Old Person Scolding of the Young is Always Hypocritical

Ten years ago, when Facebook was a mere infant and not yet the democracy-destroying evil it would become, middle aged people would badger people in their early twenties for posting pictures of their drunken escapades on the site.
This will hurt job prospects, the olds scolded. The first thing employers do is check out your online presence, they continued. Be smart kiddos!
This advice was entirely accurate, of course. We should all take great care about how we present ourselves online — in the endless fever maw that is the internet, an errant tweet or indiscreet image might set our careers back by decades. And yet there was something rich about middle aged people who’d committed their own share of youthful indiscretions now telling the next generation of young people not to be young. Had smart phones existed in 1969, the world would now be awash with thousands of naked (and more intimate) photos from Woodstock.
Young people have always been foolish and reckless. It’s a crucial step along the time honored path towards becoming too cautious and fearful in middle age, before finally not caring again what people think about your choices once you get older. The crucial difference now is that technology offers a permanent record of youthful foolishness, inspiring hypocritical lectures from people in their fifties who were just as reckless themselves once upon a time.
With the sudden downfall of US Representative Katie Hill, partially brought about by the release of indiscreet photos shared against Hill’s consent, generational scolds are at it again. How could she do that? Why must every single moment of every single day be shared online? When will these kids learn?? We were different when we were young. We were better.
Once again, the logic of the critique is airtight. Taking — and then texting — intimate photos often leads to a world of hurt. People are cruel, and the internet is a handy place to enact that cruelty. This is why revenge porn has become such a horrid scourge of modern life. Indeed, in Hill’s case it appears that her ex-husband was part of the photo release.
And yet. Before smart phones existed people made stag videos that lived on VHS tapes hidden in the bottom dresser drawer. The impulse toward exhibitionism is as old as humanity. Millennials didn’t invent it.
The older people criticizing Hill are right to argue that nothing good arises from indiscreet sharing of intimate digital photos. But they are wrong to pretend that they would have acted any differently if they had owned smartphones when they were young.
