Well, it happened. I actually saw something awful on twitter.
(Note: As much as I am blissfully head over heels in love with twitter, there is actually a lot of awful stuff on twitter, as evidenced by basically anything Chris Brown is mentioned in (plus obviously so much more.) But alas, this awfulness came out of nowhere to me.)
Also, I don’t even know if I should be bringing attention to this. Maybe when not great stuff happens, we should just quietly leave it be. But, I think it’s a good example/jumping off point to talk generally about privacy on the internet.
So, there’s this comedian – Nathan Fielder. Two Wednesday’s ago, he sent out a tweet saying, “Experiment: text the person you’re dating ‘I haven’t been fully honest with you’ then don’t reply to them for 1 hour (& tweet pic of their response).”
Someone I follow on twitter encouraged us to go look at Nathan Fielder’s timeline (no info on it – just go look). I liked the funny person who sent out the suggestion to check out Nathan’s timeline, so I went. Nathan’s timeline was of course full of retweets of screenshots from the text experiment.
At first I didn’t know what I was looking at, because I hadn’t seen that original tweet. But, after scrolling down a bit, I understood what was happening.
Now, first, let me say, I understand comedy. And yes, that was a kind of funny idea for a tweet.
But oh my gosh, is nothing private anymore?
I get that people are going to talk about their friends or significant others. And since most of us live so publicly now, some of that talking will probably be on the internet. But anytime I talk about anyone, I try to not use names (or say anything specific enough that people would know who I’m talking about), and/or ask the person’s permission before mentioning anything about him or her on the blog(/twitter, etc.).
I just think that’s polite.
I will admit that since I started this blog (and my twitter), I’ve become waaaay more open online that I ever thought I would be.
As I’ve said before, it took me forever to get Facebook. And even once I did, I tried to keep it pretty bare bones – not wanting to have more than 20 or so photos, just generally not having tons of information up there. I was always extremely aware of trying to keep some privacy in my life.
(People were always commenting that it wasn’t as fun to “Facebook-stalk” me as it was to do to other people. But why would I want to put my whole life on Facebook? (says the girl who now puts her entire life in many online places.)
But obviously over the past year and a half or so, I’ve shared personal stories I used to not even talk about in person to many people (and example would be my heart issue).
There are more pictures on the internet of my than I ever thought there would be. Heck, I’ve amassed more pictures of myself over the past year and a half than I think I took total in all the other years of my life.
Whether all that’s healthy, or narcissistic, a recipe for danger, or who knows what else remains to be seen. (And I’m sure could be debated.)
But all that yammering to say – I understand how you slowly but surely get used to sharing so much online that maybe over-sharing becomes kind of easy. (We’re probably kind of like the frog in the story of how the water gets turned up just a tiny bit at a time. We keep getting comfortable – and then we end up being cooked.)
But, the way people were treating other’s privacy was horrifying. People sent in screenshots of text messages that included people’s full names. Some even had their phone numbers! Some people even tagged their significant others’ twitter handle in the tweets! As if we couldn’t crack the code of a somewhat common full name, let’s just be really, really sure and totally call this person out on twitter.
I would be mortified! And of course not have anymore trust in that significant other.
Granted, some of the significant others had responses that were funny. (Once someone caught on, their response was basically, “screw Nathan Fielder.”
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.