Anonymity grants individuals the opportunity to speak one’s truth unfiltered and uncensored. There are moments when anonymity is abused, particularly in instances when trolls hide behind the cloak of anonymity to harass others. But in other cases, anonymity offers individuals a degree of candidness. In a celebrity obsessed world, anonymity helps place a particular emphasis on an idea rather than on the individual.

Back in 2011, Startup L. Jackson first popped up on the startup scene as a self-described “fake twitter account that began life as an inside joke.” Over the course of four years, SLJ racked up 8.4K tweets and 72.7K followers through his acerbic wit.

Dear sport-jacket-over-company-t-shirt guy, there are exactly zero events for which you are appropriately dressed. Pick a fucking side.

— Startup L. Jackson (@StartupLJackson) September 25, 2012

Of course the SLJ persona pays homage to actor Samuel L. Jackson. The real SLJ jumps from roles that are completely absurd to deeply solemn with an unmatched quickness much like his faux tech protege. In fact, the persona behind SLJ wrote to Re/code: “I get to be the absurdist jester, the satirist, or occasionally a voice of reason, depending on my mood.”

As far as I can tell, OpenAI only needs ~$5M to operate. I can only assume the other .995B will be used by the AI to take over the world.

— Startup L. Jackson (@StartupLJackson) December 11, 2015

Over the last few months, I read several interviews and speculative pieces posing the question: who is the “real Startup L. Jackson?” One founder accurately described the mastermind behind SLJ as the “Silicon Valley equivalent of Banksy.”

Others figured out the answer using innovative approaches. This was the case for Josh Dickson who applied machine learning techniques to analyze a series of screenshots posted by fake Mr. Jackson on Twitter.

Fucking machine learning nerds. Time to call in The Wolf… pic.twitter.com/bagKeUwYQt

— Startup L. Jackson (@StartupLJackson) September 26, 2015

There were others who tried to unmask the real Startup L. Jackson using other methods. Joshua Gross employed semantic analysis where he “compar[ed]…syntactical structures” between tweets sent by the unknown Startup L. Jackson and personal tweets by several Silicon Valley insiders to see if patterns point to the person behind SLJ.

On September 4, 2015, Product Hunt Live’s popular AMA (Ask Me Anything) featured Startup L. Jackson. Morgan Beller, a partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, asked the question on everyone’s mind: “@startupljackson – who are you? / (sorry I had to, the mystery is killing all of us).” In a classic Startup L. Jackson response, he quipped: “@beller You were the kind of kid who snuck down and opened your christmas presents early, weren’t you?”

As I clumsily stumbled upon clues and potentially the identity behind Startup L. Jackson, I realized rather ironically how the world we live in is obsessed with “knowing” other people’s secrets (or rather what we believe to be secrets).

Whether it is another individual’s gender identity, nationality, political affiliation, deepest thoughts, and so on. Remember that one time when a current unnamed presidential candidate–his name rhymes with lump–obsessed over President Obama’s nationality activating a media circus. Yes, that really happened.

Recently, I re-watched the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.” Towards the end of the movie, the four central characters Dorothy, Tinman, Scarecrow, Lion, and Dorothy’s dog Toto, were shocked when they found out the Wizard’s identity.

Watching the film reminded me of this fascination of many (myself included) in figuring out who is “the real Startup L. Jackson?” Silicon Valley publicist Ed Zitron (who could very well be in on the joke) quipped to Re/code:

We know nothing of his qualifications, who he is, what he’s done, what he will do and yet there’s people who want him to speak to them like a strange prophet…Why the hell are you going to a parody account for your advice?

My question is, do we actually really need to know who is behind SLJ to trust the validity of the advice given? The irony is that even Startup L. Jackson advises people to think critically by approaching multiple sources before drawing their own conclusions. Ultimately, advice is just that: advice — best taken with a grain of salt.

If you think a market is promising, liken it to the early web. If questioned, point out that the web had small-minded skeptics too.

— Startup L. Jackson (@StartupLJackson) December 10, 2015

While Dorothy & friends were disappointed that Wizard was just an ordinary man, the quest to meet him helped them recognize qualities inside of themselves they did not believe they had (courage, intelligence, love, and a connection to home). Much the same, SLJ believes, “People should learn to think…believ[ing]…the key skills of the future are creativity, empathy, and critical thinking.”

The Wizard gifted the characters with validation that they themselves had the power to conquer their fears beyond their wildest imagination. In the case of Startup L. Jackson in his or her own words, “help startups when I think the common wisdom is wrong, or to promote great people doing great things.”

Is Startup L. Jackson more or less the Wizard of Oz, you know, the anonymous voice of reason in a startup world obsessed with finding the holy grail: the next Uber or Facebook? Perhaps SLJ’s response to Beller was telling that like the Wizard, he may unmask in due time. Maybe I shouldn’t have peeped into my Christmas gift too early.

Completely unrelated photo credit: The real Samuel L. Jackson in the 2014 film “Kingsman.”