Too Much Information
In our Bloggingheads conversation, Dan Drezner and I discussed the younger generation's proclivities for self-disclosure, following up on this post. Perhaps, I suggest, putting your life online is just a phase and people will pull back once they realize there are negative consequences, assuming such consequences are, in fact, forthcoming. This ABC report suggests that's exactly what's happening--to the point that one guy has even made a business of hunting down and removing embarrassing material. He has some advice:
Fertik suggests 20-somethings give posting personal information on the Web the same consideration they would a major body modification.
"The best way to think of this is as a tattoo," he said. "Would your 30-year-old self want to live with the decisions of your 20-year-old self? Would your 40-year-old self want to live with those decisions?"
In today's WSJ, however, Jennifer Saranow suggests that the cult of too much information is infiltrating the adult world (free link):
If you hate newsy holiday letters, brace yourself for the live blog.
People are increasingly documenting the most mundane and private aspects of their lives and posting them the instant they happen. From birth -- "I can see his head a little" -- to death -- "so many memories," one blogger posted from a funeral -- no experience is too personal or sacred not to be shared....
Hosts who want to ensure that guests focus on the festivities are responding with countermeasures. Expecting about half a dozen bloggers at their wedding, Joey de Villa, 39, and Wendy Koslow, 32, posted "A Note To Other Bloggers" on their wedding Web site about two weeks before their September 2005 nuptials in Cambridge, Mass. The note asked guests not to bring their laptops to the event and to only blog about the wedding after the fact. "I wanted them to pay attention and enjoy themselves and participate," says Ms. Koslow, who came up with the idea for the embargo. "I wanted them to be in the moment."
Although the guests complied, the first attendee blog post was up by 11:16 that night, shortly after the reception ended. The culprit: Rev. A. K. M. Adam, a 49-year-old Episcopal priest from Evanston, Ill., who preached at the ceremony. From his hotel room, he wrote, "the ketubah is signed, the glass smashed, the champagne toasted, the disco medley played, and the guests exhausted. These guests, anyway." Rev. Adam says, "It was the thing that happened that day, so I wrote about it."
He didn't explain why an Episcopal priest was overseeing a ketubah or what happened to the "the" before Reverend. (Back in my day, the WSJ was more careful about such things. But then you couldn't use "Ms." either. I am so old...)
UPDATE: Speaking of youthful indiscretions, here's the scoop on Hillary Diane Rodham's formerly locked up senior thesis about Saul Alinsky. The Clintons really were stupid to persuade Wellesley to make it off-limits, feeding speculation that it would prove her a youthful communist.