Do we invite invasion of privacy?

There is always a hue and cry whenever a news item about new measures from either a website or the government that can potentially affect citizen/user privacy surfaces and rightly so. I believe that each individual is entitled to some amount of personal privacy.

However social networks offer a glimpse into something slightly different also. I am sure research has already been done or is being done or will be done on this issue. Human beings love attention. We love being pampered and what is this without attention? A social network offers us an opportunity like never before to gain attention. To be completely honest I believe even a blogger is part of this crowd. There might be a desire to disseminate one's views to the larger public. But there is an underlying motive of gaining attention in this also. For e.g., whenever I write a new post I share the link on Twitter and Facebook. I regularly check the number of page views. Frankly to me this is an ego boost though I am nowhere in the list of at least widely followed bloggers.

I frankly however (maybe hypocritically) find it irritating when people air their display of affection publicly. It is one thing to post photos. Here one might want to share these with one's friends and relatives. It is completely a different thing to air grievances like "Why me, God?" and "I miss my koochikoo" on social networks. This would, at least in my opinion be diabetical without being sweet. Assume my friend's boy/girl friend just dumped her/him. S/he puts up a status saying something like, "Why me?" or something else similarly cryptic. Now s/he will get sympathetic (from those in the know or those who understand) or questioning comments below the post. Now will s/he be willing to answer publicly the posts which ask what happened? I assume that s/he will not be. In such a case what is the point of airing the grievances publicly? If one is looking for support and expresses one's sorrows publicly would it not make sense to come out completely?

This was not the case before the advent of social networks. If such a situation happened previously a girl's friends would sit with her and say unmentionable things about the boy and his unmentionables (I got this from a girl, so ladies, please don't protest). In essence there will be intense bitching against the guy. If the guy is the dumpee his friends sit with him and try to tell him that there are more important things in life without the bitching. At least this is what a guy is supposed to do. Look how the world changes!