It seems that the lines- social rules, courtesies, and hierarchies- that once provided us with an opportunity to discriminate (non-prejudiced connotation) one person from another have been softened to the point of imperceptibility. Two linked topics of great concern are privacy and celebrity.
People may assume that because we live in a world today where little of one's life cannot be made public through some media- whether via facebook, blogs (whoops!), or twitter- that somehow people don't care about these aspects being kept private. Formalizing this concern, people may think that others don't value privacy anymore. I do value privacy.
A friend the other day took it upon himself to find my phone and start reading through my text messages. Really...really?? If this doesn't sound outrageous to you, then perhaps you have become desensitized to the softening of the social courtesies that I am speaking about. I mean this in the least judgmental tone possible, for I think it's easy for anyone to get caught up in it. But a phone is a personal device for keeping track of various communications, and the contents therein, likewise, personal. If I wanted you to see my conversations with people, I would have put it in a Word document and printed off a personal copy for you, and maybe even highlighted the good stuff for easy reader viewing.
This is far from saying that I have anything to hide. Just the person I am, there is essentially no drama for vicarious social vultures to feed upon. That said, this does not in any way grant permission or mitigating circumstances for viewing what is private.
It boils down to this, which I know I have previously written about: we need some...intangible things other than our bodily divisions that separate us from others in order to give us a sense of being separate. These features that make us us, and separate, are not necessarily in the name of making us "special," "unique," or "better," than others, but for God's sake, it seems like a human right to not simply be operators of common knowledge about each other, to whom some of this common information technically belongs. We become estranged from our own identities if this happens.
The second part, or maybe example, of these softening lines is the distinction between celebrity and non-celebrity. This line has all-but disappeared. Celebrities want to be normal: they join reality shows in their non-professional domain to experience a rush on the dance floor. They send out twitter messages to people on the side-walks and interact with fans. News anchors laugh with another in too-human a way and joke when they mess up. Celebrities create facebook profiles that they probably do not (and should not) have time to maintain if they want to continue to be great at what they originally gained recognition for. Likewise, non-celebrities want to- and can become- "celebrities" through any extreme act. They sing horribly or dress scantily on American Idol and may be on the finale show and get a Golden Idol from Ryan Seacrest. Survivor alumna Elisabeth has gone on to host The View and marry pro quarterback Tim Hasselbeck. Even celebrities don't stay put but rather move laterally within a profession characterized more broadly everyday as 'entertainment.' They are singers who really want to be actors; actors whose dream it really is to produce; ex-reality stars who always wanted to host a talk show and, with enough visual appeal, attempt to conceal lack of talent in the delivery of their lines, the crudeness of their articulation, and try to pass off their opinions as authority.
A certain standard has to be reestablished, and merit-based status rewarded. In this attention free-for-all, the loudest person will always be right. And we are all being taught to shout.
I am all for standing out in the crowd, differentiating myself, but I'd really like to do it in an 'honest' way; competitions in track, for instance, are determined by time or distance. If I want to stand out and be the best in an event there, I will have to do so against certain guidelines. The 'lines' help us keep track- we can differentiate ourselves from others, and even from our previous performances. Some people argue against lines because they confine us, but even the most creative people who "drew outside the box/lines" made use of these lines by virtue of having drawn outside of them!
The lines give us a reference and combat the free-for-all; they help establish a standard for who is what (I think people are afraid to be confined to labels and so want the aforementioned lateral movement; but again we need certain intangible boundaries that give us a sense of self); finally, lines provide us with structure for social expectation and comfort- they inform us that it is not ok to disrespect the boundaries of personal space and information. It is time to reestablish standards, recalibrate our expectations, and re-sensitize ourselves to our rights as individuals.
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4 comments:
Grin. I think I was this friend, or if I wasn't, I very easily could have been.
