topics like immigration in Europe, and got so discouraged by the suspensions that, in 2022, I deleted my account.

After a few months, I missed Twitter, so I started a new anonymous account from scratch under a different name, and it blew up to over 30,000 followers in just a few weeks. But within two months of my first tweet on this new account, I got indefinitely locked out for posting a stat from the FBI's official database about the increase in the black homicide rate. My appeal requests weren't acknowledged, but eventually Rabbit Hole used his connections to the new owner, Elon Musk, to help get me reinstated. Since then, it's been smooth sailing.

I've always been anonymous. I live in a leftwing town and in a precinct in which Donald Trump received fewer votes than the Green Party candidate. There used to be an “Antifa house” a few blocks from where I live. I was physically threatened by a local radical once for making innocuous comments about home prices on my neighborhood chat group. My feeling is that it would not be safe for me if my identity were revealed. Only one person knows my identity.

I've never had “goals”. My posting on Twitter serves a therapeutic purpose: I speak my mind and get things off my chest. I try to be direct and honest about what I believe and not tailor my comments to please any group or tribe. I try to avoid motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.

To put it mildly, my experience has far exceeded whatever minimal expectations I may have ever had. Just the fact that Elon Musk follows me and has occasionally replied to me seems incomprehensible to me. My account has been written about in well-known media outlets. I expected none of this. It seems surreal.

Crémieux: The idea for my account came about from my friends constantly goading me into finally making an account of my own after I'd spent years posting a lot in various group chats and in people's DMs, writing posts and articles for other people to put online, etc. I would send people DMs regularly, telling them about this or that problem in this or that statistic or paper, offering them a post idea, or even things to say in a comment chain, and my friends thought it would be better for me if I directly posted what I was saying in my free time.

So I did just that, and it has gone well.

I've decided to stay anon because I post about content that has resulted in threats. People with whom I have no connection, people with whom I have some connection, and even people who I actively dislike have received death threats and both offline and online harassment over allegedly being the person behind this account, so looking back, it seems wise to have started and stayed an anon account. And for the people incorrectly doxxed as me, I can't really do anything for them, so I can only hope they're alright.

I did not expect my account to garner over 100,000 followers in about a year. I've gained around 6,500 followers per month consistently, through just posting things that I'm thinking about in my free time. Ever since I turned on subscriptions for Twitter and Substack, those have also landed me a good chunk of change that I've managed to save away. If things keep going like they have been, I should be able to retire a few years earlier than I used to expect. I, frankly, had no idea that was on the menu.

How do you view your role and impact in the broader media landscape, especially as it relates to cultural and political implications? Have you been in contact with powerful or high-profile people about your account? If so, what were they looking for and how did it play out?

The Rabbit Hole: This thread has a summary of where I am trying to come from. I would say my primary goals are to promote the values of free speech and open discourse. There are various reasons for this:

• The tradeoffs that come with censorship are simply not worth it.

• Even bad ideas have a right to be heard; if they are truly bad then sunlight can and will disinfect.

• Censorship is a slippery slope; it’s impossible to *only* regulate bad ideas without good ideas getting caught in the crossfire.

I put extra focus around taboo topics, like group disparities, because I believe candid conversations are worth having and because it is difficult (if not impossible) to solve a problem if you are not allowed to discuss it from all possible angles. For example, one of the great fallacies in modern thinking is the haste with which people attribute disparities to discrimination when, in reality, the picture is much more nuanced. Therefore, a major goal of TRH is to promote multivariate thinking and highlight as many variables as possible that can contribute to disparities. Two groups can have disparate outcomes not necessarily because of racism but because of average behavioral differences. For example, Asians study more on average than Blacks so it makes sense they are more represented in universities. As an extension of this, I also oppose any and all forms of Demographic Engineering (e.g. race preferences in Affirmative Action and DEI) which led me into lengthy exchanges with Mark Cuban earlier this year; because my goal is to be an advocate for colorblindness and meritocracy in our institutions.

I also believe technology plays and will continue to play an important role in humanity’s future. AI has the potential to be a check against natural human biases but not if the people working on these tools program them to have the same flaws and biases people do. I do think ideological diversity is possible (if Cancel Culture is addressed) and can help if the tech industry is willing to challenge some of the echo chambers that have emerged over the past decade.

