Tchong offers up the example of an ad he found posted on Craigslist by a woman whose dream man was a foodie. “She proceeded to list the most incredible list of specs, if you will, for the potential boyfriend,” says Tchong. “Like, ‘You know the difference between a nonstick pan and a Teflon pan, and you know the difference between olive oils.’ I’m looking at this and I’m thinking, ‘I hope you were successful in finding this person, because that’s an awfully tight specification!’ “
Control Freak Syndrome piggybacks on a larger trend Tchong has dubbed Voyeurgasm, which dovetails with our culture’s “reality” fixation — limited not just to TV, but anything that allows you to peer into the formerly secret corners of other people’s lives.
Once dubbed “the third most hated person on the Internet” by Radar, and certainly a self-promoting victim/leader in the Voyeurgasm movement, Julia Allison is an unofficial expert on the online overshare. (She’s also a frequent Tumblr blogger, a dating columnist for Time Out New York, and no stranger to the notion that the Internet breeds judge-y behavior.)
While some argue that the Internet brings out our true selves, and others that it hides them, Allison believes it’s somewhere in between, and that Facebook and other social-networking sites of its guise bring out facets of our personality we weren’t aware of. “Facebook is really changing the dynamics of the way we interact,” she says, and bringing us back to the kinds of relations we used to have with people. “I think what people are finding is that they actually enjoy the connection.”
Maybe . . . I mean, at first, it’s easy and natural to cultivate a version of who we really are within our avatars, and use it to make or keep track of friends. But Facebook’s attempts to bring us even closer together often make me feel more alone than ever. Allison agrees that the grief often comes later, maybe months after you’ve hit the “save changes” button on your account. In her case, the shame-faced-ness hit full-force after she decided to co-write a blog with a boyfriend, which eventually exposed the humiliating details of their break-up.
“Look at any celebrity,” says Allison, “and they’re far more vibrant in early interviews, before they get burned. That’s how normal people are starting to act — like public figures. They’re starting to have the same record of things used against them, and that’s the danger of this new everyone-sees-everything society.”
Allison hasn’t pressed pause on the sum of her many forms of Internet exposure, though there are still certain things she prefers not to share — her favorite books being one example. “I feel like they’re private,” she says. “I’m fine with putting out other stuff — I’ll tell you about the people I’ve dated and my body-image issues, but my favorite books? No. That’s mine.”
On July 7, British singer Lily Allen scooped the tabloids by using Facebook to announce she was back together with Chemical Brother Ed Simons. Considering it’s been a wretched Summer of Celebrity Break-ups (Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook, Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel, and, in all likelihood, Madonna and Guy Ritchie, just to name a few), the pop singer’s news gave me a spark of hope. Until I started to worry about her. Allen may have taken control over who leaks tidbits about her love-life, but that just means she’s the one who has to clean up her dirty work, both on and offline. Six months from now, Allen could find herself a heap on the floor with her own laptop, cursing the day she chose to divulge anything about a relationship that fell apart yet again.
