Individual, perhaps, but not personal.


Distinguishing just what is personal and what isn't has, in the age of Reality TV, become much more difficult than it once was. When we can sit in front of our televisions and watch people who allow us to glimpse into their inner thoughts (if that's what they are) in the hope that this exposing of themselves will bring them greater ratings, "personal" may have lost any meaning it once had. At the very least, it's confusing. But more often than not, and without any need to call upon Reality TV, we confuse the individual with the personal. The internet may recognize who were are in such a way that it's able to streamline our online experience, but when it does this it individualizes that experience, rather than personalizes it. We remain types, not truly distinguishable entities.

True, many of us upload and share information to the web that can certainly be considered personal, but even here, except perhaps for those people who aren't aware, as Oscar Wilde so beautifully put it, that
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up
we're well aware that rather than exposing our inner selves or something like that, we're choosing how to represent ourselves in public.



Go to: It's nothing personal.