Few people will see your post, but the ones who do see it might be exactly the people who can hurt you the most — those who specifically sought it out in order to gain information on you.
If few people see your post, then this almost by definition means it is unlikely anyone will seek to "gain information over you". The kind of people who obsessively try to collect information about other people tend to fall into two broad groups: anti-fans -- which are people who were stans and then were shut out, or people who had some kind of direct personal relationship or interaction with the person that went sour.
Anti-Fans may be in some cases be catalyzed by someone "coming out of the closet" if they have been misrepresenting themselves in a way which was intrinsic and important to the ongoing parasocial relationship they had with their stans (think of cruxy things, like Bob Dylan going electric, or more recently MAGA supporters enraged over the lack of disclosure about Epstein). More often than not, it is actually provoked by something very different: the sudden radio silence or "taking a step back for my privacy" - in a sense, going into a closet. This lack of closure causes resentment and fans begin trying to find out everything they can to reach the previous level of exposure. (Does this remind you of "ghosting"?)
This behavior is very similar to stalker behavior is interconnected to domestic violence. A romantic partner or potential suitor is rejected, but unable to accept why - as it is said "To stalk is to seek relevance." (Not all stalking behaviour is caused by a sudden step back, but it is the most common[1]. Erotomanic delusions almost always involve repeated exposure to the victim, which is why they tend to be very famous and powerful people like Kings, Late Night TV show hosts, famous baseballers, or movie idols: people for whom media exposure is great- in a sense their obsession is a subset of the media's obsession. Victims are tends to be males who are older and wealthier than the stalker, stalkers tend to be women with low socio-ecoonomic status (which I would guess means less mental health support, less self-confidence, more likely to be victims of abuse too - but that's my speculation) dreaming of 'escape')
Not so fun fact: "approach behaviour" of stalkers is a counterintuitive indicator of likelihood of harm - threats are less likely to lead to acting on threats[2]. This again leads me to suspect that one single blog post isn't going to trigger an obsessive information gatherer. They need to already have some kind of investment in the confessor.
Simply put - a post unlikely to be seen by anyone means that no one is sufficiently invested in their parasocial relationship with you to obsessively seek information over you. What does trigger that kind of behavior - is suddenly ghosting an audience.
So a couple of years ago I wanted to write about why people get obsessive and start collections - and part of that lead me to collect a lot of anecdotes and research on stalking behaviour, vexatious litigants, chronic complainers, OCD and Schizophrenia. I wrote a first draft of the book but never polished it since the topic is too vague to be cohesive. Might turn it into a Youtube series. It's less about stalking - more about collecting - lot's of stuff about Pinterest boards, wardrobes, sneakerheads and the bus-ticket theory of genius. Hopefully you're not worried why I have all this info now.
79% of victims were acquainted with their pursuer (N = 62), and half of all stalking emerged specifically from romantic relationships (M = 49%, N = 53). (meta-analysis of 175 studies)
The state of the art of stalking: Taking stock of the emerging literature. Brian H. Spitzberg. William R. Cupach.
"...stalkers who communicate hateful, threatening, or obscene messages or content are the least likely to physically attack their target. This is especially true when the unwelcome communications are made anonymously. However, if such communications persist, the risk increases with each successive contact. Stalkers who express a desire to meet their target in person and to travel for that purpose are much more likely to be dangerous. But paradoxically, those who express a desire to have children with their target are typically less of a threat."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/machiavellians-gulling-the-rubes/201810/the-many-stalkers-taylor-swift
You know how most people, probably including you, have stuff about themselves which they keep hidden from the world, because they worry that others would respond negatively to it? I think there’s a lot of alpha in sharing that stuff publicly, online. Just baring your soul to the world. It’s like a much more general version of coming out of the closet.
Obviously there are caveats, but I think the caveats mostly boil down to “there are some skills involved in generalized coming out of the closet to make it be well received”, as opposed to “society just reflexively attacks people who reveal certain things”. This post is mostly about my current best guesses at the relevant skills.
