What are you - Privately Public or Publicly Private?

Supreme Court’s verdict is out and we, the common people, breathe a sigh of relief that our privacy is restored. The newspapers devoted many columns on this subject, welcoming the move.  The analyses clogged the pages and we were assured of the cover, the privacy, which we always wind around in the name of saving humanity, inner space, liberty and anything that being lost makes you feel humiliated, strips you off the basic right.

Privacy is our fundamental right. Of course it is. How much I let you know and what I don’t is solely within my discretion – PLAIN and SIMPLE.  Privacy is the word we encounter so often, and now it’s being reinstated gives us immense comfort. Well, there’s another instinct too that dominates many of us. To tantalise….to permit to intrude and then bang the door on the face. This tells the story of success by social sites. We are so visible, audible, we open our heart, we flirt, we strike a friendship, we fight and abuse all on these platforms that connect billions of people in this universe, yet very passionate about sanctity of privacy.

In fact this is the situation when the thought of “bare all” is not a hidden agenda anymore and it’s being precious and vulnerable requires lots of care and tender. A veil of protection guards it in the form of legal noose. So, be careful! Yes, social media are armed with an array of privacy settings to pat on the back of the users to be social enough with intelligent application of privacy tools and, at the same time, not to be entrapped in the rowdy revelry.

Social sites can provide one’s daily whereabouts but the ardent follower may not gratify his/her thirst for probing more than what the account holder wants to share.  Arrays of mechanisms are set to rule the privacy stringently.  

 Social media have brought the privacy and publicness dangerously close. The line between is thinning gradually, is becoming more subtle and sensitive.  One rash misjudgement and you are in danger.  An unwritten code of conduct has to be construed from the wait and watch policy. Be a follower if you are novice in this zone rather than an initiator to respond. Time will teach you the propriety.

The ruling by the apex court has ascertained the need for privacy at a time when the dichotomy earns comical dimension as social media urge you to go more public. Really, people are baffled by the turn of incident, to be “privately public” or “publicly private”? And, hands down, later titillates more for others to enjoy, whereas former rein in the gregarious instinct. Time to find out where do you belong.