Unprivate Ryan

My girlfriend's wonderful. Unfortunately, whenever we have a disagreement, she shares it on social media. She feels she has a right to do that because it's part of her life. Am I not entitled to a private life while I'm with her?

--News Object

Some favor the social media approach to the "examined life," Instagramming their medical records and crowdsourcing their flatulence problem. Others take a more guarded tack -- encrypting everything...including their cat videos. The longing for privacy -- keeping certain info about yourself from public consumption -- is a very human thing, a desire that probably evolved out of our need to protect our reputation. In ancestral times, having a bad reputation could lead to a person being booted from their band and made to go it alone -- back when "fast food" would've been all the zippy small animals they couldn't catch while they were starving to death. Contrary to your girlfriend's notion that "relationship" is just another way of saying "two-person surveillance state," you have a right to privacy. This is a fundamental human right, explained Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, and it comes out of our right to be left alone. So, yes, you are entitled to pick the "privacy settings" on your own life, because the information about your thoughts, emotions, and romantic interactions belongs to you. Nobody gets to dispense that info publicly without your permission -- even if this means they have to keep part of their life (the part with you) under wraps. To stop your girlfriend from turning your relationship into a giant data breach, trigger her sympathy -- explaining how awful it feels to become infotainment for a bunch of strangers (and, worse, people you know). Better yet, help her feel it: "Honey...just imagine going on Twitter and finding your therapist's new account: 'Heard In Session.'"