"We got two ciders and she patiently waited while I spent 20 minutes reading through it. Pages filled with words about processing family drama, formulating goals, plans for life changes, romantic details, lists of regrets, contemplations, etc."
"I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think."
The key here is "meaningless to me". It's obviously meaningful to her. And it would also be meaningful to her family, or romantic partners, or a potential employer, etc.
Privacy is contextual. I often joke that it wouldn't bother me personally if Google or the NSA poked around my e-mail. But it would bother me a lot if my mom did.
Yes it's a silly, flippant response by the OP. What if sivers.org posted her diaries for HackerNews to read?
I bet you could find people for which her diaries would not be "meaningless" and could make this person not feel happy about that information being known here. Here, we can make someone like Nelson Mandela seem horrible, just think how would we could make this women feel.
You don't have to get out dystopian examples of why this view is basically stupid. It doesn't stand up to common sense.
This is mostly how i feel about it. With the addition that, there's a big difference between a friend asking to read your diary (who, we'll note, was not in the diary, as he pointed out) and a friend (or anybody) asking to distribute your diary to the public. I think that's the main thing most other people are commenting on as well. There are many levels of private and making something public is not the same as making it publicly accessible.
"I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think."
The key here is "meaningless to me". It's obviously meaningful to her. And it would also be meaningful to her family, or romantic partners, or a potential employer, etc.
Privacy is contextual. I often joke that it wouldn't bother me personally if Google or the NSA poked around my e-mail. But it would bother me a lot if my mom did.