What you're suggesting is a bit excessive. You run the risk of overstating your point, in order to make the 'violation' of said point less excusable. Reductio ad absurdum -- "People don't value privacy!!!" Everyone values privacy. But not everyone assumes it, across the board.
I think that the one thing that all of these various outlets (blogs, twitter, facebook profiles) share is that they all stand as a singing testimony that most people wish to be understood and "known" better than they already are.
So, with that as an underlying belief, and even a growing one, it's natural to think "maybe this person wants me to know them, above and beyond the ways traditionally afforded by small talk."
If the person grabs your phone, secretively and runs away, it is a violation of privacy.
The "reading of the text message" event actually has an implicit request involved, an implicit respect of privacy.
The person reaches for your phone and says "I'm going to read your text messages." At that point you can request that the person don't, as you have private things in there that aren't for public consumption.
Or, (you can verify this with your friends) more frequently the person will giggle/laugh and say "OMG DON'T!" while sitting there, with a smile on their face, watching you flip through the messages, really meaning "Okay, please do this will be funny!"
Enough of my defense of my (potential) violation of privacy. In retrospect, I don't think this was me, I think I read your diary.
As far as the line between celebrity and non-celebrity -- I hate to say it but I think I disagree with you on this point as well.
I don't think celebrities have any true desire to be a non-celebrity. It is really easy to not be a celebrity. And almost every "former" celebrity is desperately trying to get back in.
I think celebrities engage in those mundane activities to be -perceived- as a "normal person."
Celebrities have PR agents, people who make a living measuring and mediating the way that other people are perceived by the public. The more "normal" they appear, the more their street cred goes up. If you think [female actress] is just like you, it is not a jarring disconnect when you see her portraying the girl next door in a romantic comedy. It's surprisingly easy to accept Jenifer Aniston as the "spurned-hopeless lover" -- as easy as it is to accept Angeline Jolie as the sexy dominatrix.
As for the rest, actors that want to be singers, singers that want to be producers... are you the casual social psychologist, or the casual philosopher? I hope you never pick one.
Phil,
How...self-centered (;)) of you to think it was you who stole my phone...wouldn't you remember such an incident? jk ironically enough, it was the German! haha. I forgave him. You stealing my Post-It diary, however, it less permissible. The fact that my diary was not as vivid as the one you trespassed last night is in no way mitigating your offense, either; gravity of the content of the stolen forum is not an argument for the severity of the act itself. Forgiveness is, at best, pending.
I would not make such a bold assumption that everyone values privacy, for I do believe there are people out there who don't care one way or the other- perhaps apathy is a worse offense than deliberate presentation of one's information.
If the honest goal of putting all of this information out for the public is to be better understood and "known," then society is in way worse shape than I originally admonished: to know oneself is FAR more important than for others to know them, for only then is peace of mind attainable (see my fb status for this one, maybe I'll post it here too). Those desperately seeking for others' understanding likely have missed the checkpoint of self-understanding, rendering the whole dissemination of private information through twitter, etc. testimony to my point that we need some more privacy, in order to understand our own personal defining lines.
It's amazing how much we disagree naturally (non-Devil's advocate-inspired :P)...someone stealing a phone right in front of you makes it no less a violation of privacy, it just makes the violation more public/conspicuous, which is ironic in itself: they are making the death of privacy itself...not private. How fitting.
As for the celeb's and non-celeb's...I don't need 'street cred' for them; they get paid for doing the job on screen and if they need aid to enhance their image via off-screen activity to be 'understood' then they not only have they not done their on-screen job properly, but have also probably missed the self-understanding milestone as well.
So, while many of your arguments clearly lack validity, I applaud your writing itself; a bone, I know...;) Actually, I agree on the 'bit excessive'/overstating comment. This is true and again, working on succinctness. Later buddy!
I had to double check your comment, to make sure I hadn't missed something, but in fact, I hadn't. Every single point you made was merely one of opinion (and none particularly well fortified at that), and I am surprised to find that you don't feel that there is no correlation between opinion and validity. The truth is what it is, whether you think so or not.
