Nobody Could Care Less About Your Private Lives

The question is, what will biographers write about in 20 years time?  Biographies give us "the hidden man", "the man behind the legend", the man "behind closed doors," answer the questions, "what was she really like?" Now what will they be about?  Everything private about our heroes is on display now, every movement analysed to death - the death of the private.

It is somehow fitting that it is at this moment of our history that we are trying to enshrine the right to a private life into Law.  At the exact moment that privacy is no more, the law comes along to stick up for it.  It is somehow fitting that Ryan Gigg's superinjunction was basically destroyed when he took on Twitter.  I've lost count of how many "think-pieces" I've read on the death of privacy caused by social networking.  We publish everything to the public domain now.  Every aspect of our lives displayed online.  Everything shared.  It doesn't matter whether we have a right to a private life or not, we've given up the right, we don't want it.  We want to share.

And the technology has come along to allow us to share.  To live our lives always with others.  It is this, rather than anything else that makes the notion of the superinjunction seem anachronistic.  I think of the superinjunction as a legalisation of the unwritten code of journalism from years ago (least how I imagine it was), everyone in the media knows that x is gay or a serial adulterer or an alcoholic, but no one will print it, it's just not the done thing (think Charles Kennedy's (alleged?) problem with drink which everyone in the media knew about but was never touched upon in public as the last example, the moment the tide turned).  Now the code is lost so it is necessary to have a law that makes it explicit.  But as it's explicit, a matter of law, not of one's honour, it is now ripe for attacking.  And given the state of the newspaper industry in the wake of new technologies they've yet to find ways to monetize, scandals are their most lucrative source of income.

Any talk of freedom of speech by the newspapers is just so much nonsense.  They have no interest in that, they just want to print any old rubbish without fear of reprisal.  It only became a matter of free speech, to me, when the lawyer's tried to gag Twitter, taking on people's freedom of expression, rather than desperate newspaper owners. 

(Interesting that it was Twitter only:  why not Facebook?  Is Facebook the private social network to Twitter's public?  Does this mean Mark Zuckerberg has failed in his attempt to "Twitterfy" Facebook?)

So Giggs is a private man?  Doesn't try to take advantage of his family life or his clean cut image for sponsorships or publicity?  In the modern world, this makes him the odd one out.  In this age of reality TV, Talk shows, X-Factor etc., everyone wears their heart on their sleeve, nothing is personal, nothing too private to show on TV (see for instance Long Lost Families where the hosts make a point of leaving the families on their own before the big reunion but the cameras remain to record the most intimate moments - we want the comfort of the illusion of privacy).  So Giggs is the exception, and he loses out because the dominant tide is against him. The public get what the public want.  And that is scandal and gossip.  We can blame the papers, but we buy them.  We read them.  We encourage them.

And Giggs?  He's still a football legend.  But like everyone else, his personal life is ... complicated ... perhaps he should go on Piers Morgan Life Stories to get it off his chest...