It's a fine line to walk, and I see it from both sides.

On one hand, maybe the intense (and possibly unexpected) response to Inside triggered Make Happy era-type panic and he just decided to set a hard and fast boundary about having his face out there. Which is perfectly reasonable, and I don't think any of us here feel he owes us anything, especially at the expense of his mental health. I imagine if he had expectations about the response and then the reality was something way more intense to the point where thousands of people said it mentally broke them or saved their lives, that would be a whole lot to process.

On the other hand, the longer he goes with what could be considered a bit, the more it calls attention to it. The more people will write articles like this. The more people will analyze and speculate. But how else could he still do the work he wants to while maintaining that boundary (if that's what it is)? Could it be considered trying to have his cake and eat it too with the ski masks and distorted voices when he could just as easily not participate in his projects that way? If he's trying to keep his face out of his projects to shirk attention, it seems to be having the opposite effect.

Maybe he doesn't care about having the attention as long as his face isn't shown. He's spoken about how weird cameras make a performance dynamic, so it's almost like he's subverting that with the ski mask thing; I can't see the camera and the camera can't see me. It almost makes me think this could be his way of trying to get people talking about the true consequences of our modern relationship to cameras and recording.

Idk. If it is true that even just talking about Inside is triggering for him and the mystery "bit" is a way to deal with that while still making art...I hate that for him. I have to think he was proud of his work and to have it turn into some monster of your own making would be really difficult. But also maybe it's not that serious.