By Josh Gardner, whose mother’s maiden name is Smith and first pet was called Scooter
AS someone who grew up with every recorded fact and invented fact a quick Google away, I believe in the freedom of information. Anything less is gatekeeping, which is evil.
The same goes for my personal life. It’s normal and natural that everything from my full location history to 12 years of poorly cropped selfies are owned and utilised by social media giants. They’ll put together an incredible highlight reel for my funeral.
Why should there be details of my life that aren’t public knowledge? When every twist of my last break-up, the minutiae of my health complaints and every tune I’ve ever vibed to is on the internet, it would be rude to conceal.
But, like all his weird, secretive generation, my dad disagrees. He stopped me posting pictures of my driving licence and dental records to Insta even though I’d spent arduous minutes choosing the right filter for them.
‘You never know who’s looking, son,’ he warned. ‘Why not put your phone down and do something normal like watch eight hours of TV in silence, like your old man?’
No, obviously. But he has a point. Would I be more exciting, like a teased-but-unrevealed new Brat collab, if I lived a life of obscurity like Kristen Stewart who doesn’t even have Insta?
Feeling I’d found a rich new vein of content, I decided to give it a try. Even as the first few seconds crawled by I knew it could make a killer TikTok.
To fully experience living an unobserved life, I popped into town. Bad move. Even on the bus I overheard a conversation that needed to be shared, had thoughts on my sexuality and belated realisations about the new Alien film. But I couldn’t tell anyone.
Is this how people used to live? Their every thought left uncaptured, their facial expressions lost? Keeping it all bottled in was driving me crazy. No wonder the Great War broke out just so Wilfred Owen could write his poems.
Just when I felt my brain liquifying, I bumped into a mate who asked how I was. Usually I would upload my whole Twitter into his face but instead, with immense restraint, I just said ‘fine.’ Remarkably, it worked!
In that moment a new way of life opened up before me. One where I could coast through my days without oversharing, making comments that come back to haunt me, or doing a little dance.
And while it was tempting to follow this path, I decided not to because occasionally algorithms use my data to recommend useful products on Amazon. That’s a sacrifice I’m not willing to make.
