Krishna Shastri Devulapalli | A Deliberation On Parts Both Private And Public
You had the feeling that, despite their acceding to having a part of their life recorded, their amygdala protested, that it perceived the relentlessly penetrating eye of the camera as a threat
Whenever I watched a Super-8 reel of someone’s childhood from the ’60s or even an old wedding tape from the ’90s, I always felt I was intruding on the privacy of those featured in them. There was a sense of awkwardness, vulnerability, an innocence, in people back then (by which I mean even a decade and a half ago), a kind of gentle embarrassment that made them appear human.
You had the feeling that, despite their acceding to having a part of their life recorded, their amygdala protested, that it perceived the relentlessly penetrating eye of the camera as a threat. As it ought to. And I am not speaking of just ordinary folk here; to my mind, even celebrities recorded at parties and functions then appeared less self-aware, more self-conscious, and therefore more human.
Today, as life has turned into the nonstop recording of the banal, with everyone — age, gender, economic background no bar — not just comfortable with the idea of their every move being recorded and shared with the world at large, but literally dying to do so with bafflingly supreme self-awareness, my old feeling that I could be intruding on someone’s privacy by watching their clips has changed.
Now I feel it’s my privacy that’s being intruded upon.
Some time ago, a friend, among the last of the good ones from the lit-pub world, messaged me.
“This xyz is unbearable, I say. Someone needs to stop this writer from their posts.”
Somehow, I’m the go-to guy when someone needs to be told off, it seems. (I have no one to blame for this but myself.) My friend was referring to the social media posts of a particular writer who was — to put it mildly — telling everyone more than they needed to know. TMI, as they call it these days. On a daily basis.
This isn’t such an uncommon phenomenon, btw — people who call themselves writers, doctors, academics, etc., casually putting out pics, info, details of their life that really ought not to be for public consumption at all, in the name of ‘sharing’. There is a psychiatrist, would you believe it, in my neck of the woods, whose social media pages are literally a signed confession of her fragile mental health. I know there are laws that prevent mental health professionals from disclosing patient details. I think it’s time they enacted a law that prevents them from sharing their own.
What bothers me more than this utter lack of discernment on the part of these serial sharers is the ‘encouragement’ such folk — yes, I include the patients who go to this psychiatrist in this list — receive from people in related fields who definitely ought to know better. These posts are rewarded with hearts unending.
Yes, we all are many things beyond the profession we choose. A writer needn’t be a pipe-smoking brooder all the time. A doctor needn’t be, well, Hippocratic 24/7. We are allowed to let our hair down, be vulnerable, goofy and what not now and then. But that comes with a caveat. We show that side to a select few, on occasion. Not on this free-for-all medium. In public posts. On a daily basis. Which everyone gets to see.
What does this kind of thing tell us about (a) the person doing the posting and (b) the people doing the cheering?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but what it tells me about both sets is that I can’t take them seriously as writers, editors, doctors, academics. Or people, for that matter.
Because being good at what you do is inextricably intertwined with two things: dignity and boundaries. And such posts, and the comments encouraging such posts, tell me that these folks understand neither. It tells me they have poor impulse-control, low self-esteem, and, above all, vanity and sad desperation. How can this not contaminate their work as writers, artists, doctors, or plumbers and caterers, for that matter?
I can see many people going “Who’s this ****er to preach?” My inbox has never been short of these messages. Be that as it may, it will make them think — if only for a second — before they put up another pic/video of theirs, a perfectly appropriate one perhaps to share with a few good friends, made repulsive by being out there for everyone. Among whom are inconvenient ****ers like me who’ll bring the ugliness of it to their notice.
A good time to note that it isn’t just our body that has private parts. So does our life. Flashing them at unsuspecting passers-by might not be in our best interests.
