Exposed! Inner West writers reveal
their innermost secrets

In the Facebook age we're all living our lives in public in a fashion previous generations would have found scandalous. Given how willing individuals are to parade themselves in front of the cyberworld, is it still worth agonising over people having their private lives exposed by others?

Do you remember the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you? Perhaps you've fallen down the stairs after one too many drinks, and landed with your dress over your head and a shoe missing. Or maybe you've been caught in a compromising position by a stranger,
a friend or worse…your parents.
Now imagine that a million other people looked on as that embarrassing moment
was happening.
This is the terrifying reality for many of today's politicians and celebrities, in a world where it's likely that your most embarrassing, private moments may be caught on camera and uploaded for thousands to see and share.
With tools like camera phones sitting in people's back pockets, these days everyone is a citizen journalist, and gossip comes with photo evidence that you simply cannot escape. You can be snapped anytime, anywhere. And if you're famous, this means soon everyone will be talking about what you ate for breakfast, who you're dating and the fact that you went 'commando' at that gay bar last night. It makes you wonder why people sign up for careers in the public eye at all (although I hear it usually has something to do with power or money).
This year the Sydney Writer's Festival, featuring many talented Inner West writers and thinkers, focuses on the line between private and public – raising a myriad of questions about the importance of an individual's privacy and how much the personal lives of our 'public' figures should be exposed in media for all to read about.

Eddie Sharp's teenage diary

Newtown writer and performer Eddie Sharp will soon know what it feels like to have his most personal thoughts made public when he reads excerpts from his teenage diary at the festival event Teen Diaries this May. Eddie argues that "public figures knowingly sign on to a certain degree of prying into their personal life," and is more worried about how constantly consumers are bombarded with the private lives of others. "It's so inane and distracting from actual issues," he says.
"Facebook and Twitter have made it so that our lives are constantly public. I think it forces people to perform their lives more than they live them. I don't think humanity has ever been more acutely self aware. Once again, it's the inanity of it that upsets me more than the politics. People of Earth: no one cares that you have just made your own jam or that your train ride is especially long. Keep schtum."
It's true that social media has changed the sort of information we feel the need to share, causing the line between public and private to blur and diminishing the value of privacy. More and more people are subscribing to the belief that if they are willing to put their personal profile and thoughts online, they should be entitled to know everything about everyone else too.

Mark Dapin goes public

sharing parts of his personal life with the public isn't such a new thing. He started writing about himself and his life a little over a decade ago, before social media took over and everyone was plastering their holiday snaps in the public domain.
Initially Mark admits to creating a persona in his columns because he wasn't sure whether people would identify with him if he wrote exactly as he is. However, when he stopped doing this and began writing from a more personal place, he became even more popular with readers. As a journalist who asks very personal questions of others, Mark realised it was only fair that he be open himself. After all, it is a journalist's duty to be transparent.
This realisation, that the public and private worlds had somewhat merged, crystalised for Mark during one particular interview when he found himself asking an interview subject whether she had sex after a date, to which she responded, "Would you answer that question?" Many would feel uncomfortable answering such a query, yet it seems questions like this one have become the norm and are often asked (and answered) publicly.
Nevertheless, Mark's opinion regarding the public versus private lives of our politicians can be described as quite conventional: "Their private life should be their own unless it's in direct opposition to their public life," he says. A view that is also shared by Meredith Burgmann, a City of Sydney Councillor herself and the aunt of former Balmain MP, Verity Firth – who endured a very public embarrassment when her husband was caught in possession of ecstasy last year.

Nowhere to hide!

"I believe that the personal life of a public figure is fair game for the media if dishonesty or misuse of public funds is involved. Their private life is also fair game if hypocrisy is involved. For instance photographing a minister leaving a gay club is not acceptable unless he has made anti-gay statements. I think the rise of social media has intensified the issue but not changed the basic principles," says Meredith.
I would be inclined to agree that in this paranoid, terrorism-affected age – where privacy is becoming overrated and outdated, and we increasingly welcome the invasion of cameras in our lives because of our fears for our security and voyeuristic tendencies – we should try to maintain some respect for personal boundaries before nothing is sacred. But I know that this is probably just wishful thinking, and after living in the 'village community' of Haberfield my whole life, I'm not certain anyone ever really had a private life anyway, well, not completely.
Real estate brochures constantly bang on about the Inner West's 'villages', such as Haberfield. In my experience of tiny villages everyone already knows everything about everyone, or at least it certainly seems that way on my street. The difference these days is that we've discovered what it's like for our personal information to spread not only through the village, but also on a national and even international scale. All you can do now is hope that the embarrassing moment you recalled when you first began reading this article,won't end up on the front page tomorrow.

words: Nancy Merlo

TO TWEET OR NOT TO TWEET 

Rozelle journalist, Claire Scobie, weighs in on the debate – should politicians' private lives be accessible to the public?
The public versus private issue has been around for as long as the cult of the celebrity. With regards to politicians, I believe that the public only has the right to know about
a person's private life if it affects their ability to govern and hold public office. If it is simply gossip purported as news, then it is not relevant.

How has social media blurred the lines between private and public?
Social media is revolutionising how we view our public and private lives, and how others view us. These days the line between them is whisper-thin because so much of what we do and say is now online. A careless tweet can cost someone their job. This is partly because we often blog/facebook/tweet on the run, or at home – when the guard is down – rather than think carefully about what we are saying.
With blogging, and how much to reveal, it comes down to the individual. Some writers are happy to bare all and talk about their private lives within the public and virtual sphere. I prefer to keep my blog focused on writing, specifically travel writing. I won't chat about what I had for breakfast. But at the same time, blogging is an expression of your own personality, so you have to share enough of yourself to be authentic.
www.clairescobie.com/blog