So, point by point:
--On Forgiveness
While I appreciate the pending status of your forgiveness, I would suggest not to worry about whether you feel like granting me said forgiveness. I am doing quite wonderfully without it. It seems selfish of me to burden you with the task of deciding whether or not to grant something unwanted. :)
-- On Privacy
While you feel one shouldn't make a bold statement that "Everyone values privacy", you have no such qualms about implying that no one values privacy, to the extent that the world needed a post explaining how much you, in fact, do?
-- On knowledge of self vs perception of others
You are a little presumptuous in some of your response. I can only attribute it to skimming. When I say
"most people wish to be understood and 'known' better than they already are"
that statement is not interchangeable with
"Most people believe that being understood by others is the most important from of knowing"
so to respond to it as if they were identical seems a bit shortsighted, willfully so.
It's almost, but not quite, the equivalent of me saying "Many people wish to have more money" and you saying "People need to know that money is not the most important key to happiness."
Truly, I assigned no level of importance, relative or otherwise when pointing out the collective belief, so there's no need to evaluate the level of importance of said collective belief.
-- On Phones, "Theft" and the "Violation of privacy"
I do not quote haphazardly, I do so to point out what seems to be a trend in your response.
You have a curious (yet inefficient for the purposes of our dialogue) habit of reading my statement, and then essentially redefining/rewording/restating it so that it in fact is not my statement, but one that is easier for you to respond to. It is entertaining, but has the effect of turning this dialogue into a monologue and a half.
My initial depiction of the phone exchange wrestles it squarely away from the terms "Theft" and "Violation of Privacy." If this wasn't clear then, I will make it so now with the aid of a dictionary. This is not a form of condescension, I understand that with the elevated nature of most of your studies it is probably easy to lose touch with the more mundane terms of everyday life.
Theft is commonly defined as the illegal taking of another person's property without their freely given consent. In the scenario I depicted (which unfortunately, is not the one you responded to), there was no theft, as there was freely given consent, implied or otherwise. The person grabs the [item] and there is a moment at which owner of said item can react with one of at least three culturally expected consent responses, all of which are a Consent based response.
Sincerely stating: Please don't. [implication: Consent not granted.]
Jokingly stating : OMG!! NO!!! [reach for object] [implication: Consent ambiguous, statistically not-granted.]
Jokingly stating : OMG!! NO!!! [implication: Consent ambiguous, statistically granted.]
Silence / Waiting: [implication: Consent granted.]
Our interactions with your diary, and, later, with your purse, should serve as a model. You reflexively responded with choice 2, and then upon further investigation, choice 1, at which point I returned both purse, and diary. The request for consent was requested, and then when denied, was respected.
(I trust and hope that this will not de-evolve into a discussion of whether or not implied communication is as valid as explicit, or any of the other tired variations of said conversation.)
Privacy is often defined as a person's property being free from unsanctioned intrusion. Surely this should be self-explanatory, after the second deconstruction of the voice mail/diary/"theft" event.
-- On Celebrity
The statement that you, personally, don't consciously need street cred from celebrities, and their attempts to gain street cred are an indication of improper job performance is, well... solipsistic. With a garnish of narcissism and a pinch of ignorance thrown in for fun. Luckily, I know that you are none of those things.
I will attribute this to a rushed response due to your very respectable workload. I don't believe for a second that you honestly think that your layperson's personal view is enough to invalidate the effect of the public's interpretation of the off-screen/off-record/off-[x] activities of a celebrity on their career.
Also, the transmutation of my statement of a celebrity's need to "appear" a certain way, to your chosen interpretation as "their desire to be understood" I will just take as an uninspired attempt to bolster the validity of this portion of your argument by referencing your earlier, also misguided, argument. But since we've already discussed your tendency towards alchemy with my statements, there's no need to revisit it here, as well. ;)
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