A Forecaster book proposal
By Kevin L. Michel
Digital PDF edition
Power & society · A BOOK PROPOSAL
Vagueposting: The Art of Saying Nothing
How Ambiguity Became the Internet's Only Safe Language
You know the post: a cryptic sentence, an unnamed betrayal, a promise to explain later. It gives you little information and plenty to think about. In Vagueposting, Kevin L. Michel asks what happens to language when friends, employers, relatives, strangers, and future audiences can all read the same sentence. The book explores ambiguity as a way to protect privacy, ask for care, attract attention, signal belonging, and leave room for denial. The same missing detail can shield a vulnerable person or leave someone else defending themselves against an accusation nobody will name. Drawing on psychology, communication research, and public examples, it follows the choices behind coded posts, strategic silence, and statements that invite an audience to finish the thought. When does vagueness become a sensible response to exposure? Who can afford to speak plainly? And what do we lose when every sentence needs an escape route? This planned book examines the incentives that make ambiguity feel safe, then asks how we can say something honest without giving every audience access to everything.
$25USD · Digital PDF
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Inside the proposed edition
- The Post That Makes Everyone Ask
- One Sentence, Too Many Audiences
- Privacy in Plain Sight
- Asking for Care Without Telling the Whole Story
- The Attention Inside an Unfinished Thought
- I Never Said Who: Deniability and the Unnamed Accusation
- Inside Jokes, Coded Language, and Belonging
- The Screenshot Outlives the Moment
- Who Can Afford to Be Clear?
- Saying Enough: Honesty, Boundaries, and Better Conversations
The idea behind the book +
A sentence written for friends can end up in front of an employer, an ex, or a hostile stranger. A screenshot can travel without the conversation that made it intelligible. Vagueposting brings that everyday tension into focus: people want to be seen, but they also want control over what others can know. The book connects research on mixed audiences, networked privacy, and indirect speech to the ways we manage friendship, work, and reputation online. It asks when ambiguity offers protection, when it becomes manipulation, and what would make plain speaking less costly. The subtitle is the provocation; the inquiry tests where it holds and where it breaks.
