A gentleman's name should
appear in the newspaper only three times: When he's born, when he marries, and
when he dies. And we are, first and foremost, gentlemen.
Harry
Hart (Colin Firth), Kingsman: The Secret Service
A man shouldn’t talk about himself.
He should keep his successes and failures quiet. He shouldn’t go on tooting his
own horn as that is a sign of insecurity, vanity, and shallowness. He must be
absolutely discrete, as discretion is a sign of intelligence. And if you’re not
discrete, you are doing it wrong. How do I know this? Because I’m right and if
you don’t agree, you’re not being discrete, so I win anyway. Rant over.
Drop mic and walk off the stage.*
Except it doesn’t quite work like
that now days. The world is changing and how we navigate within it is changing
as well, even if you don’t want to admit it. We are constantly leaving digital
tracks all over the place as our virtual presence becomes just as important as
our physical one. Our online branding becomes as important as our offline
reputation.
Does this mean we must share every
single lunch option we pick or every trip to the gym or even every bad date? Or
does this mean we should guard our online image so carefully that our virtual
presence becomes inconsequential as we become little more than one of those
fake twitter profiles sold to boost follower statistics? Should we become
little more than the virtual version of the locked in crazy cat lady as we hide
our presence from the world?
I am a great supporter of the idea
of discretion as I learned, while still young, the benefits of avoiding leaving
a trail of my misconducts. I might have never been much of a saint, but I was
smart enough to avoid blabbing around about my adventures and misfortunes. My
mother would always say that “dirty clothing is washed behind closed doors.” I
made sure there were few pictures of my bohemian days, never kept a little black book or a journal that could
be used as incriminating evidence. This kept everyone involved better off, as
they were able to trust me from incriminating them. I do admit it was a lot easier
in my young and daring days as this was before social media turned everyone
into a public figure, where YouTube and Twitter make your temporary
indiscretion into permanent shameful reminders.
The challenge now is that you, as a
person, become a brand and social media such as Facebook, Tinder, and OK Cupid
have become your social presentation cards. You are forced to actually open up
publicly to the world to have access to the world. Surprisingly your profile
serves as validation to who you are in the real world instead of the other way
around. What you are willing to admit publicly on a profile is believed more
than what you say during a casual conversation.
Our profiles become open admissions
of who we are, stating what we want others to know and at the same time what we
are willing to “hide.” Society has taken the same NSA surveillance mentality is
complains about. “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, why would you hide it”
has become the common ideology when looking over what people post about their
lives. Is your relationship status “hidden” because you are hiding the fact
that you are in a relationship or because it’s nobody’s business if you are in
one? Do you avoid a profile picture to keep people from finding you or because
you only let select people find you? At this point, discretion starts to border
on deception.
Others tend to run the complete opposite
mentality. In their attempt to become open about themselves, they tend to
overshare, turning their lives into little more than Reality TV entertainment.
We see this often in personal FB profiles or blogs, where people make desperate
bids for attention by making spectacles of their lives. Sure, they get a lot of
hits and followers, but that’s not always a good thing. Traffic accidents get
plenty spectators as well. I have seen more than one Blogger lose friends, get
divorced, fired, or passed over for employment because those around them tire
of becoming collateral damage of that train wreck.
So, how do you handle discretion
without falling into deception? How do you handle opening up without becoming a
liability to those around you? Moderation. Don’t hide who you are, but don’t
click bait for distinction. Let the world see you, but don’t chase the spotlight.
This way you are you, while keeping you from becoming a spectacle.
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