So They Do Have A Line

I'm a very private person, by nature. I understand that the only person you can truly trust to keep a secret is yourself.

Some of us are lucky enough to have friends who will keep our secrets as if they were their own. And we should be very, very, thankful.

But, from my perspective, the profound respect for and tight-lipped silence in response to one's desire to share with one and only one person, particularly if that person is not a permanent monogamous significant other, is rare.

So, if you are me, you can imagine how weird the larger soul-bearing aspect of the social networking phenomenon is. I've read articles that have said that the difference between today's youth and my generation is that today's youth understands that the concept of privacy is a myth and thus they bare everything and anything for all to see on the Internet. After all, the sheer volume of information should obscure it (unless, of course, the search algorithms keep getting smarter...)

Today, it seems, there is at least a partial line to the lack of privacy. Some of the users of Facebook stood up to the platform and said, "Stop Using My Information In A Way I Don't Like." And good for them.

Reading about it makes me smile. It's very weird. In more than one way, Facebook is like a government regulating a sovereign nation with a representative democracy populus: the majority is too busy gossiping, shopping, and posting drunken pictures of themselves to be political, but there is a minority who pick fights, and thanks to them, the whole is better.