Privacy vs. Exhibitionism

In an interesting op-ed piece, one writer decries the web as a newborn "ExhibitioNet"

People seem to crave popularity or celebrity more than they fear the loss of privacy.

With millions upon millions of people sharing their thoughts, photos, and videos, often of the most intimate moments of their lives, where's the fear of privacy violation that most pundits predicted would slow the growth of Citizen Generated Media?

This is no longer fringe behavior. MySpace has 56 million American "members." Facebook -- which started as a site for college students and has expanded to high school students and others -- has 9 million members. (For the unsavvy: MySpace and Facebook allow members to post personal pages with pictures and text.) About 12 million American adults (8 percent of Internet users) blog, estimates the Pew Internet & American Life Project. YouTube -- a site where anyone can post home videos -- says 100 million videos are watched daily.

The answer, I feel, lies in the nature of the internet and people's unfamiliarity with the consequences. While many of the young posters on MySpace extol their current drinking, sexual, and other like behaviors, they don't necessarily realize that this may catch up to them. A recent article, for example, noted that recruiters are now scanning MySpace pages, and have no qualms about rejecting applicants based on their supposed daily weed-smoking. (Whether these boats are true or image building is another question.)

With the possible implications of seemingly innocent posts with recruiters, potential dating partners, and the like now becoming apparent, will people begin to more actively manage their image online? And where does it go in 5 years?

The larger reality is that today's exhibitionism may last a lifetime. What goes on the Internet often stays on the Internet. Something that seems harmless, silly or merely impetuous today may seem offensive, stupid or reckless in two weeks, two years or two decades. Still, we are clearly at a special moment. Thoreau famously remarked that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Thanks to technology, that's no longer necessary. People can now lead lives of noisy and ostentatious desperation. Or at least they can try.

Full text here.