the exchange rate of self-disclosure
Dredging as social contract and performance art
Knowing that Taylor Swift is married now elicits the same satisfaction, I would argue, as being a medieval peasant who got to witness the town cathedral get finished within their actual lifetime. (Pure coincidence that they got the Sagrada Familia done also this year?) What can I say, I’m a sucker for the completion of a lifelong project that got the whole village involved…
Some people still talk about the golden era of Millennial blogging as the apotheosis of online self-disclosure, but I’ve been extra fascinated lately by the way this genre, so to speak, continues to evolve. Of course, its predominant medium has diversified, thanks to the front-facing camera and proliferation of podcast mics, though people are still doing impressive things with text and image. On social media, after all, oversharing isn’t just an art form. It’s practically good manners — a way of signalling that you’re down, you’re around, that you understand the digitized nature of your relationships and how life requires that we mediate our interactions, life updates, and every waking thought through a third-party platform. The messier ones, especially.
