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00:00Everyone likes to talk about themselves every once in a while,
00:03but what is it that compels some people to make it their entire career?
00:08I think that I may be the voice of my generation, or at least a voice of a generation.
00:17Oversharing has become a particular topic of conversation in our current era thanks to
00:21so many people being so open about so much of their lives on apps like TikTok,
00:27but the thrill of and possible monetary gain from oversharing about your life goes way back.
00:33So to get a better understanding of this phenomenon,
00:36let's use some of our favorite oversharing writers from movies and TV to unpack
00:40the reasons why people tend to overshare,
00:43how some turned it into an entire career from books to blogs to social media,
00:48and all of the downsides that people often don't think about until it's too late.
00:53That's the point. You're no one until you're talked about.
00:58There are lots of characters and people in real life who overshare,
01:01but only some choose to put it in print to share with an even wider audience.
01:06So what are the things that drive that need to be so
01:09open about things that most of us would rather hide?
01:13Most of these people are naturally open to begin with.
01:16They've never necessarily felt the need to filter their thoughts.
01:19I'm either going to have to make an emergency visit to my gynecologist,
01:22or one of you is going to have to give me a hand.
01:24Being so open can be freeing in a way,
01:27allowing you to feel like you're releasing your burdens by sharing them with others.
01:31There's also, of course, the more ego-focused aspect of the sharing as well,
01:35getting to feel like you're interesting to others,
01:38and fashioning yourself as the main character and the focal point of all of that outside interest.
01:43I wrote my first post about me, lonely boy, the outsider, the underdog.
01:48I might have been a joke, but at least people were talking about me.
01:52Some studies have found that oversharing can actually be hardwired in our brains.
01:56Sharing things about ourselves can ding the reward centers in our brains,
02:00which can lead to a continuous cycle of wanting to share more,
02:04to keep feeling that positive feeling.
02:06One study noted,
02:07just as monkeys are willing to forego juice rewards to view dominant group mates,
02:12and college students are willing to give up money to view attractive members of the opposite sex,
02:17our participants were willing to forego money to think and talk about themselves.
02:21Participants were willing to forego money to introspect about the self,
02:25and even more money when they were able to disclose the results of such introspection
02:29to another person.
02:30Am I seriously the only one of us who prides herself on being a truly authentic person?
02:35This is tripping me out!
02:37There's also the value of the connection that sharing things about yourself can bring.
02:41It can be great to share something you feel might be weird about yourself,
02:45only to find people who also have a similar experience, and no longer feel so alone.
02:50And for the readers,
02:52oftentimes not having shared experience is what makes this kind of writing so interesting.
02:57It allows them to live vicariously through these writers,
03:00and experience things they might not ever have in real life,
03:03and might not have even ever realized was a possibility otherwise.
03:07But how and why did this blossom into a form of a career?
03:11And how did that then develop into our current world where everyone seems to be oversharing for
03:16a living, even if they aren't getting paid for it?
03:18Also, does it really count as oversharing if people want to hear it?
03:23While movies and shows can be a great escape from our world,
03:26just like with so many of our favorite oversharing writers' stories,
03:29what's really important is how it all connects to real truths.
03:33That's why we know that, just like we love digging in and analyzing media,
03:37it's also important to be able to look at the news we read with that same analytical lens,
03:42both so that we can be aware of the bias in the headlines,
03:45and also so that we can develop a deeper understanding of what's going on.
03:50That's why we appreciate this video's sponsor, Ground News, so much.
03:54Ground News pulls together thousands of articles from across a range of topics every day,
03:59allowing you to get a more full understanding of what's going on beyond the headlines.
04:04The recent Louvre heist was like something straight out of a movie,
04:06and the headlines it garnered spun off in multiple directions.
04:10Ground News shows us info for about 33 sources,
04:1310 of which lean left, 3 lean right, and 9 are in the center,
04:17showing that the biased distribution leans more towards the center and the left.
04:21Where you're getting your news can have a major impact on your perspective of a story.
04:25For example, on the left, we can see a focus on the larger historical context of the artifacts.
04:30Like with hyperallergics, the Louvre heist was a colonial wake-up call,
04:34while headlines on the right focus more on the true crime aspect.
