The Pursuit of Privacy

I've recently been frantically deleting old posts, tweets, photos and details of my name from social networking sites, as well as tightening privacy and security settings. I've tried to get rid of anything that can too easily identify me, my interests, or my friends. I have a vague idea that this has been done for reasons of privacy. But, overall, this is a pointless and bad idea for a number of reasons.

Firstly, no one cares about my details. I'm not rich, famous, or successful. If I were planning a career in politics or the like, I could understand why I've done this, but I'm not, so I don't.

Secondly, even if someone did genuinely seek to undermine me or use my past words against me, my precautions would be ineffectual. Basically, I'm not so good at IT that I could truly protect myself from such threats online if they existed.

Thirdly, I've basically committed cultural genocide against myself:

Twitter's probably the most painful example. I've deleted tweets which might be viewed as too inflammatory or foul-mouthed alongside those which might compromise my security. I've gone from about 1,600 tweets to 200, and now they mostly consist of short one-sentence answers to other people's tweets. I'm too vain to let my tweet-count slip to zero, but I'm too paranoid to allow anything interesting to remain.
edit: Fuck it, I'll delete them all, barring the first one, which will show when I joined, and a second explanatory one, explaining the lack of future posts. I'm nothing if not methodical.

On Facebook, I've deleted all old photo albums, even those which appear benign. I'm not sure why; although my friends could access them, my outside privacy settings were secure. Maybe I just don't trust my friends, but then, of course, they'll have other photos of me anyway, and won't always have the same stringent privacy settings that I employ. This goes back to my second reason listed above. Anyway, beyond photos, I've also started going back over all my old statuses and postings, and deleting them, bit by bit. Again, secondary reason, this is pointless because a lot of my filthy incendiary comments are probably on other people's walls, not to mention what I may've said in countless "private message" conversations (which I can only delete from my side).

Anyway, this talk of wall postings, tweets and status updates lead me onto expanding the third reason. I generally put a lot of effort into my updates and tweets. I sometimes looked back on them and smiled, thinking how enormously clever I was. As each was accompanied by a date and a time, they acted as handy reminders of how I might've felt at a certain time, during a certain period of my life. At the very least, they would've been a good archive of some of my more interesting thoughts and ideas.

Maybe I'm actually being vain in thinking this matters at all. Surely the only reason I'd ever truly look back is because I was writing my autobiography, having achieved a great deal in public life? Am I planning to attain a great and notable standing at some point in my life? Not really. So why should it matter if I'm deleting my past?

Perhaps I feel blasé about this whole trauma because I've been reading a lot about Mark Twain recently, who had a healthy disregard for truth and accurate memory ("Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it" etc.). If I ever rise to prominence, I'll take the opportunity to rewrite my life and reinvigorate the past. Who'll contradict me? Mark Zuckerberg? HA! Show me the evidence.


P.S. All this has made me realise the hypocrisy of this public blog. However, barring a few privacy lapses, it's not too personally compromising. It shall remain. But it'll have to get more interesting to soak up the wisdom and wit from the deleted social-networking posts (Ha. Prove they weren't!).