diabola in musica

In 1997, the musician Momus released the song “The Age of Information”. The tune is eerie. Gentle, sustained tones accompany a hushed, dispassionate voice. Electronic sounds—bleeps and bloops—trickle faintly in the background. The tone is calm, soothing, even as the lyrics list warning after warning about online life. In 1997, the Internet as we know it was still young, but Momus describes an Internet we could readily recognise today. With lyrics like “Your reputation used to depend on / What you conceal / Now it depends on what you reveal“, the song still feels contemporary eleven years later.

And it’s amazing to see the things we would reveal.

Earlier this week, Emily Gould exposed herself in the New York Times Magazine. She revealed her experience with blogging, how fulling it was, and how it drove wedges in her relationships. Gould regularly exposed the lives of celebrities when she was an editor of the Internet gossip blog Gawker, where she gained both fans and critics. But when she blogged about people in her personal life—against their wishes—the gossip gun eventually turned on her. An ex-paramour did not take kindly to the exposure of their relationship, and submitted an article to the New York Post about the dangers of dating a blogger. Now a victim of Internet gossip, Gould understands the consequences of her actions.

Was she wrong? Did she reveal too much? Is she too self-absorbed? Many people think so, even at her old job and especially the commenters on the NYT Magazine article. The Internet provides many easy ways to expose our thoughts and our lives. Online, people more easily reveal their hopes, their fears, their relationships—even their medications. A curtain has been drawn back. On the Internet, we share things with perfect strangers that we wouldn’t share in person. We share more of our lives, and sometimes we overshare—revealing things that others don’t want to see or don’t want to be seen.

Emily Gould definitely lowered her inhibitions online, and perhaps revealed too much. But she is not the only one guilty of a loose tongue. Take a look at those comments on the NYT website. They are just as spiteful as those you’d find on Gawker. Would these people confront her in person? Would they tell her—to her face—to get a life, to do something useful, to stop writing about herself? It’s just as easy to leave biting commentary online as it is to write oversharing blog entries. The Internet revealed Emily Gould as someone who loves to hear herself talk about her life. But in those comments, the Internet also revealed something else: petty, self-righteous people who love to hear themselves tear someone down.