And lest you think this is just armchair speculation… I have put my metaphorical money where my mouth is. I’ve been actively aiming to generalized-come-out-of-the-closet more over the past half year or so. For me, the most significant of those efforts was My Empathy Is Rarely Kind and its Follow-up a couple weeks ago. That was the last big thing I have generally kept hidden from the world, because I feared people reacting negatively to it. And with it out in the open, I’m done; I have no other major things left about myself which I keep hidden for fear of negative response. (Yes, including my sexual kinks. I haven’t actually considered them that emotionally sensitive for me for a long time, but I specifically made a point of sharing them in order to set the stage for this post.) Other notable examples from me include a thread on relationships which lots of people hated (which eventually led to The Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships and its follow-up), and The Field of AI Alignment: A Postmortem.
Value Prop
From the perspective of someone coming out of the closet - whether in the original sense or the generalized sense - the immediate potential upside is to feel seen, validated, not-disliked, and more safe and close with one’s community. The immediate potential downside is that people react negatively, and then one feels the opposite of all those nice things.
Insofar as generalized coming out of the closet in a way which will be well received is a skill, I think the first and most important piece of the skill is to set aside that value proposition. The number one thing you need to do in order to be well received is to provide value to the audience. And “please like me guys” generally isn’t much of a value prop to a broad public audience. That’s how you get cringe.
(“Please like me guys” can sometimes be a decent value prop to a narrower audience. If you’re generalized-coming-out to people who themselves already feel emotionally close to you, then making you feel seen and validated and so forth is probably something which they themselves will feel good about. If you’re coming out to a community whose whole schtick is bonding over the thing you’re coming out about, like e.g. revealing that you’re gay to an LGBT group of some sort, then again that’s probably a fine value prop. People will bond over it. But that is not how it normally works when baring one’s soul to the broader public.)
Fortunately, there is usually plenty of other value one can provide to the audience, by baring one’s soul. Some examples:
For example, the central framing of my original empathy post was “People seem to think that empathy necessarily leads to sympathy, gentleness, compassion, etc. But that is not my experience.”. (... and in hindsight, I think I was partially wrong; I wasn’t using the word “empathy” the way people usually do. But I at least intended a value prop which was very much not “please like me guys”.)
To make this work properly, I think you need to actually gut-level let the (intended) audience’s value prop drive. Like, when writing that empathy post, I wasn’t thinking “please like me guys” or anything like that. Heck, I expected the reception to be relatively negative compared to most of my posts, and that was indeed the case! Don’t go into this as a way to heal insecurity. Go into this as a way to provide value for other people.
There’s likely to be value to provide other people precisely because, whatever your thing is, it’s a thing which people normally don’t talk about.
Audience Choice and Bracing Yourself
Even when posting in public, you have some ability to choose your audience. I would suggest, for example, that LessWrong is usually a better place to bare your soul than the comment section on youtube, let alone 4chan.
I actually expect that the value prop considerations are probably pretty similar across online communities. You probably want to adjust presentation details somewhat to match the audience, but the high level plan is probably mostly the same. Where communities likely differ a lot is in the proportion of negative responses you’re likely to receive.
There will probably be at least some negative responses. (If not, then you were incredibly miscalibrated in your nervousness at sharing this thing with the world! I hereby provide that as a fallback negative response, in case you find yourself with only positive responses.) If you won’t be able to handle any negative responses, then don’t publish.
But on the other hand, if you’ve framed the thing around a solid value prop for a sensibly chosen audience, the negativity will probably be limited. If e.g. you provide an engaging story about your experience, and someone comes along like “wow you’re a loser”, then, well, they probably come off as The Asshole, and you probably come off as sympathetic. People will likely still respond negatively in more muted ways, like e.g. suggesting that you are perhaps a loser but they’re trying to be kind and constructive about it. Such is the cost of alpha. If you can handle that, and have the skills to provide value to an audience, maybe give it a shot.