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06:02on screen and off.
06:04Some studies have found that our interest in ourselves can affect our life choices in major ways.
06:09Not just in choosing things that we enjoy, but in choosing things that remind us of us.
06:14From choosing professions that sound kind of like our names, to living in cities that contain
06:19numbers we associate with ourselves and beyond. Given that, and the neural reward ping that can
06:24come from sharing about oneself, it's no surprise then that many oversharers have found ways to make
06:30sharing about themselves their entire jobs. We, as of recent decades in particular, might associate
06:35oversharing with reality TV. But that's different from the oversharing writer, because on a reality show,
06:40there's a whole production team helping to create narratives and spin stories. But for the writer,
06:46they are in control of how much they're choosing to put out there, and how it's framed. Though,
06:51of course, they also don't have any control over how it's received once it reaches an audience.
06:57Semi or fully autobiographical works have been around forever, with people garnering attention for
07:02telling, often embellished tales of their own scandalous deeds. But in the 20th century, it became a
07:08particularly radical literary pursuit for women who were carving out their own place in the canon,
07:13and wanted to do so in a way that didn't try to hide all of the facets of their reality,
07:18but instead lean into them. Writer Joan Didion, for example, shot to fame through her journalism,
07:23but also developed a devoted audience through her confessional, introspective essays about her own
07:28life, from the minutiae of her packing list to her marriage and beyond. This kind of writing by women,
07:34shining a spotlight on the long hidden or ignored parts of their own lives, from the mundane,
07:39to the distressing, to the comical, was revolutionary. But while that kind of openness
07:45was applauded when it came through a male lens, for women it was often seen in a more negative light,
07:51as a sign of being self-centered or myopic. That, however, never stopped these writers from
07:56continuing to write, or from finding an audience. So many of the most iconic oversharing writer characters
08:02on screen feel so real because they are based on real-life writers, who themselves wanted to open
08:08up about their own lives and thoughts. Nora Ephron included many aspects from her real life in her
08:14work, especially in her novel Heartburn, which she later turned into a screenplay. The story was based
08:19on her real-life relationship with journalist Carl Bernstein, and she didn't pull any punches when it came
08:24to being open about their problems. Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, who spends most of the show
08:37writing sex advice columns for a newspaper, was based on writer Candace Bunchell's own real-world
08:42column for the New York Observer. Candace, like Carrie, shared a lot about her own life in her column,
08:48to the point that she began using the pseudonym Carrie just in case her parents came across her
08:52writing. Carrie was constantly sharing not only about her own love life, but also those of her
08:58friends and anyone else she happened to come across. Her willingness to be so open about the parts of
09:03love and relationships that weren't often talked about openly was what drew people in, both to her
09:08column on the show and to Sex and the City itself. Is cheating like the proverbial tree in the forest?
09:14That it doesn't exist if there's no one around to catch you? In a gravity-free world, if anything goes,
09:19what constitutes cheating? Though, as we'll discuss in a moment, this didn't come without
09:24its own share of issues. Carrie and other writers like her set the scene for those who would come
09:29after them as the internet age dawned. The bloggers. As making it as a writer in the traditional sense
09:36became more and more difficult, many began turning to blogs as a way to share their writing with the
09:40world. And for many, this meant sharing a lot about their personal lives. I'm planning to write an article
09:46that exposes all of my vulnerabilities to the entire internet. Overshare was even Webster's
09:50New World Dictionary's Word of the Year in 2008 and the Chambers Dictionary's Word of the Year in 2014.
