The issues of online anonymity and privacy aren’t just abstract talking points for me. I’ve been keeping an online journal in one form or another for about ten years. I’ve talked about my private life, kids, and anything else that struck me as interesting. And over the course of a decade, that really freaked out people from time to time – family, co-workers, friends – who didn’t understand the whole ‘talking about your life online’ thing.
A February article in New York magazine talks about the attitudes of teen and 20-somethings who’ve grown up in the age of the internet. In short, they are a lot more realistic, practical and not freaked out by privacy concerns.
The article has one story about girl – ‘Susie’ – who had a ex post a sex tape they did online. Susie freaked out and pretty much got herself offline forever. The article’s author Emily Nussbaum asked 19 year old Columbia student Xiyin Tang about and I think her response is smart, healthy, and probably a good indicator of where the next generation will come down on these issues.
I tell Xiyin about Susie and her sex tape. She’s sympathetic with Susie’s emotional response, she says, but she’s most shocked by her decision to log off entirely. “My philosophy about putting things online is that I don’t have any secrets,†says Xiyin. “And whatever you do, you should be able to do it so that you’re not ashamed of it. And in that sense, I put myself out there online because I don’t care—I’m proud of what I do and I’m not ashamed of any aspect of that. And if someone forms a judgment about me, that’s their opinion.
“If that girl’s video got published, if she did it in the first place, she should be thick-skinned enough to just brush it off,†Xiyin muses. “I understand that it’s really humiliating and everything. But if something like that happened to me, I hope I’d just say, well, that was a terrible thing for a guy to do, to put it online. But I did it and that’s me. So I am a sexual person and I shouldn’t have to hide my sexuality. I did this for my boyfriend just like you probably do this for your boyfriend, just that yours is not published. But to me, it’s all the same. It’s either documented online for other people to see or it’s not, but either way you’re still doing it. So my philosophy is, why hide it?â€
Blogged with Flock
