Should you ask a creator in public how to reach them?

You have gone looking in every place there was to write to. The page under their name still doesn't say where to send anything. What looks like the only thing left isn't a send: you can type the question under one of their videos, where anyone can read it.

For the jump rope: you make a jump rope that counts in the handle, for people who train in a small space, and your list came from accounts that post workouts in spaces about that size. Two of those names have nothing under them: one films rope sessions on a balcony, one in a stairwell.

What makes this different from sending?

Our guide to what to do when a creator has no contact details says what the difference is, and it is a sentence about who else reads it: "No send has an audience. Each one goes to a single place, and nobody but whoever reads that place sees it. A question under their video is read by the people who watch them and by anyone else who opens it."

The same guide says what that buys and what it bills you: "That's the cost, and what you're spending it on is the thing the page didn't name. None of the sends charges it."

So that difference is already judged, and what it turns on is who reads the question rather than what the question achieves. That guide left the question outside its own sort and said why in the same breath: "There's one more thing you can do, and none of this sorts it, because it isn't a send". It was sorting the routes you could write to by whether this account published them, and a question typed in public is not a route.

What it doesn't do is say when you pay. That's the part left over, and it comes down to one condition and an order.

For the jump rope: a question under the balcony account's newest session is read by whoever came for the rope work, and by anyone who opens that video later.

Whose room are you typing in?

Theirs. Our guide to whether your brand should reply to comments on a creator's video answers that in one word and then says why the answer doesn't move: "The comment window under it came with the post. It was there yesterday for their last video".

That guide lists what lands in a room like that, in one line: "It's public, it carries the name of the account that typed it, and it's readable by anyone who finds that video months from now." It wrote that about a reply, and nothing in the three depends on being one. What you don't get is ownership, and that guide draws the line there: "that window is yours, and this one isn't."

Then read how far apart the two situations are. That guide is about a video you paid for, on a creator's account, with comments already arriving under it, and its test opens by asking whether somebody is asking you something. Somebody had already typed something. You are earlier than that and on the other side of it: no video of yours, nothing settled with them, nobody who has put a question to you, and the first thing in that thread with your name on it would be your own question.

The reply guide's rule for how you talk in a room like this one still holds: "Answer as the brand, in the brand's name, or don't answer." It was written about answering, and it covers a question just as well: a comment from a brand account that reads like a fan who happened to find the video is the brand talking without saying so.

For the jump rope: under that balcony session there's a thread about hallway lengths and ceiling heights, running since before your list existed. None of it is yours.

What goes public when you ask?

Two things, and only one of them is the question.

Look again at what you're spending the audience on: "the thing the page didn't name." They had a page. They didn't put a way to reach them on it. So the question you type carries that with it. Anyone reading it reads that the page named nothing.

That's the whole of it. What anyone reading makes of the page having named nothing is not something you can know.

For the jump rope: the question says, where everyone reading it can see, that the balcony account's page has nothing on it.

What has to be true before you spend that?

One thing: no place you know is theirs is still waiting on a send from you. That's checkable, because the no-contact-details guide names the places: "A route they published is such a place, and so is the account itself." Two places. There are three things you can send to, and the third isn't one of them.

A route they published somewhere else. "A route they published, somewhere that isn't this page." The same name on another account, with an address typed into that bio. If one of these exists and hasn't gone out, that send is still waiting on you, and nothing here is a decision yet.

An address you put together. "A route they didn't publish, which you put together instead." That guide doesn't rule it out — "Send it if you want to" — and it carries a price it took from the no-reply guide: "it should cost you a minute and no more." What it isn't is a place you know is theirs: "An address you put together isn't one you can vouch for, so a name you've only written to there is one you haven't asked yet." So this one isn't part of the condition. Send it or leave it, and the guide says what the send can't get you: "What the minute doesn't buy is the thing the other route came with." Put that price next to the other one: a minute is yours to spend, and the room isn't.

A DM to the account. "One send isn't an address at all. A DM goes to the account you're looking at, so there is nothing to find and no doubt about whose place it is." Nothing to look up, and nothing to assemble. What it lacks is the page's word for it, since the page names a DM "only when the line under the name says to write there" and this page says nothing. It is still a send, and it still has no audience. It is also the second of the two places, because the account itself is one you know is theirs.

Work down the two. A route they published somewhere else is one you either find or don't, and finding one leaves a send to make. The DM is a send you have either made or you haven't. When neither is still waiting on you, that is the condition, and a name that has reached it is already asked: the DM went to a place that is theirs. The address you put together doesn't change that either way, so it doesn't hold the condition open.

For the jump rope: the stairwell account posts under the same name somewhere else and there's an address in that bio, so that's a route they published and it goes out today — the question under the video isn't in front of you for that name. The balcony account posts nowhere else under that name. The DM went out last week and has been quiet since, so that name is asked, and the address something put together is the one you looked at and left unsent.

So where does it go, and what does it leave?

It goes last, because you spend what's yours before you spend what isn't. The reason is the kind of cost rather than the odds, which nothing on this page measures. Each send costs you something of yours: a minute, or a message to a place that never says whether it was read. The question under the video spends readers who never asked for it — the people who came for that video, and anyone who opens it later — in "a room you don't run".

That cost doesn't come back. If the question works, the no-contact-details guide has already said what you're holding: "Then you have a route they published, and it behaves like one from there on. What you paid to get it stays where you left it." So the good outcome is a route, and that guide takes it from there.

For the jump rope: the question under the balcony account's session spends that thread, and it stays spent whether or not an address comes back.

Frequently asked questions

We asked under a video and nothing came back.

There's nothing in that to read.

Our guides have weighed silence after a send — one message, one place, and what could be behind it. A question in a comment window isn't that, and no guide here has looked at what quiet means after one. So what you have afterwards is the page you had before, with the cost already paid.

What about the comments under our own campaign video?

Different question, and it has its own guide. Whether your brand replies to comments on a creator's video starts where this page doesn't: a thread already filling up under a video you paid for.

Does asking in public move a name to asked in your list?

No. The no-contact-details guide is specific about what moves it: "What moves it is a send to a place that is theirs, not another pass over the same page." A question under a video is not a send, so it is not what moved anything.

By the time the question is in front of you, a DM has gone out, and that was a send to their account, so the name moved then. If the question brings back somewhere to write, you have a route they published, and what a send to it adds is what the page didn't name, not a move the DM already made.

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