Do you really know a thousand people?

Social media challenges us to know the limits of our reach, our friendships, our professional connections. Just how many people can we know? How many can we share professional or personal interests with?

The lattice of connectivity thins, IMO, with numbers. The more you have, the more tenuous any connection becomes. The fewer, the stronger. Or so one might assume. But in a maniacally data-driven world, numbers — sheer numbers — count. And so what Beyoncé or Bernie Sanders thinks or likes becomes important relative to their ability to influence whatever outcome they are hoping for. And trust me, they are hoping for outcomes suitable to their unfettered desires, however awful or ridiculous they may be. Unhappily, all those algorithms for gauging such shit can’t tell us much. Oh, they might tease out distinctions that advertisers seek to discern, but they don’t tease out the heart of the owner, who in our digitally determined world advertisers or Russian bots want to capture.

All of this is by way of saying — share as little of yourself online as your mother would wish to know, post as few notes as your spouse would approve of, and link to nothing that your children would have to endure from a bully or government or employer might seek to question. The more you reveal, the more transparent and so invadable and collusive and damaged you are likely to become. I’m sure almost everyone connected to Donald Trump would agree.