The typical purpose of a pseudonym is to prevent some set of people from connecting certain activities to your legal identity, while still permitting reputation

The typical purpose of a pseudonym is to prevent some set of people from connecting certain activities to your legal identity, while still permitting reputation to be accumulated. It's quite possible for pseudonyms to remain completely disconnected from one's legal identity, even under scrutiny. For example, merchants on Silk Road use pseudonyms to manage buyer/seller trust, but still take care to avoid being arrested for drug possession. The important thing is which entity is considered to be the "adversary". If a teenager just wants to hide angsty reddit posts from her classmates, that doesn't require retreating to a crypto-nerd darknet. The author feels that he must abandon the open internet because it's being monitored by the NSA. This implies that he considers the NSA to be his adversary, in which case his choice to link identities has in one step undone all of his sacrifices. There's no point in using a pseudonym on a darknet if your opponent knows about the darknet and knows your pseudonym.