Christine Rosen ponders the rise in public displays of just about anything:

It is not only public grooming that you'll see more of these days; public displays of affection have become more frequent (and more amorous) as well.  As one young Manhattan resident recently complained in the New York Times, "Everywhere I go, people are fondling each other as if the entire city were a cheap motel room."   At work, over-sharing is becoming as vexing an office problem as gossip.  Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Bernstein wrote recently of the challenge of erasing from her mind the image of a colleague who, in pursuit of his bicycling hobby, described "shaving his entire body to reduce aerodynamic drag."  We have even devised an acronym - TMI, or "Too Much Information" - to capture the uncomfortable experience of listening to people natter on about their personal problems. 

What ever happened to embarrassment?  Why are an increasing number of us comfortable bringing our private activities - from personal hygiene to intimate conversation - into public view?  Bernstein and others place some of the blame on the desensitization wrought by reality television and social networking sites like Facebook, both of which traffic in personal revelation. To be sure, television and Internet video sites such as YouTube have made all of us more comfortable in the role of everyday voyeurs.  We watch others cook, work, shop, argue, sing, dance, stumble, and fall - all from a safe remove. The motley denizens of reality television regularly put themselves into questionable and embarrassing situations so that they can later discuss, for our viewing enjoyment, how questionable and embarrassing their conduct was.  If we are less easily embarrassed, it must be in part from vicariously experiencing so much manufactured embarrassment on the screen.

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