Tom Mitchell , in my opinion having a mugshot with your bio does not necessarily make your bio more genuine. Is not having one a mistake? Absolutely not! Does it deter readers? Maybe a tiny bit.
You have to decide for yourself what is more important; gaining as many claps and readers and followers as you possibly can in order to build a “brand” and make huge amounts of money, or retaining your God-given right to privacy.
In all the many years that I’ve been on the internet I have never once published a photo of myself. I’ve published over a dozen books and I have never included a photo of myself on any of them.
Why? Because I value my God-given right to privacy. Did the lack of my mugshot deter any sales of any of my books? Most assuredly — at least a tiny bit.
But my God-given right to privacy is far more important to me than fame or wealth or brand-building. I am selling my work, my art; not my image or brand. If people insist on judging me, let them judge me by the stories I tell rather than what I look like.
But today’s internet world is all built on image. We have slowly been conditioned to believe that image is everything and that we should give up our God-given right to privacy so that we can be better controlled by those corporate entities in power. And we have slowly been conditioned to believe that if we don’t give up that God-given right to privacy then we must be some kind of terrorist or something.
I refuse to give in to that.
There are plenty of “photographs” and drawings of Crazy Horse on the internet and every single one of them is fake. Crazy Horse vehemently refused to allow anyone to take his picture or even make a drawing or painting of his image. No true image of his face exists. To him, copying his image was a flagrant violation of the sacredness of his spiritual beliefs.
My spiritual beliefs in this regard happen to be the same. Yet time and again people insist that I give up my spiritual beliefs so that they can see what I look like, so they can judge me as to whether I am genuine or not. If you want to know if I am genuine, read my words! That is the only place where you can truly find out anyway. It is much easier to fake photographs than what one expresses from their heart.
While I have suffered a tiny bit because of my refusal to give up my God-given right to privacy by using a mugshot, I have suffered considerably more because of my name, White Feather. Because it is not a White Christian name many people automatically assume that it must be fake. But it’s not. It’s my name.
All we can do is BE who we are. We can lose that if we are focused on being an image, a brand, a projection of what we want people to think who we are. For better or worse, it is the art, the stories and the words that express who we truly are more genuinely than any image. Don’t be an image. Be yourself. And don’t give in to the societal demands to give that up.
