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Comment by xefer | Hacker News Reader

I like Banksy's work well enough, but the thing that has always bothered me about his persona is the collusion in the art and media world to maintain his supposed anonymity. I simply can't believe that there aren't large numbers of people who know exactly who he is, so why is he privileged by the media in this way?

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Realistically, you can find out who he is by looking at his Wikipedia page. It's "unconfirmed" because there hasn't been an "official" confirmation, and his anonymity makes for a better story.

As soon as the real person behind is officially known, there is no more story, it's over.

I guess it's interesting (and lucrative) for the arts industry and the media to continue to play along.

Maybe at some point a real investigation media will take the subject and mark the end of the game.

Not necessarily, Jean-Michel Basquiat started out as an anonymous graffiti artist, who later revealed himself and did very well under his own name.

I simply can't believe that there aren't large numbers of people who know exactly who he is

Why not?

Indeed, I consider it quite likely this is possible. News and media are famous for copying and not doing own research. A logic result is that media keep copying "the anonymous Banksy" as some meme. And that hardly any budget is released to actually research the person behind the name. Defending your anonimity against the very few journalists that do their own research is probably much simpler than defending it against the supposed "hordes of media".

We've seen this with "Satoshi" too. And even worldfamous artists like Daft Punk keep a reasonable privacy this way.

Well Daft Punk are different. They are very well known, and they don't hide their identities any more than a voice actor for a cartoon is hiding their identity.

Satoshi as far as I know is still unknown, and while there are some pretty good guesses, they will most likely never be more than that.

Possibly of interest to you: https://medium.com/cryptomuse/how-the-nsa-caught-satoshi-nak...

I honestly don't think anyone cares. The mask is the persona so to speak. The psudeoanon nature is nessarry when illegally spraypainting buildings in the name of art. But if I start selling my work as banksy, someone will have to claim copywright, its not impenetrable.

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