*Reddit is asking me to crosspost this, and who am I to disagree?*

Something that not many people are pointing out in this whole Banksy “unmasking” is why he was anonymous in the first place.

To understand that, you have to step outside the media narrative for a second and look at how anonymity actually works in street art. In this context, anonymity isn’t an exception, it’s the baseline. In graffiti especially, it’s a structural condition of the practice, not some stylistic choice.

There’s a very simple rule that anyone working in this field learns immediately: you don’t expose an artist who has chosen to remain anonymous. If you take photos, you ask before showing a face. If you know a name, you keep it to yourself. Breaking that rule isn’t just bad etiquette, it’s seen as disrespectful, and in many cases, a form of betrayal.

This matters because it dismantles a common assumption. Banksy’s anonymity is often framed as a calculated branding strategy, a clever way to build hype around a persona. But within this world, anonymity isn’t unusual at all. It’s standard practice, and just as standard is the expectation that it gets respected.

I wrote more about this in my April newsletter, coving different aspects of this "unmasking," I’ll leave the link here if you’re interested in reading it: https://giuliablocalblog.substack.com/p/we-dont-want-to-know-who-banksy-is