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It's time to get paranoid. Not about black helicopters, space aliens, or the sanctity of Swarthmore's online student records. Being scared of all that shit is old hat. Here's what you've really got to worry about: How many people know you? And what do they know about you?
 

See, the problem is not that many people know you (who you know know you), but that they know plenty of people you don't know (yet). They talk to, instant message with, and write web diaries read by other people. And, boy howdy, do people like to talk, message, and write about other people. I'm not referring to your chatter among friends about last weekend's bender, the list on the Daily Jolt of people whom you've allegedly gone down on behind the bar at Olde Club, or that nose-picking incident in the Tarble game room (that's right, I saw you). Oh no, I'm talking about the ex-lover who mentions your penchant for the boudoir utility of a certain breakfast cereal's that stays crunchy in milk to a few friends, and six months later when you're recognized as "that Cap'n Crunch Freak" on introduction to someone whom you know nothing about.
 

That's when the shit gets heavy. The most embarrassing things don't actually matter much more than fourth boy- or girlfriends (do you remember yours? Without counting?) when kept to a small circle. Sure, mom talking about that cute Peter Pan outfit you wore for Hallowe'en when you were six might make you cringe, but when someone you've never met knows you memorized, and can reliably recite, the lyrics to Hanson's "Mmmbop!", and not just knows it, but knows you because of it, that's just fucking unsettling.
 

Everybody must have had this happen a time or three: you're cruising along at some cocktail party thrown by a friend of a friend. You don't really know anybody, but you've finally thinned your bloodstream enough that you're comfortable chatting with people you don't know without too many awkward pauses. And all of a sudden, one of these people whom you've just met, probably one you'd rather fancy impressing, comes out with something like, "Hey, I recognize you from somewhere… I know–you're the guy with the full moon on Debra's web page! Say, how 'bout showing us that birthmark shaped like Columbia? That is you, isn't it? I mean, I only saw your face upside down between your legs." At which you, really, have no option but to comply in shame, crying like a little girl. Because, you see, you are That Guy.
 

Perhaps worse than any public nudity, though, is being recognized for something that, in an of itself, isn't all that embarassing. Take a pair of friends, Jim and Bob, who live on opposite sides of the same continent and who met and communicate exclusively by email. Bob breaks up with someone who bears a distinctive tattoo, let's say pictures of, left to right, a pig, an unbroken egg, and ham and eggs sizzling in a pan, which tattoo he mentions. Jim, several months later, spots this tattoo in a club and emails Bob, who confirms that a physical description matches. Subsequently, Jim is introduced to his friend's ex-lover, and says, "Oh, hey, you used to date Bob, right?" Confronted with this, the ex-lover panics: "Oh my god! Is he still thinking about me? Is he stalking me? Oh no! I almost sent him a postcard, you know, one of those 'Hey, how's life?' things… Oh, this is fucking terrible!"
 

No matter who you are and how private you thought the details of your life were, they're probably out there somewhere. Because, regardless of how many hearts were crossed and needles stuck in eyes (or, anyway, promises made to that effect), your friends are human and, if you told them, showed them, or hooked up with them, they're likely to tell someone else. This was bad enough before everybody and their fucking iguana had Internet access, when the passage of information between private individuals required at least vague acquaintance between the passer and the passee. And it's only getting worse, now that people are bound neither to listen to whatever the New York Times editorial page says, nor to speak only with one other person on the other end of a telephone, but can read and write for the unwashed cyber-masses with great ease.
 

You may think that you live in an especially closed society: Swarthmore College students, the folks at work, academia, whatever. But when it really comes down to it, it is, in fact, a rather small world. These days, though, pretty much no society is all that closed. The kind of community penetration that used to be reserved for tax collectors, the FBI, and telemarketers is now at the fingertips of any navel-gazer with half a clue sitting in a public library.
 

Not that this is all bad. Breaking down societal barriers, in the long run, works wonders for people's comprehension of formerly remote others as real human beings (a comprehension which is still, for the most part, lacking today). This is the kind of thing that leads to folks actually treating each other decently. It's easy to think of Chinese, Indian, or Canadian citizens as just a wash of people-like images right up until you start hearing about specific ones receiving monster, hang-on-the-locker-hook wedgies, dropping harmonicas down toilets and reaching in after them, or losing control of their bowels in public. It's not that so much that details about someone else's life must be embarrassing to humanize them, but rather that humans remember embarrassing stuff significantly better. The gradual spreading of human details isn't going to make Israelis and Palestinians stop blowing each other up next week, but maybe in fifty or a hundred years.
 

Along the way, though, we'll either have to be a little more conscious about our privacy or accept that we haven't got it. Already, you're only getting lucky if something you wanted to keep private but divulged to anyone actually has stayed that way. It doesn't take much, really, to keep Joe the Doorman from knowing things you don't want him to know, but it does take some kind of conscious effort. Like, for instance, simply not talking about things you really don't want someone else to know. (Come on… you know that you go off and repeat things that people asked to keep private, but are really careful to do it in a conspiratorial, "this doesn't leave the room!") I mean, just presuming that things you say won't get passed along has been poorly-founded thinking since apes crawled out of the trees and started to gossip, which we were doing since one gorilla elbowed another and raised his eyebrows to say "check out the serious fleas on that guy."