Dating in a Post-Privacy World

We live in an age of oversharing. Depending on your level of tolerance, perhaps you’ve just come to accept that too many people know too much about you, and sigh with resignation every time a family member or friend posts a photo of you with a double chin, or the dreaded red eye, or hoisting a pint at the bar when you told your boss you were home sick that day.

Privacy? Boundaries? Those went out with the advent of social media.

But some things require privacy to thrive. I’m not talking about illegal behavior, per se. There’s something about sex, love, even marriage, that prefers the candlelit corner, and not just because low lighting is so forgiving. Posting about everything -- the first date, the last fight -- can wound or kill a romantic relationship.

Love in the Digital Age sat down with Rico Gagliano recently. He’s co-host of the radio show and podcast "Dinner Party Download," and while he wouldn’t claim to be the World’s Foremost Expert on Love -- who would? -- he’s had some experience having his personal life dragged out into the limelight for review and discussion.

“We all on some level understand, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, know the way that people behave in their public lives may not necessarily jive with the way that they behave in their private lives,” Gagliano says. “Those are two different universes.”

In a perfect world, your private life would be yours to enjoy, observed only by those you choose to share it with. Right. Some of us are old enough to remember when that was possible. The choice today is not whether to document our private lives online, but how.

“There are plenty of people who look at my Facebook page who are not my close friends," Gagliano says. I don’t want to tell them about my relationships, or have them know exactly what I’m doing with my significant other. And yet, I feel like there’s the expectation that you do that.”

He’s not just speaking about the madding crowd he's friended over the years. He’s speaking about girlfriends, who expect to post -- or have posted -- a steady stream of sunny photos about meals in restaurants, weekend trips, and “usies” at various spots around town. If you refuse to post, or to allow others to post, “then what is that saying about your relationship?"

You can, of course, set specific limits on who sees what on Facebook, or evade older generations by seeking out younger social media networks like SnapChat.  But unless you go off the grid entirely, your privacy strategy will never be better than partial.

Some people say Millennials, having grown up with the expectation there is no privacy, do better at proactively self-censoring than older generations, but there's a limit to how much of yourself you can hold back in the search for love.

An Early Lesson in Love Online

Back in the early 2000s, Gagliano was enthusiastically involved with a platform called Live Journal. That is to say, he hung out with a group of people who blogged on it, read what others wrote on it and dated each other.

“I was on Live Journal,” say Gagliano. “My girlfriend was on Live Journal. We dated, and then we broke up. That was fine. We were still friends. Many months later, I started dating somebody else who was also on Live Journal and was friends with all of us, including my ex.”

Gagliano went to a movie with his ex. “We were still friends.” At the time, he thought there would be no need to tell the new woman, because he had just started seeing her, especially if he had no interest in rekindling a romantic relationship with his ex. “All it’s going to do is cause problems,” he thought.

He didn’t anticipate that his ex would post about the evening on her Live Journal.  It didn’t help that she mentioned what a good time they had and how much she wished they were still together. “This girl that I’ve just started dating sees that I’ve gone out with my ex. And she’s like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ” You don't need to follow Gagliano's Facebook feed to guess how things progressed from there.

That episode may not have been the most painful thing he's experienced, but it did make Gagliano keenly aware some people are always watching him. Even though we’re talking about his friends, family and yes, exes, it doesn’t make that oversight feel less intrusive. There is always a camera somewhere, documenting your search for love in the digital age.

“To what extent do you have any control anymore?” Gagliano asks.

This podcast features music by K. Flay (“It's Strange”) and the Candyland Remix of the same.