When someone’s online activities come back to embarrass them offline, I always just roll my eyes. It seems silly that anyone could be surprised that tweets, blog posts, or photo sharing comes back to bite them. You put it on the internet, man, of course it’s public.
When I got my Spotify invite, I was so excited to share mixtapes with long-distance friends that, well, I didn’t think through how I store my own music. The concept of Spotify, with the ability to make and share playlists, seems like a stunning cyberpunk future.
Here’s my confession, internet: A lot of my musical taste is boyfriend-influenced, and, even more embarrassingly, most of my music is sorted by guys’ names and place names. This has been a private, secret activity, but just between us, internet, I flip through my playlists like a photo album.
The college roommate with the They Might Be Giants collection. Songs that remind me of my trips to Culver City, Vegas, Denver. Driving to Boston with Marcus is a folk-hipster blend of Toad the Wet Sprocket, John Gorka and Dar Williams, but driving to Boston to see Eric is my solo drive playlist of Beyonce, late Britney and Lady Gaga. My deadline playlist, and the super-secret collection I listen to when I’m nervous about walking into a conference filled with strangers.
As soon as I saw my embarrassing titles in my Spotify profile, I quckly turned my playlists private, lucky to be such a social media hipster that only three or four of my friends had Spotify yet, so only three or four friends would be able judge me for my embarrassing playlist titles.
In the last few weeks, Spotify has taken off from the invite-only startup to a wildly popular music sharing application that requires integration with Facebook. The new dual-feed Facebook has presented a second stream for sharing one’s ABBA addiction or secret Katy Perry listening. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the musically embarrassed, though.
You put it on the internet, man, I think to myself, of course it’s public.