09:57This also coincided with a new wave of characters on screen who were not afraid to be open and raw
10:02about every aspect of their lives. Again, very often written as self-insert characters by real-life
10:08oversharing writers. If that's the way you process the world, is to make creative content based on
10:13your personal life, then you have to be really careful. These kinds of characters are so fascinating
10:18because they're so unafraid to open up about the darker and even supremely annoying parts of
10:24themselves that the rest of us want to pretend we don't have. I have work, and then I have a dinner
10:30thing, and then I am busy trying to become who I am. But this is also what makes them, like their
10:36real-life counterparts, so polarizing. Their openness forces their audience to confront parts of
10:42themselves that they might prefer to ignore. Don't even worry about it. Everyone was so drunk
10:47up that no one even remembers what you said. I remember. I blogged the whole thing. That sense of
10:52connection and getting a peek into another world has only increased as we've all become more connected
10:57by social media. On the one hand, this continues to have those positive effects of allowing people
11:02to find others who have shared experiences, and to learn about new ones they might not have known
11:07about otherwise. On the other hand, the existing feeling of reward for sharing, combined with the
11:13algorithms designed specifically to actually reward people who are willing to share it all,
11:18has led to an explosion of oversharing online. Some people have lost their jobs because they refuse
11:24not to post their entire life online. But many grab eyes via story times, which at their core are
11:31essentially just video versions of the confessional blogs of yore. But because the algorithms also seem
11:36to favor negativity, it can often be difficult to tell if these people's lives are actually like this,
11:42or if they're just leaning into deliberate rage bait to increase their income.
11:46Stop showing me your loser husband. Stop showing me your loser husband.
11:51And this is where we get into the much less fun sides of sharing everything with everyone.
11:57Openness can lead to a lot of positives, but there are also a number of downsides that can arise
12:03that the oversharer might not even realize are such a big problem until it's too late. There's that
12:09addictive nature of the attention that comes with oversharing, which can lead to them feeling
12:14compelled to share more and more, well beyond what they had ever initially intended.
12:18This can lead to sharing about yourself becoming almost a compulsion, drowning out your ability to
12:23focus on anyone but yourself. It can be pretty hard to have observations about other people when
12:29you're only thinking about yourself. I would know.
12:34The combination of that desire to share with an impulsive nature can also be particularly troubling,
12:40as once things are out in the open, you can't unshare them.
12:44While everyone knowing so much about you or being able to find out so much about you so easily
12:49can also tip the scales in an awkward way in your everyday life, having to wonder just how much every
12:55new person you meet knows about you, and how much that's created preconceived notions about you in
13:00their heads that will be hard to shake, while you don't know anything about them.
13:06The part of the equation that oversharers most often forget isn't actually about them at all, however.
13:12Wait, is this f***ing play about us?
13:14Oversharers usually aren't just sharing stories solely about themselves, but ones that include
13:21other people who likely were not asked if they wanted all of that information out there.
13:26Not fair.
13:26It's my life, Rory. I went to all this effort for many, many years making sure the people only knew
13:33what I wanted them to know. Now you're going to lay it all out in a book?
13:36Gossip Girl's Dan Humphrey is an interesting version of the trope because he wasn't really
13:41an oversharing writer until the writers decided they wanted to subvert expectations many seasons in.
13:47For most of the show, even Dan didn't know that he was sharing all of that information about himself
13:52and his friends and family's lives. But within the canon of the show, he was indeed putting both
13:57himself and everyone else he knew on blast constantly just for the thrill of the attention
14:03and to seek out revenge.
14:04Dan, I cannot believe you are the one responsible for all of this poison.
14:08The damage you've done to your friends, to your family, to your own sister!
14:11The show just kind of hand waves away the issues at the end so that it doesn't have to deal with
14:15the real ramifications of what it would have meant for him to be Gossip Girl all along.
14:20But we can kind of see a similar pattern play out in real life,
14:24with people oversharing to a degree that blows up their and other people's lives,
14:29only for them to turn that around and profit off of the fallout as well.
14:33So maybe Dan was on to… something.
14:37When asked if she ever regretted sharing so much of her real life in her writing,
14:41Samantha Irby told the LA Times,
14:43I never regret it because part of why I keep doing this is because I get feedback from people that's
14:48like, that thing you wrote really helped me. If my talking about getting my heart hit by a bus is
14:53helpful, then I'm cool with it. But any of the like, I fell out of this or I pooped on that?
14:58No regrets. No regrets. At the end of the day, it's only really oversharing if it's more than you
15:04wanted to share, and if there's no audience that wants to hear it. No matter how our mediums of
15:10communication continue to evolve, there will continue to be people who want to open up about
15:14everything. And people who can't wait to hear more.
15:19If you're aware of all of the downsides, and making sure not to drag anyone into it that didn't ask
15:24for it, it's really just… sharing. Which can be a great thing.
15:29That's the take! Click here to watch the video we think you'll love,
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