In the last year, TRH has garnered over 2.4 billion impressions on 𝕏 and has received coverage from several news outlets. I’m not sure how much of that translates into real-world tangible outcomes but I hope it’s done some good and inspires others to give sharing their ideas (even anonymously) a shot. My account, and others, have proven there is merit in anonymous individuals competing in the marketplace of ideas.

I did meet with Elon Musk once which was to thank him for giving the page a chance. His support has truly meant the world.

i/o: I never think about this, although I can't imagine that my account amounts to more than a tiny drop in the deep wide sea of online political discourse. I've received direct messages from some well-known “public intellectuals.” Some of my intellectual heroes have DM'd to tell me that they appreciate what I'm doing on X. Usually they wanted clarification from me on something I had posted about.

Crémieux: One of the things that's really surprised me is that I've been forced to realize that I've positively impacted a number of important people's views. A lot of people have reached out to me to thank me for something I've written, to get clarification on something they're thinking about, and more, and some of these people lead major companies. Seeing them repeat things I've said, or say that I inspired a heretical thought in them is a lot more common than I ever could have predicted and I'm delighted to see just how open they are to changing their views on a wide array of topics that are, sometimes, very far outside the Overton Window.

Most of the time, high-profile people are just looking to talk about whatever is on their mind; there's no ulterior motive. One well-known founder reached out to me to talk about the nature of human intelligence and how it contrasts with the nature of machine intelligence. I spent some time with a billionaire at his place outside of San Francisco and we talked about everything from evaluating charity impacts to the latest in biotech companies in the Valley to why we're unclear on which political candidates to support to actually get permitting and zoning reforms.

I've had a lot of high-profile contact and I'm happy to have had it because it's resulted in a number of new friends that I get along with really well and wouldn't have known otherwise.

Here's a notable thing that happened: On two occasions, I was offered jobs with high-frequency trading firms after I discussed my background with some subscribers at those firms, and on another, the son of a person at an HFT firm said their dad read my blog and would've liked me to apply. I did not predict getting job offers off of this account, and those aren't even the most surprising ones.

How does running this account intertwine with the rest of your life? Do you have another job? Do they know about your account? Friends and family?

The Rabbit Hole: For the sake of privacy and safety, I try to keep a healthy distance between my online life and personal life. I do have a regular job that I work outside of social media. It’s a career I worked hard to break into and hope to maintain for a long time. A few of my loved ones do know about the account and we occasionally chat about it. A big reason why I wish to stay anonymous is to ensure my loved ones do not experience any disruptions in their day-to-day lives as a result of any online shenanigans.

i/o: If by “intertwine” you mean taking up way too much of my time, then, yes, it definitely intertwines with my life. There are dozens of other things I feel I should be doing, but somehow posting on X is where I end up on most days. The only person who knows that I'm “i/o” is my longtime girlfriend.

Crémieux: I tend to keep my running this account hush-hush outside of very selective groups, and I don't tie it back to my job. This account has given me a lot of unique opportunities to go and network with people, and that's been nice, but I think there has to be some separation if you're maintaining an anon account.

In terms of time consumption, this account is a breeze. I spend very little time drafting posts, and I'm slowly taking to making all of my long-form articles timed.

Do you coordinate with other anon accounts? Is there a planned strategy amongst you and individually, or do you just post what is interesting to you?

The Rabbit Hole: I usually just do whatever is of interest to me. Whatever the current zeitgeist is plays a role but for the most part, I attempt to stay data-driven and share stuff with a grounding in facts and reality.

i/o: I'm in fairly regular contact with three other “data-oriented” accounts, but we don't really coordinate our postings. I've never had a strategy or plan about anything I do on X.

Crémieux: I don't coordinate with other anon accounts per se. I will sometimes send a post to a group chat or DM someone something I think they might want to see, but for >9/10 posts, I don't even do that. There's no strategy on my end, I just post what I think is interesting. Thanks to the nature of reading the timeline making certain topics pertinent, that can mean what interests me in a given moment is relevant to the news cycle, and that can be a happy coincidence when it comes to engagement.

— Kevin Chaiken