I read these thoughts on a Facebook post the other day and happily they coincided with my own thinking. And so I thought I’d share them with dear reader: “Remember when people had diaries and got mad when someone read them? Now they put everything online and get mad when people don’t (read it)”.
I never really kept a diary. When I was a boy and again in my teenage years, I tried but as I was reticent (or maybe just paranoid) about putting my deepest (darkest?) most personal thoughts on paper for fear of their being read by someone who would mock me or worse, my attempts at being a diarist failed miserably.
If anything, my diary was more like an appointments book. It was a smattering of reminders of the dates of important events and the birthdays of family members and friends.
I can admit now that because I knew I wasn’t a cat and therefore curiosity would not kill me, when I had the chance I often peaked into the diaries of those I knew who kept them. But clearly we were birds of a feather and few if any of them had diaries any different from my dismal attempts.
The one diary I do remember keeping regularly was the homework diary that my school issued every pupil. As the name suggests, this was a diary of class assignments that had to be completed at home, usually overnight, and had to be signed off by a parent or guardian and then later verified by the teacher who had issued the assignment.
Like many of my friends at school, it was the maintenance of this diary that drove us into the dark and dingy world of petty misdemeanors, as we learned to forge our parents’ signatures when we had something to hide from them, and needed to lie to the teacher. I recall some of my friends were such good forgers they would assist those who were not for a small fee. Incredibly none of them, as far as I know, made forgery a career.
This was a week where once again the thoughtless and often racists and hateful posts of random people across South Africa led to virtual unknowns including an estate agent and a fairly middle-level government employee (as well as better known social commentators such as a broadcaster and a banker), gaining their allotted 15 minutes of infamy.
For all these people and a bunch of others, the business of sharing unfiltered thoughts with the whole world came back to bite them in the backside.
These people and others of their ilk seem not to fully grasp that not all their Twitter followers or Facebook friends necessarily share their racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic (take your pick and add a few of your own if you like) view of the world. These people will expose your garbage to the wider world out there and you will be left alone flailing about trying desperately to cover your over exposed behind.
That said, I guess we’ve all blurted out things before our brains were properly engaged and had to pay the price. But usually the audience in such a situation is more manageable than the whole world.
Speaking for myself, many is the time I have posted something on Twitter, pressed send and then instantly thought that perhaps it wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Yes, you can go back and delete the Tweet but there’s always the possibility that it has been read and possibly retweeted long before your damage control measures kick in.
The alternative is an Orwellian Thought Police to save us from ourselves. Shudder!
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