Signs you are Oversharing
Privacy in an Age of Exposition
We live in an age of oversharing. People share their most intimate emotions and details of their lives to not only their casual acquaintances and peers, but to the world on social media. Previous generations did not have this tendency. Perhaps one may argue that they did not have the tools, but the reason social media has been able to invite people to make such a spectacle of themselves is that they have no moral superstructure guiding their decisions. For someone who has no moral compass telling them what is right and wrong, the only way they can evaluate a decision is based on how much attention it gives them. This explains in large part, the number of videos, tiktoks, reels, posts, and long-winded captions of people exposing very intimate details of their lives to total strangers.
Some may say that they are blogging to “connect with others” but this desire to connect with strangers, in a totally one-sided exposition, is not true connection, but rather a vulgar performance. Vulgarity can be defined as making public that which should be intimate; vulgarity is a violation of the sanctity of intimacy.
Why is Oversharing Harmful?
It is an insult to our true relationships to open up intimately to everyone. People who have built a real relationship with you have earned the right to know about your life in that way. If everyone has this privilege then you do not respect your close relationships very much.
Moreover oversharing can put you in real physical, psychological and spiritual danger. Everyone is not looking at you with kind eyes and if you happen to inspire any kind of jealousy or resentment, your personal information will be used as ammunition against you, taken out of context, displayed without grace or kindness, perhaps even confabulated with lies to make it give credence to rumours. If you keep your personal details with only those you trust immensely, it will protect you from such things.
The physical dangers are easier to understand because you don’t want people you don’t trust to know your address, where you are travelling, or where you work or study. There are a lot of crazy people in the world who can neither be reasoned with, nor do they have benevolent intentions toward you, and keeping your privacy protects you from such people having access to you.
Psychologically, oversharing invites opinions you did not ask for. When you share any decision you made or are planning to make, be prepared that people will give you their unsolicited opinions about it. Not everyone’s opinion is a valuable one. In fact, some people’s opinions can derange you and make you second guess your own intuition and research. This is dangerous because other people can never know all of the details about your situation or care about you enough to give you actually good advice. This is why it is wise to share decisions after you’ve already made them, or only with people whose opinions you genuinely care about. Explaining yourself to people who don’t matter will degrade you.
Signs you are Oversharing and how to fix it: