“It’s about the terror … the terror of being found out.”
“…we all have ticking away within us something we fear will badly harm our reputation if it got out. Maybe our secret is actually nothing horrendous. Maybe nobody would even consider it a big deal if it was exposed, but we can’t take that risk so we keep it buried. Maybe it’s a work inpropriety or maybe it’s just a feeling that at any moment we’ll blurt something out during some important meeting that will prove to everyone that we aren’t proper professional people or, in fact, functional human beings.
I think even in these days of significant over-sharing we keep this particular terror concealed like people used to do with things like masturbation before everybody suddenly got blasé about it online. With masturbation nobody cares where as our reputation – it’s everything.”

from Chapter 2
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Jon Ronson