I was photographing people at a busy intersection when I heard an exchange a bit to my left and behind me. It was an exchange between a homeless man and a middle-aged pedestrian waiting for the light to change.
Homeless Man: Got any change?
Middle-Aged Man: No.
Homeless Man: Fuck you!
Middle-Aged Man: Pardon me?
Homeless Man: I said Fuck you!
Middle-Aged Man: You asked if I have any change. I don’t. So I said no.
Homeless Man: Oh. Well. Fuck you, anyways!
A standard question during a psychiatric intake interview is: Do you ever feel that the people around you can read your mind? I wonder if our cultural habits have rendered this question obsolete. The question assumes that (normal) people have a private life they hold apart from their public life. That private/public dualism is part of the enduring appeal of the superhero genre. We like Superman because, most of the time, he’s an ordinary schmuck like the rest of us. We identify with him because we, too, have a secret identity and it is a source of strength: If only you knew who I really am …
I wonder if this private/public dualism is eroding. More and more, I encounter people who say what they think and hold nothing back. Does social media encourage this? Does a shameless world leader give people tacit permission to bare everything? I suppose certain categories of people have always behaved this way—sainted fools and sociopaths. But I wonder if more and more ordinary people—the sort of people who enjoy the Superman story—have decided to ditch the glasses and self-deprecating manner and, instead, have chosen to wear the cape all the time and to hell with what anybody else thinks of them.