On Oversharing
Penelope Trunk writes about why she can share so much about her life.
Because if I am living an honest life, and my eyes are open, and I’m trying my hardest to be good and kind, then anything I’m doing is fine to tell people.
But the reason behind that (if you read the rest of the post) is because of a lot of fucked up shit that happened in her childhood/adolescense.
I’ve had a stereotypically perfect childhood/adolescense. Fuck, my parents are high school sweethearts (homecoming king & queen at that!) who are still married, and my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins all live within a few blocks of the house I grew up in. We’re all super-close now, and I honestly love hanging out with my parents and my sister and my extended family. Yeah, yeah, I’m weird, I know. I want to move back to Ohio to be with them some day.
So, the point being, I don’t have any of Penelope’s rationale for over-sharing. But I’m a huge fan of over-sharing nonetheless. About myself. About the people around me. I’m sometimes accused by friends of telling too many details about their lives to other mutual friends, or to random strangers. I somewhat understand, but it’s never malicious. I just don’t understand the point in hiding most things. (note: most). I think it’s almost, as a rule, better if people know things about one another than don’t—if people blurt out how awkward they feel around one another, or how much they adore one another, how jealous they are, or in awe, or how they’re glad some thing has past, or they hope it will soon …
It’s worked for me …
I love your philosophy on this.
I hate to break it to you, but NOBODY CARES!
oversharing about other people = gossip
Discretion is the better part of valour and all that. This philosophy will absolutely lead to hurt feelings, anger, resentment, discomfort, pain, and suffering.
Boundary issues?
Telling the world all about yourself is one thing. Telling the world private details about other people that they want kept secret is a huge boundary violation. It is incredibly disrespectful for anyone to unilaterally decide that they have the right to tell other people details about their friends lives. You may think it makes you cooler and more open than other people. It doesn’t. It makes you narcissistic and insensitive.
Sharing is great, but the “over-” in “over-sharing” implies the excessiveness that makes this not OK. Say what you want about yourself, but it’s not your place to reveal the business of others to third parties. It’s gossip, as another commenter said.
The fact that it’s “never malicious” does nothing to alleviate the harm. It’s a rationalization for behavior I think you know to be inappropriate.
And if someone’s hiding something that he/she confides in you, it’s not yours to “understand the point” of the hiding. It’s his or hers. I agree with Dan. The more I think about this post, the more narcissistic it seems to be.
I think it’s an incredibly liberating thing to be so transparent about your life. I wrote a blog entitled “Explaining your life” (shameless plug)…http://altonwoods.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/explaining-your-life/ to assist people in handling the brutal judgmental attitudes people who can’t seem to share at all will beat you with to try and get you to crawl back into your cubicle and just suffer in silence like everyone else…I love your blog, finally someone who seems interesting!
It’s really cool that your blog has three columns. I like autobiographical blogging as well. I look forward to reading more of your blog posts. If you want to read my blog, it’s nldthoughtsandfeelings.wordpress.com. Thanks for creating such an interesting blog.
hey! check out my blog! http://www.elevenyc.wordpress.com