Who is QuietGorilla?

Who are you?

I am an old, naked, talking ape living in a forest, on a hilltop, beside a mountain.

Really?

Yes. I am old and I am an ape who can talk. I am not always naked, but I often am.

I live in a temperate rainforest, on a hilltop, beside a mountain. Many mountains in fact.

Why “QuietGorilla”?

I started roaming the net back in the days of BBS and Usenet, and while doxing was not yet something most of us worried about, many of us adopted pseudonyms for our online adventures.

Given my preference for quietly observing humans being human, I originally used the moniker “The Original Lurker” or T.O.L. for short.

Then, about 30 years ago, someone asked what I looked like IRL, and I said, “a gorilla”, and the “QuietGorilla” was born.

Do you actually look like a gorilla?

Yes. My upper body is oddly disproportionate to my lower body, and I am most comfortable sitting on the floor, with my legs folded under me, and my bottom jaw thrust forward, as I slowly chew on something, both literally and figuratively. Apparently, I have done this since I was a child. I am not as hairy as a gorilla though.

Are you actually quiet?

Yes and no. I can be quite talkative, but I do spend a lot of time just sitting quietly. Even when I am in a group of people, I tend to just sit and observe. And, as an applied social science researcher, I am trained to maintain a distance and to not interfere with the natural course of events.

What do you do?

When I am offline, I watch, read, and think about humans being human. So, I am fortunate to have a career where I get paid to know things, answer questions, and ensure that stuff gets done. This work pays the bills.

I have made another page about what I do when I am online.

Are you a “scientist”?

Not in the sense that most people think of “scientist”. While that descriptor has evolved over the centuries, today a ‘scientist’ is typically thought of as someone who has an advanced degree in a specific scientific field and is usually employed to conduct research in that field. And they wear a white coat … in a lab.

I do have postsecondary education and academic credentials in a range of sciences, including the natural sciences (math, physics, biology, and neuroscience) and social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology, and criminology), and I have worked as an instructor and an applied researcher in the social sciences, but I am not currently employed to do research as a “scientist”. And I don’t work in a lab, or wear a white coat.

Do you teach?

No. I am not currently teaching in a formal sense, although I have taught a range of programs and courses, including undergraduate level courses, but that is not my profession.

Are you published?

Yes. But not anything, or anywhere, in which anyone would be even remotely interested. In fact, I once titled a presentation about my academic work as … “No One Wants My Intellectual Property”. I do not think the audience noticed.

Most of my professional research work is gathered in large reports and is slowly gathering dust on bookshelves in government and institutional offices.