Social media and the boundary between public and private: a thesis.
What do you talk about at the pub?
My friend Lisa from Twitter posed a question and some related thoughts about social media (Web 2.0, call it what you will) this morning. Read her tweets from the bottom up:
Lisa’s onto something, and to my mind it goes beyond the typical talk about online privacy. I think it gets at a basic reorganization of the way we think about our social interactions. So please bear with me while I unspool a little off-the-cuff theory.
Here’s one drastically oversimplified model of how our social interactions in the public/business sphere have evolved over time:
- In the old days,* most people knew many of the people with whom they did business — knew them pretty well, knew them from the community, maybe went to church with them or knew them from the Grange or the Elks lodge. We still get the flavor of this sometimes, for example if we have a favorite barista or bartender at our regular coffeehouse or pub. It can be the same if you have a long-term relationship with a lawyer, accountant, doctor, or the like that bridges business and friendship.
- As cities have grown and as populations have become more mobile, more of our business transactions have become transient, or at least impersonal. Through much of the 20th century, the prevailing model for business comportment was one of unfailing propriety, in part because such caution was appropriate when you didn’t know many of the people with whom you were doing business. Unless you were a titan of industry whose moods would be indulged, you toed the line for what was generally held to be “professional” behavior.
- These days, social media tools and other means of instant communication allow us to choose from a much wider range of definitions for what constitutes “professional” behavior. The boundaries are as porous as we want them to be.
As I think about this last stage — the stage we’re in now — it occurs to me that, in the United States at least, this transition has been paired with much more tolerant social standards across the board. Twenty or thirty or fifty years ago, someone’s single motherhood or homosexuality or atheism simply would not be addressed in polite business conversation, whereas now these things have, in many cases, lost any sense of taboo.
But Lisa raises excellent points in the tweets I quoted: Although openness is generally a fine thing, there are times at which, and topics about which, we don’t need to share everything about ourselves.
Before I philosophize further, let me hand the mike over to you:
How do you decide where to draw the line between public and private,
especially in your use of social media?
Do we share too much today in our public conversations?
~
* I’ll leave it to you to decide if these were the “good old days” or the “bad old days.” Probably some of both.
~
(Pub photo by misocrazy.)
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Interestingly, my sister and I were having this very conversation this weekend, on our drive home from a trip with our mother to Provincetown.
My sister, a few years my senior, and editor and writer, probably would not have included “on our drive home from a trip with our mother to Provincetown.”
My mother probably would have said “Cape Cod”, not “Provincetown”.
I find the details, when not inappropriate (and sometimes, when inappropriate) add to the readers’ experience and, when properly chosen, allow us to shape the world’s perception of us in the way we wish. (This could lead into an entire conversation about niche audiences, but enough for now.)
As a fellow Twitterer (davidbadash), I share those details of my life I want others to know. But like advice from years ago, if I wouldn’t want my mother to hear it, I probably wouldn’t write it.
I share details often, or at least what feels like often to me.
As I think about your question, I realize that there are things that I wouldn’t share face to face…and so I don’t share them here. The social space is public in theory, just as a conversation on the street is public in theory. In either case, anyone COULD drop in. And so I take that into account.
I don’t know. I came over just to help you with page views. Now I find that you are drawing me into conversation.
Nice job.
Jon — Thanks for stopping by (for whatever reason!) and thanks for these thoughts.
I think that plenty of people follow the same model that you do: might not broadcast everything online, might share to a degree, but understand that something *might* well be overheard.
In my opinion, I think it’s a mistake to regard all of this as either (a) exactly the same as what’s come before or (b) entirely different. We need to carry over appropriate lessons from earlier media - e.g., it’s generally unwise to scream in public - while also learning the etiquette, mores, and methods of the new media.
David — What I find interesting is how we’ve come to deny - appropriately, I think - that there are hard-and-fast boundaries about what we should share and when. WE decide, not some abstract “them” who sets the rules.
This is interesting to me from at least two directions:
1. The clueless assertions of the old-school types who say “You can’t find a real job on Facebook” or “You can’t build a brand with just a blog” or whatever. They’re making rules about something they don’t understand, and the fundamental thing they don’t understand about these new media is that they tend to be rule-averse.
2. The converse assertions by some (a few) in the social media who say you “must” act in particular way in these media - e.g. that you “must” allow comments on your blog, or you “must” follow back anyone who follows you on Twitter. Really? I must? How would you know? These folks are trying to make rules about a communications medium, despite the obvious examples of earlier media (postal mail, telephone, film, e-mail, IMs, etc.) that have been used every way under the sun.
When you compound this with considerable changes in what’s considered inside the bounds of polite society (trips home from P-town, etc.), it just adds to the fun. Well, *I* find it fun . . . and I’m glad to be sharing the fun with the likes of you.