Privacy means giving up things you love: Golf for Tiger Woods, Facebook for the rest of us
Tiger Woods announced Friday that he’s withdrawing from sports — and endorsement deals, I assume — in order to have private time with his family. William Rhoden at the New York Times wrote a piece essentially saying, “Up yours, Woods.”
Woods announced that he was stepping away from the game to mend fences with his family. “After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf,” the statement continued. “I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father and person.”
Woods’s handlers are probably confident that they have given a hungry news-media horde what it wants to get off the trail. If his representatives think this statement will put out the fire, they are wrong.
via Sports of The Times – Woods Needs to Put His Face on the Apology – NYTimes.com.
I have argued many times that Woods is not entitled to privacy. I still believe this, but I disagree with Rhoden. Woods is making the right decision if he really cares about his privacy.
If you want to be a truly “private person” these days, you must make extreme decisions to stay out of the public eye. For Woods, that means abandoning the one thing he’s good at. For the less spectacularly gifted among us, it means giving up your Facebook account.
By withdrawing from golf and bringing an end to advertising appearances, Woods will cease giving us fodder for discussion. Unless he gets in another car accident or more interesting mistresses come forward — e.g. “I am a circus carnie. Tiger Woods and I had an orgy with two clowns, three trained lions, and the whole trapeze troupe.” — we will have little to speculate on.
Like Woods, the members of the hoi polloi have to also withdraw from the public eye if they hope to preserve privacy. The public eye these days is called “The Internet.” By creating content for consumption — whether by appearing on the golf course in a televised tournament or by creating a Facebook account — you invite others to look at your life. You allow yourself to be tagged in photos, like at the latest holiday rager, and to have your friends and online activity tracked.
If that really concerns you, cancel your online accounts and step away from your computer. Ethan Epstein smartly writes:
Since its inception, the whole purpose of Facebook (and any social networking site), has been to blur the traditional distinction between the private and public self – to tear down those boundaries. Photographs, dinner plans, even ostensibly private conversations; all of these are posted publicly on the site. This has formed a sort of virtual Panopticon, where, if I’m a user, I can see everything everyone I know is doing, and everyone I know can see everything I’m doing. This has never been compatible with any sense of “privacy,” at least as I can understand the term.
I completely agree with Epstein, but unlike him, I am an avid Facebook user. I embrace a society of knowingness. I don’t think people should give up Facebook (or golf). I suggest instead that they give up on the notion of privacy.
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They will never leave him alone, and for him to take $900 million in endorsements and expect privacy, well he has to now realize that money can’t buy everything. He did it to himself.
I think Internet users should consider privacy in two instances: 1) When a woman or child feels that they are putative prey to a slimy predator; 2)When he or she has something that they wish to keep secret. These two reasons put most people at risk. Most of us have something to hide; not everyone is as pure as the Kashmirs or Scheherazades of this world. I wish that there were more innocents, but life isn’t so dedicated or kind to clean slates–or even blank ones.
OK and the older I get (49 now) the more I realize how right Mom was! The real story is the man lost his values, and I am concerned this guy doesn’t “accidently” take to many pills, but he did it to himself. Some old time religion will fix him right up!
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[...] attention swirling about, including some real interesting posts here on T/S (see Ethan Epstein and Kashmir Hill for two excellent posts with which I profoundly disagree), maybe privacy is finally going to get an [...]
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