Emma Cowing: Time and a place for the personal stuff

WOULD you like to know what I had for breakfast? What about where I went for drinks last night? Or what colour my nail polish is today?

Or how I really feel about that thing I overheard my friend say that she did not know I had overheard? You don’t? I see. In that case my life has no meaning. And if you haven’t shared similar details about your life with 5,000 people this morning, neither does yours.

This is according to the likes of Ben Goldsmith, at any rate. Goldsmith (son of James, brother of Jemima and Zak), who has some indiscernible profession that appears to make him pots of money, took to Twitter on Monday in order to have a go at his estranged wife, Kate. Commenting on the fact that she had hired a PR firm to “fix her reputation” (apparently she has absconded with a US rapper), he told his 6,000 followers: “A bit late surely? How about focusing on her devastated children?” How, indeed? I’m sure those devastated children will be delighted to hear their emotional state is being tweeted to the nation.

Meanwhile, Melanie Sykes has been having a rather torrid relationship with a young man she met on Twitter, and tweeting the emotional and physical detail of it all in a manner that is not even remotely suitable to be reprinted in a family newspaper.

Now I am delighted that Sykes, 41, has got herself a strapping young 26-year-old, but really, I need not know more. Truth be told, I would rather stick sewing pins in my eyes and fall face first into a foam mattress than read those tweets again, but I’m sure I’ll get over it.

At some point in the past five years, probably around the time that everyone and their Auntie got themselves a Facebook page, it became pretty much de rigeur to share the most intimate details of one’s life online.

And I get it, really I do, that sometimes we need to share, particularly when it comes to the big stuff. I love seeing pictures of my friends’ children on Facebook (although parents, let me just say that sometimes, one or two pictures will do, rather than all 632 identical snaps that you took of your beloved offspring within the space of three and a half minutes). It’s fun to have a look at the wedding photos of old school friends, and I have been moved to tears at times when pals have posted about the pain of losing a relative.

I post on Facebook, too, of course I do, and I like how the photo albums and the silly status updates (usually about shoes and other such weighty matters) act as a memory-jogger, an instant diary marking out certain points in life.

I post on Twitter, too, but, there again, I tend to keep the personal stuff offline, not least because I’m not so full of myself as to think anyone is even remotely interested.

The thing is, there are some things that we don’t need to know about each other, partly because, if we really were close enough, you’d have told me anyway, over a glass of wine or a coffee, or on the phone, or in an e-mail. I don’t want to know the details of Goldsmith’s marriage break-up or Sykes’ sex life because, to be honest, I’m not really interested.

We all like to feel that we matter. But the truth is that the details of my life only really have meaning to a small handful of people, and possibly my cat, but only because I am her only human source of tuna. The same goes for you, too. The brutal honesty is that not that many people care. They are too worried about their own lives – and the people who populate them – to care about you or me.

We used to be fine with this notion, and I’m not entirely sure why we no longer are; why we now feel that unless we’re constantly informing the world what we’re up to, or posting pictures about it, it somehow doesn’t matter, or isn’t real, or important: that you only really had a good time at that party if 14 people have liked the picture of you looking like you were having a good time.

The likes of Sykes and Goldsmith presumably feel as though posting intimate details about their personal lives somehow allows them to feel more in control of the situation, but, in reality, it merely makes them seem sad and desperate, seeking validation and agreement from a wider world that could not care less. Twitter and Facebook are both excellent mediums when used correctly, but we could all probably benefit from a little more online decorum.

So please, keep your breakfast off-line, if only so I won’t lose mine.