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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. All that shit's old hat. Here's what you've really got to worry about: How many people know you? And, as if that weren't enough, what do they know about you?
 

See, the problem is that there are a pretty fair number of people who know you (and who you know know you), but they know plenty of people you don't know (yet). They talk to these people. And, boy howdy, do people like to talk about other people. ^[1]
 

I'm not referring to your chatter among friends about last weekend's bender, who you went down on 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 breakfast cereal preference to a few friends, and it comes back around six months later in your being recognized as "that Choco Pebbles Freak" on introduction to someone whom you know nothing about.
 

That's where the shit gets heavy. The most embarrassing things don't really matter much more than fourth boy- or girlfriends (do you remember yours? Without counting?), but when someone you've never met knows some insignificant detail of your life, and not just knows it, but knows you because of it, that's some truly unsettling shit.
 

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, "Oh, hey, I know where I recognize you from! You're that guy whose full moon Debra has a picture of on her web page! Will you show us your ass so I can be sure the birth mark matches?"
 

Because, you see, no matter who you are and how private you thought your embarrassing moments were, they're probably out there somewhere. 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, but that isn't so much true any more. And it's only getting worse.
 

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 not 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. For the most part, anything that you're taking for granted as private these days, you're probably just getting lucky on already. 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. 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 long before we had any capacity for language in the modern, formal sense. ^{[2] [3]} (Think about how much gossip gets across through pointing, gesturing, and facial expression as things are today.)
 

[Guess-what-kind-of finish… that's right, a PUNCHY one!!!]
 

jlewis: Gabe, could you punch this up a bit? Thanks. jlewis: Uh, sorry about that, old habits die hard. Comments inline. gabriel: Tom: is that encrypted to my key? Josh: Asshole. :^> jlewis: Never mind -- general comments here too. I hate to say this, but in general, it needs to be funnied up. :) Rat is right: it's not quite wacky enough, and I kept finding myself hitting points where I expected a rim shot and didn't get one. Rants like this seem to work in rhythms. Instead the wackiness that is present here is really irregularly spaced. That can be okay, but because the Places Where The Punch Lines Go don't necessarily have punch lines, the mismatch between the peaks of funny and the peaks of content makes the whole thing a bit anticlimactic. I'll try to point out specific examples above. lisa: I think you need to decide whether this is just about gossip in general or about how changes in modern society/technology have compounded the gossip problem. If the former, I suggest stalling a bit and pretending to be talking about some new and modern problem. If the latter, omit examples (like the breakfast cereal) that don't fit the pattern, and make your thesis clearer and your other examples wackier (include bizarre chains of connection like, the girl you are trying to come on to knows about some obscure collection you have because she knows someone you bought some obscure collector's item from on e-bay. Not the funniest example ever, but the only one I could think of at the moment). gabriel: If you're still reading, shimmy on over to the new post. (I made changes that, if I were to make them through Skein's revision foo, would blow away comments that I'd rather keep here.) Add comment