Please mark this week’s column as TOP SECRET. It contains some very important information that you should definitely not flush down the toilet or take to your vacation home.
Secrets aren’t what they used to be. I don’t know if it’s the company I keep, or the secrets I keep, but nearly everything I tell someone gets passed along whether it’s confidential or not. I hate to tell you this, but Mom and Dad, now that you’ve had a couple of visits to the hospital recently, nearly everything you say gets relayed to the rest of my brothers and sisters in a separate group chat. Don’t worry, every time that I get out of breath when I mow the lawn, my wife texts my sister, the nurse, to make sure I’m not dying.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of the former president, but my guess is that he was thinking those documents labeled “Top Secret” were one of those “yeah, but I’m going to immediately post it on the group chat secrets.”
Information, in general, is passed around willy nilly anymore. I donated $50 to a local candidate for office recently. I thought it was a menschy thing to do. And almost immediately, I had text messages and emails from national campaigns imploring me to donate more to these other candidates.
Now, I’m glad my candidate could use that $50, but I’m a little perturbed that she turned around and sold my email address to 50 other people. What if I labeled my email TOP SECRET?
The truth of the matter is that the way we look at information has totally changed in the past 50 years. Information is no longer closely guarded.
Even the companies that are supposed to closely guard our information, our banks and our credit agencies haven’t secured it like they wanted to over the past five years.
And it’s not like it’s even that important to us – hell, we tell people on Facebook when we’re going on vacation for two weeks and act surprised when someone robs the house. Secrets just aren’t what they used to be anymore.
So let’s redefine secrets. Let’s start with the ones that can never, ever, ever be shared. The ones that if you share, people are killed over them. Then, let’s just be more mindful of the privacy of information. Believe me, there is value that you’re losing out on with all of this stuff. Loose lips sink ships, yanno? So don’t go blabbing it all on Twitter.
And finally… and here’s the real good stuff you’ve been waiting for… remember that under no circumstances should you *redacted*
(Get more secrets from Kamler on Twitter where you’ll find him loudly whispering secrets as @TheFakeNed)