Imaginary Playmates

One reason I’m not as opposed to social media as some is that I recognize within Twitter, Instagram and such the venerable humanist tradition of keeping diaries and journals, of exchanging correspondence.

(On this point see the opening chapter of Peter Sloterdijk’s Regeln für den Menschenpark.)

Before, to be sure, diaries were kept private, even secret, often under lock and key. Yet rare the diarist who did not have an inside reader, an interlocutor akin to a child’s imaginary playmate who could eavesdrop on these reflective acts of autobiographical self-constitution.

Now anyone can.

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