Nice to Know You

Jeff Opdyke, who writes the “Love & Money” column in the Wall Street Journal, is familiar with sharing details about his personal life in his writing. That's part of the point of his column – to personalize the many decisions that arise for an American family around saving, spending, raising kids, buying a house, using credit cards.

In a recent column, Opdyke described his reaction to his grandmother’s request that he give her several hundred dollars. He related that his grandmother had raised him, and so is more like a mother than a grandmother to him. He was very honest in describing his mixed feelings about her request – he knows that she doesn’t “need” the money to survive, but rather to let her maintain the lifestyle she’s used to, which includes treating her friends to meals out and parties. Despite this, he concluded that he would give her the money anyway.

His readers’ reactions were swift and virulent, including insults (“You insufferable twit” and "selfish, self-indulged, petty, controlling" were just a few of the printable ones, I imagine).

The exchange was provocative, but what it made me think about was the pitfalls inherent in sharing your personal thoughts in a public medium, whether in a newspaper column like Opdyke’s or a blog like this one.

Former Pioneer Press columnist Laura Billings would occasionally write stories that gave glimpses of her mailbag, and it was disturbing. I think that was the first time I realized how hard it must be to share what you think with the public – most of the time, you don’t hear from the reasonable middle, but only from the whacko extremes.

Writing about myself and my opinions for a public audience (no matter how few of you there are!) is similar to journaling, except for the fact that I’m not the only one who reads it. This affects what I write about, and what I choose to say. Whether I’m considering what my mother would think, or a friend, or some person I don’t know, it affects my words.

At the same time, when I read someone else’s thoughts, it’s hard not to feel like I know that person to some extent, even if it’s a complete stranger. It’s similar to our celebrity culture – when we watch an actor in a movie, or a musician performing, our modern media erase the space between us so that we feel as if we are there. (The same effect happens when a child is snatched – it’s all too easy to identify and extrapolate that experience to your own child.)

I suppose this situation began with the invention of writing, which allowed one person to read something written by another without ever meeting. The printing press accelerated it, allowing for wider distribution of writings. The telegraph and then modern mass media broke the space barrier – words could be moved across distance without having to be attached to a physical medium that required transportation. Moving images in film and television made it more vivid than words alone could. And, of course, the interweb has taken it to its current (and constantly changing) level, allowing for instant response through comments, trackbacks, diggs, and so on.

But of course I don’t know the person whose words I read. I’ll never meet the celebrity I see on David Letterman. It’s not my child that was taken.

Our human brains are wired to know a relatively small group of “us” so that we can be ready to defend ourselves against a threatening “them.” Yet we live in an age where our “us” includes people we’ll never actually know, and our “them” includes people in our towns or neighborhoods whom we could know, but don’t have time for because we’re too busy watching TV or surfing the interweb.