Have you ever found yourself in a social situation, either in person or on social media, where you start chatting back and forth sort of automatically, just to fill up time/space?
Somebody says (or writes) something, and you say something back, and you’re not really thinking…you’re not fully engaged either in what you’re saying or what the other person is saying?
The next thing you know, things are getting more personal than you’d realized. Maybe the other person asks you something about a relationship, or your work, or whatever, and before you realize it one thing leads to another, you’re giving out information that really isn’t anybody’s business but your own. But you’re not even aware of what you’re doing…you’re just aimlessly chatting.
But when the conversation is over and you’re by yourself again, you think, “Why did I say that? I really didn’t want anybody to know about that!”
People talk about privacy all the time, about how they’re concerned about not having their privacy invaded, but the next thing you know, they’re the spilling the beans themselves about their personal affairs. Maybe they’re not giving out their bank password or their credit card number, but they might be unwittingly “sharing” something that they feel in their gut isn’t really appropriate to share.
Has this ever happened to you, in person, on the phone, on Skype, on Facebook, etc? What do you think about it?
