The Face in the mirror

True confessions-I am an exhibitionist. At her age? I can imagine you are thinking. My goodness, with all of the good therapists, not to mention talk shows she could go on, as well as the online counseling available, hasn't she gotten help for this problem yet? I guess I haven't gotten help for my bare all tendencies because, so far, I don't see a problem! I'm not the type of exhibitionist who wears blouses cut down to there or gets smashed at cocktail parties and disses her ex-husband (a really nice guy, by the way). Instead, as I told a new friend a couple of days ago, most of my insights (some would debate the use of that word) somehow end up getting broadcast to a not-so-waiting world. The advent of the blogosphere has been a great gift to folks like me, who can't believe that someone won't profit from the gems we toss into cyberspace. But it turns out that middle-aged bloggistas like me were antiquated from the start. The popularity of sites like Facebook and MySpace has allowed anyone who has the most minimal computer capabilities (which means practically every US citizen under 40) to post the most intimate details of their private life...and have their bent for self-exposure become part of a new social movement. But there are limits to what some young men and women want revealed..or, it might be more accurate to say, there are limits to how acccessible they want that information to be to friends, family, friends of family and the family of friends. Apparently Facebook's creator, a 22 year old graduate of Harvard, didn't realize how outraged some of his clients would be when they found that their split ups, hookups and other details were scrolled to everyone on their "friends list" within nanoseconds of the time their fingers had left the keyboard. When it became obvious to him that some of the Facebook posters wanted their friends to have to work harder for the gossipy details, and actually visit their web pages, Facebook quickly came up with an, excuse me, Face-saving way for some posters to escape the unwanted illumination too much publicity may provide. After all, it's not like they don't want their buddies to know who they slept with last night....they just want them to want to know it badly enough to check it out for themselves.