Oversharing

Feature story today in the Times Magazine is by Emily Gould, a young woman who got semi-famous for writing a blog about herself and then had second thoughts over all the personal information she was revealing and later came to be freaked out and hurt by all the comments she received—that she knew she ought not read, but couldn’t help herself—and so, of course, she had to write a 5000 word article for the paper of record about all this, which—to her credit—she recognizes is rather ironic, but which didn’t stop her from doing so, anyway, eager for attention as she is, and many of us—yours truly, I guess—are, too.

Fortunately, I’m limited in my tendency to (what Miss Gould calls) “overshare” by my self-imposed daily limit of 327 words. So, just at the time point when I might be ready to spill the beans about some deep and troubled aspect of my psyche or some fatal error I made in my interpersonal relationships, I’m saved by the fact that I’m out of room to tell the tale.

Additionally, since my life moves much more slowly than an ambitious 26 year-old living in Brooklyn, it’s extremely unlikely that I would have the sort of beans to spill that would lead me to regret doing so as did Miss Gould.

The best I could do in the navel-gazing department would be to talk about how I cut my finger slicing a lime last night for that one more Marguerita I probably didn’t need but had anyway. Then I could go on about how the family sat around and watched an episode of “Flight of the Conchords” and laughed and laughed—at least Jen and I did. Finally, I could thrill my readership with reports of how I spent the afternoon shellacing the cloth bar-tape on my Tournesol.

I’m sure there are people all over the world just dying to hear more, but alas, my oversharing limit is reached.