So Weasel grabbed me on MSN and said in response to my meme he would like to see a blog on privacy. Just that, no guidelines or nothing and despite the fact it doesn’t strictly fill the guidelines it should get me writing again (I have blogged on privacy but that must have been years ago now).
I don’t believe in it.
Seriously. I think we should all be comfortable in having cameras on us 24/7 and I would happily answer any question on any subject to do with my ‘private life’ asked, I would happily spread it across the world wide web in technicolour. I think privacy is an excuse for doing things you’re ashamed of and admitting that the uncertainty we live with on a daily basis scares us. Fear is not a good thing, fear is a mind-killer (may have read Dune at an impressionable age), we need to banish that fear by telling everyone about everything.
Of course the reason that I don’t do this, the reason that I give people Mishnames (as Goat has christened them), is because other people think differently about this whole privacy thing. I do like other people and want to show them respect, they’re claiming this privacy thing so me blogging about the way the Jellicle Cat orgasms (AWESOMELY!) or what Weasel and I got up to in bed the other week, not to mention that the last woman I woke up in a bed next is probably the most numinously beautiful woman I’ve ever met and precisely who kissed me last night would make these people quite uncomfortable.
I want an ID card, I want credit card companies to track what I buy, I want my personality and my preferences to be known by Amazon, Google and the Census people. So they’re going to tailor my adverts, so they’re going to suggest I buy certain things – doesn’t actually mean I have to buy these things. Doesn’t much change what I see of the world either considering I’m listen to radio 4 and have a variety of e-newspapers sent to my inbox.
I am myself, I do not believe that the world can significantly change that and I got used to people making assumptions about me years ago. If they’re wrong then they’re wrong. Bring the cameras on! What do you want to see next, is it me or is it a physical shell – whatever you like I’ll show you because I don’t think privacy is a healthy thing.
What do I keep private? I try not to keep anything private but sometimes I don’t take a camera out with me (more often of late as it’s broken) I’d tell anyone who asked what happened but I’d keep the feeling of it to myself because even though I communicate myself to yourself as much as I can the way that I think is never going to be the way that you think and true communication is only possibly on rare and beautiful occaisions – without privacy there is more communication and thus more likelihood of this wonderful thing happening.
Fuck Privacy. But I continue to keep secrets, try not to embarrass other people or make them feel bad because I also like divergent views, who knows, I might be wrong about this privacy thing but I don’t intend to change how I view the horrid thing.