Who Are You When No One’s Watching?

How anonymity reshapes identity for international students in Los Angeles

You run into a classmate at a random pub years after graduation. Or meet someone new, only to realize they grew up in the house next to yours. Moments like these make the world feel small.

For international students, it feels even smaller. our lives stretch across cities and countries, with the same schools, the same competitions, and the same circles repeating themselves in different places.

There’s a constant feeling of being watched — of being known before you even get the chance to introduce yourself. Stories travel fast, crossing borders as easily as we do.

When everyone is watching, identity stops being something you define for yourself. It becomes something shaped by everyone else.

But when I moved to the United States, that feeling seemed to disappear. No one seemed to care in the same way about what I wore, who I was with, or what I was doing. The anonymity felt both freeing and unfamiliar.

In that silence, a strange question followed:

Who are you when no one’s watching?

It’s a question Tony Nguyen never really had to ask growing up in Vietnam, and one he couldn’t avoid after moving to Los Angeles three years ago. At 22, Nguyen had already spent most of his life being seen. The son of actress Hiền Mai and a performer since the age of three, attention wasn’t something he chased. It was something that followed him. In Vietnam, that attention came with intensity: fan clubs, media coverage, even headlines calling him “god-like.” 

But attention has a way of shaping identity. Over time, Nguyen stopped being seen as just himself. Headlines referred to him as “Hiền Mai’s son” before they referred to him as an artist, reducing him to an identity he had not chosen for himself.

“I want to identify myself as my own person,” Nguyen said.

Moving to Los Angeles for college marked the first time Nguyen felt he had autonomy over his identity. Now studying International Relations Global Business(IRGB) and Music Production at USC, he found himself in a place where no one seemed to care in the same way.

“In the States, I have freedom. I can do whatever I want. I can dress however I want. No one would give a shit,” he said.

In Los Angeles, the expectations attached to his family name disappeared almost instantly. The freedom was immediate, but so was the uncertainty.

Without the constant gaze of others, Nguyen was left with a different kind of question: who is he when no one’s watching?

For Nguyen, the answer has always been grounded in music. “Music has always been my passion,” he said.

“Music has always been my passion,” - Tony Nguyen

Even as a child, performance seemed to come naturally to Nguyen. Long before national television appearances or performing in front of large crowds, Nguyen was already crafting his own stage at home. He recalled standing outside his house at three years old, holding a water bottle like a microphone and singing loudly enough to attract a crowd of strangers. 

By the time his grandmother returned home, dozens of people had gathered around him. “I’m just holding a water bottle, just singing,” Nguyen said, laughing.

Although Nguyen grew up surrounded by entertainment, his mother never pushed him toward the industry. Having experienced the pressures of public visibility herself, she often warned him of the emotional cost of attention, while still supporting his love for music. 

But talent alone was never enough.

Behind the public image was years of training that shaped the discipline he carries today.

Beginning at age four, Nguyen trained intensely in both piano and competitive swimming, often spending hours each day moving between practices, lessons, and school. By high school, he had become captain of his swim team and broken multiple records, balancing athletics alongside music and academics.

“It was just training and training, nonstop,” Nguyen said.

Over time, the pressure of training transformed into a sense of comfort on stage. After nearly two decades of piano and years of performing publicly, the stage became one of the few places Nguyen felt himself fully.

One piece of advice from his mentors stayed with him: “Make the stage feel like you’re at home.”

“Make the stage feel like you’re at home.”- Tony Nguyen

in Los Angeles, music became more than performance. It became a way for Nguyen to reclaim visibility on his own terms.

While public attention had long shaped how others perceived him, songwriting and performance gave him the opportunity to define himself for himself.

That desire for autonomy also shaped the way Nguyen approached the industry itself. While building a record label with a fellow USC alumnus, he said he wanted artists to have the freedom to develop on their own terms rather than being forced into manufactured versions of themselves.

“If you like the piano, then just stay on the piano,” Nguyen said.

Even with that freedom, Nguyen admitted his relationship with visibility remains complicated.

Growing up in the public eye meant constantly feeling observed. “It’s 24/7, just on guard,” he said.

But attention also became intertwined with validation.

“Sure, attention is bad,” Nguyen admitted. “But at the same time, I like the love that they give me.”

In Los Angeles, Nguyen found relief in anonymity, but also the absence of the audience that had shaped him for most of his life.

For Phuong Anh Le, however, the absence of attention felt less like a loss and more like relief.

Growing up within Vietnam’s tightly connected international student community meant constantly feeling perceived, not only by classmates and mutuals, but eventually online audiences as well.

When she was younger, Le and her sister built a YouTube channel centered around slime videos that amassed more than 500,000 subscribers. In high school, her presence on TikTok brought another wave of attention, particularly within Vietnam’s international school circles.

Le’s slime content channel that amassed more than 500,000 subscribers

The attention quickly extended beyond social media.

“I would actually get stopped for photos on dates, and it made it really awkward,” she said.

Eventually, she began to resent being recognized in public altogether.

“I absolutely hated everything about it,” she said.

But recognition was only part of it. Within Vietnam’s tightly connected international student circles, people often formed opinions about Le long before meeting her directly. Hearing those perceptions repeated back to her began to influence the way she understood herself.

“You hear things about yourself, and you're like, ‘Oh, maybe this is who I am. And I’ve got to live this way,’” she said.

Moving to Los Angeles disrupted that cycle.

“Coming here, there was a realization that I was not that important at all, and nobody cares,” she said.

Rather than feeling insignificant, Le found the realization freeing. For the first time, she entered social spaces where people knew nothing about her past, her online presence, or the assumptions attached to her identity back home.

She remembers going out as a freshman at USC and noticing how different it felt from Vietnam, where parties often seemed like extensions of the same international school circles.

“When you go out here, you don’t know anyone,” Le said. “It was all very new. It was nice, though.”

Anonymity gave Le something she rarely experienced growing up: the ability to exist without constantly anticipating how other people might interpret her.

“Everyone you've met has a different version of you in their head,” she said.

Eventually, she realized that trying to control all of those versions was impossible.

“To free yourself, I think you should just remember that nobody cares about you like that.”

In recent years, Le has intentionally stepped away from the online visibility she once occupied, posting less frequently and focusing more of her attention on the people closest to her.

“As long as the people you're close to care about you, I don't think it really matters,” she said.

While she acknowledged that visibility might matter if she were pursuing a career as an actress or influencer, for now, she simply wants the freedom to exist without feeling like her life constantly needs to be seen.

“You hear things about yourself, and you're like, ‘Oh, maybe this is who I am. And I’ve got to live this way,’” Phuong Anh Le

Like Nguyen and Le, I also arrived in Los Angeles carrying identities shaped long before I had the chance to redefine them for myself.

Perhaps that is the strange gift of moving somewhere nobody knows you.

Anonymity does not necessarily reveal some untouched, authentic version of yourself. It simply takes away, for a moment, the audience that had been helping define you.

And for the first time, you are left alone with the question: who are you when no one’s watching?