On being overheard and making a spectacle of yourself.

I'm trying to piece together, over the months, the ethics of blogging. I have a lot of fuzzy rules that I suppose if I tried I could formulate into a code. I avoid saying anything bad about anyone who isn't a public figure, and I generally avoid naming a nonpublic figure who doesn't agree to be named, unless they are blogging under their own name, in which case I have, I believe, an obligation to link them. Sometimes I refer vaguely to a person to tell a story, but then I leave them unidentifiable. I'm quite aware of how disturbing people without blogs may find it to know that someone else has a blog, with hundreds or even thousands of daily readers, and who might some day up and say something objectionable about them.

But what should the rule be about overheard conversations? I reproduced some overheard dialogue from neighbors who talked loudly and drunkenly outside my bedroom window throughout an entire night. (Here's my post: note the time stamp of 3:59 a.m.) And Nina is recounting overhearing a conversation in a café chiefly to make the point that the person ought to have found a private place to have a conversation like that. My neighbors and the café student didn't protect themselves against being overheard, so does that trigger the rule that we can write about them online? Should the world be on notice that if they allow themselves to be overheard that someone may offer up a transcription on the internet? Or, at least, should people who are being outrageous or annoying enough know that they won't just be the subject of privately told anecdotes, they will be written up for the world to see?

As for photographs, I would love to take photographs of strangers, as Walker Evans did with a secret camera on the New York subway. But I don't think it's right. For this reason, I often pick photographic subject matter that doesn't include people. I will use pictures of people who are only seen at a distance. The other day I was taking a picture in a café and the light was low, which caused my camera to focus by projecting a bunch of red dots prior to the shot. That made a woman at a distance turn around with a real look of alarm on her face. It was quite an interesting picture, but I deleted it (and regretted alarming her!). But I do have a rule that it is perfectly acceptable to post a photograph of someone who is making a spectacle of himself. Like this guy: