CHEAP SHOT, NOT SORRY.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: I'm okay with living in a social media panopticon because you can't Instragram a fart.

UPDATE. Some commenters go to the source, read Goldberg's essay (about how it's great that behaviors can be recorded forever on the internet and employers and schools can use them against you, because character), and come back gagging. "Jonah," asks BigHank53, "you do understand that the Enlightenment was not, in fact, primarily concerned with self-expression?"

For me the most fartworthy aspect of the essay is Goldberg's assumption that if something you did gets you in trouble with a prospective employer or school, it must reflect your bad character, so you had it coming. I doubt Goldberg has ever heard of Hispanics United of Buffalo, Inc. v. Ortiz, a case in which five employees were fired for complaining about their jobs on Facebook, or any of the many other cases like it, but one of the morals of the story is that employers will penetrate as far into their employees' private lives (and that of their prospects) as society will let them, and cheering for further intrusion as a character-building exercise is... well, exactly what I'd expect of him.