Wednesday 16 July 2014

Full Disclosure

I feel that my creative writing has come to a stand still lately so I thought I'd have a go at a Daily Prompt. See here for the full details of today's.
So someone gives you a device which allows you to hear other people's thoughts. You can hear everything they are thinking, good and bad. The catch? It can never be turned off.
A few years back I would said 'hell yeah, hand me that chip!' I would have enjoyed listening in, discovering secrets, being my general nosey self. I love people watching, I love observing their body language, seeing people interact. Getting inside their brain would have been the icing on the cake! 
However, now, I'm more aware of privacy, more aware of not wanting to share every bit of information with the outside world. With the increase of social media, it seems like everybody posts pictures of every meal they eat, every time their mood shifts they change their status on Facebook, they have a new idea and Twitter is updated. In this day and age, is a mind reading chip even required when our lives are plastered all over the internet for everyone to see?
I have taken care to only show parts of my life and my world that I want others to see. I'm quite proud of my photography skills so images appear quite frequently. I'm quite happy to post my opinions on books, TV programmes and movies and I like to promote local events that I'm involved in. But my relationship status is hidden. I don't post very frequently at all about what I'm doing. I like to keep an air of mystery.
I also think being able to hear the thoughts of others would be claustrophobic. Imagine going out to a public event, somewhere where there is a lot of people. You would literally be bombarded. 
Also, I think friendships and relationships are protected by not knowing every thought and niggle. I love my friends and family to bits, they mean the world to me. But they are not perfect people, nobody is. Some days, I may be irritated by them, or not agree with something and I'm sure the same applies for them. But do I want to hear 'her bum looks big in that'? Or 'I wish she'd stop moaning'! No, definitely not. I have confidence issues as it is! 
So my mad scientist friend, you can keep your chip, I have learnt that the best thing to do is keep my nose out of other people's business!

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