Can we really separate Public and Private?

The topic of public writing seems to deviate from our past projects. In the past we have all heavily focused on our own discourse communities, even with the abstract project—despite collaboration—we had to use the knowledge and writing styles of our own field in order to complete the assigned task.  In today’s class we attempted to define public, which in retrospect was not as simple as it may seem. The definitions are as varied as the outlets in which public writing is produced and coming up with a singular cohesive definition seems to be impossible. But is this a bad thing? I would say that it is actually quite the opposite in that it allows for an open and lively discussion on a topic that affects us all. The intersection of public and private documents can be seen in everyday life. In my opinion it is impossible to label something as 100% public because there will always be someone that is excluded from access to that specific text. Similarly, I believe it is impossible to label something as 100% private because in our modern world there is always a way to make something public (i.e. snap chat). 

 In our discussion we paid particular attention to Chris Kluwe’s An Open Letter to Emmett C. Burns. When I first saw this article I was immediately struck by the fact that I had already read it. I don’t remember exactly when, but I remember getting an e-mail thread from one of my roommates. After class today I decided to search through my mail and see if I could find the original e-mail to see how my roommate approached it as a part of this so called public audience. I was immediately amused that the subject was Gay CockMonster!!. This subject brought up an interesting question in my head about the nature of public versus private. My roommate sent us a link to the article on ESPN’s website which by nature is a public website but his use of a vulgar title (a phrase actually taken from the article itself) makes me think it was clearly meant to be sent to a select few individuals. If he was sending this link to a boss or a professor for whatever reason, I’m sure his subject heading would be different. So the article itself is clearly a public document, but his email was not. Despite his intention to send this e-mail to three people it actually went to more because I then forwarded the e-mail to some friends and they continued to do the same. How wide spread did this e-mail with his original intent go? Honestly I have no idea but it is an interesting question to think about when we send out e-mails, texts or even snap chats. 

Our class discussion on the public nature of this article was very lively and I think it hit on quite a few important points when trying to decipher public versus private. My above example just touches on the idea of how a public document can become private but as we eluded to many times in class today the reciprocal happens in our everyday lives. Facebook is an obvious and very relevant example that has affected our entire generation. I’m sure we have all looked at our Facebooks in the past and seriously regretted certain pictures that we have posted, whether it be from high school or college. The important point here is to note that what we believe to be private information can very easily go public. Chris Kluwe’s article was clearly meant to be public but we have all seen public officials writing go public that was clearly meant not to. Based off of this discussion I think it is impossible to separate private and public documents as they are constantly being intertwined with each other.