A few days ago, when I was lecturing on how social networking sites have redefined the notion of personal privacy to my high school students, I had to employ a great deal of effort to explain what privacy actually meant before the rise of ‘share-all generation’. While I was explaining social etiquette during our days, my students were throwing ‘you old generation’ look at me. The notion of ‘personal privacy’ these days seems to have become a misnomer.
Exhausted after five lectures on personal privacy, I turned to facebook for respite, just to find myself dragged into further distress. As usual, my over informative friends had occupied the timeline with all their details from ‘womb to tomb’. A friend’s husband had posted on her wall wishing her ‘Happy Anniversary!’ in the most elaborative and embellished language possible, followed by at least a hundred likes and fifty or more comments. Mister Gentleman! It would have made more sense if you had told her that in private rather than putting affection and love on public display! This is not the end of the story; the same day I unfollowed several people on Twitter, tired of their endless petty personal details popping up in my timeline. I am sorry, but who is interested in knowing whether you have finished your lunch or are drying up your wet laundry out in the sun or having a row with your husband?
These days, there is a strange new urge to showcase every single detail of daily life, as if these sites were some television reality shows where the best and the most consistent display of privacy is going to win a jackpot. Talking about oneself has become something of a social norm, and seems more important than everything else. Psychologists term this ‘modern day narcissism’. Laura E. Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell in their 2008 study ‘Narcissism and Social Networking Website’ talk in length about how, with the help of ‘inflated self-presentation’, narcissism is manifested in social networking sites. Be it with the best snap or best quote, they say, the owners use page content to form impressions of her/his personality on the viewer.
‘Narcissism’ reminded me of a not-at-all funny sexist joke I found on my facebook page, in which a woman borrows a sari from a friend, just to post a picture of it on facebook. I don’t know if friends and followers are attentive enough to remember what you wore last time at a particular picture, but the desire to show off is evident. A couple of my friends even believe that repeating the same clothes doesn’t matter as long as you haven’t already posted a picture of the dress in facebook. Does this mean that I would have to have an overstuffed wardrobe so that I don’t commit a repetition blunder and get a couple of likes and some ‘wow! love your dresses!’ or ‘you look adorable!’ kind of comments, become bloated with my bloated self-image and reply ‘thanks’?
I had to employ a great deal of effort to explain what privacy actually meant before the rise of ‘share-all generation’.
While narcissism may be one explanation of the psychology of over-sharing, I found Roger Cohen’s idea of status anxiety and over sharing as ‘twinned phenomenon’ equally fascinating. In his December 7, 2012 New York Times article titled ‘Thanks for Not Sharing’, Cohen argues that people over-share to escape status anxiety, be it social status measured in terms of your post-like or twit-follower ratio, or your financial status (that you just discover through social sites has declined in comparison to a friend’s). Over sharing, he says, is ‘the only means to push that status up again’. His modern social networking era rendering of Rene Descartes’ ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am) as ‘I over share, therefore I am’ explains how over sharing has been vital to affirm one’s existence in our times. This actually makes perfect sense. After all, who in this publicity prone era cherishes an obscure existence?
But that’s hasty generalization. My Canadian friend had no facebook or twitter account three years ago when we met. She doesn’t have one now. A simple answer she would give for not being a part of share-all generation was “I don’t want people to have control over me.” I didn’t understand it then; but now after two active ‘facebooking’ years, she has begun to make sense to me. When the secrets of all my friends’ lives flash perpetually in my facebook and twitter timeline, she is living in Canada with her closely guarded secrets.
Nevertheless, I still hope someday she will face existential crisis like everyone else, and join the bandwagon and let go of the burden of privacy. I better go and check my Facebook and Twitter to see if she has joined in.
The author is A-Level Teacher at Chelsea International Academy
paudel.smita@gmail.com
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