Does that just mean not trying to do your own personal branding so people can find you on the internet? Or is it more about "everyone that I care about, aka local people, should know about me - that's my private identity".
I'm curious, as an American born and someone who's continually trying to learn about other cultures.
For everyone that you care about and if your care is reciprocated, I think no matter how small you try to keep your identity, they'll just still be enamored by it.
I myself try to generally keep my identity small, both in public/digital space and within my friends, but yeah my friend can't help but still know who I really am, what food that I like, what music that I like, just as I can't help but to know who they really are. It is the result of close proximity in relationship. But this results in more organic and more understanding. My friends don't judge me purely black and white, and I don't judge them purely black and white either.
Care to refine your position?
> Make people mad at you for existing.
You brought this up, not the commenter.
Commenter: > Don't tell people anything about your private life, your politics, your religion, etc
Does not say to keep a specific belief private, but in general practice. This helps avoid conflict with people who disagree, as well as deter people looking for a point to drag you down for.
And the above quote is when it comes to personal branding in a business - I believe I don't need to elaborate on why you shouldn't talk politics with a client, as well as keep your personal life separate from business.
The latter half of the comment reveals that that they simply prefer to keep their personal details to themself. To do so digitally makes sense, considering how often it is for people's data to be sold. In-person, the commenter does not practice this extremely because their friends inevitably get to know them better, and the commenter gets to know said friends.
If anything, why don't you elaborate on your interpretation?
So, go back to the original topic. The topic is about you wanting to keep your mental health/wealth, sanity, inner peace. In this case, you want to avoid trouble as much as possible. People will bother you for everything, anything. You want to minimize this. In Asia, we prefer to keep the harmony, so to speak. Not saying it is perfect, no system or worldview in this world is perfect. Trade-offs everywhere. When you want to keep the harmony, then individual and group rights already take the second place compared to the majority.
In case you want to challenge the default status quo, the mainstream, then you can no longer keep your mental health healthy. It is already a warfare in your mind. It is a trade off. No war can be won without price. By going against the default status quo, you already signed yourself up to the battlefield, starting from your mind, and then, your body. For people who are oppressed, they never had peace from the start anywhere anytime, so asking this question for them is already a privilege, because they are already at war.
But the topic here is not about that, but about keeping your mental health/wealth. Mental health and wealth is like peace, it is a luxury. Those who have the chance to read the article above and relate to it, are living in luxury already. Peace after all, is the privilege of the victors.
It is indeed true, that when you choose to fight the status quo (which there are many valid reasons to do), it makes it much more difficult to keep constant mental peace.
Don't tweet about your hemorroids.
https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/
Having a large and visible private identity has a cost, and I think that post does a great job at illustrating it.
I think as a general principle it's probably good to minimize your public-facing identity, however, the reductionism and broad generalization make this argument much weaker and misses the point about why people get so upset about identity.