The Echoes
An Echo · v1.00
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
A long time ago, before the internet age, ending a certain kind of relationship consisted of avoidance, moving, or a restraining order.
In this age, it is more complex in ways I do not think people fully understand yet.
If you have read my piece about the right to be forgotten, you know I am an advocate for people’s right to be forgotten in personal, private ways.
This is not a repeat of that, but a more nuanced look into how much of a pain in the ass it can be to do your due diligence in cleaning up a mess like it is a crime scene.
When something ends with someone, I am not a keeper of things unless safety requires otherwise.
There is a difference between keeping something because it may be needed for safety and keeping something because it still gives you access to a person.
I do not give old private conversations value like souvenirs.
“Mmm, those were the days.”
No.
My mindset when something ends is simple: how fast can I delete this shit?
Not just for my privacy, which, for me, is a lesser concern because of how I conduct myself, but for the privacy of the other person.
Regardless of how things might end with someone, they have a right to privacy.
I do the best I can, given how a situation ends, to abide by that.
Ideally, if something is dissolving, I like to be able to say, “Hey, now that this is done, or going to be done, how would you like to handle the housecleaning on this?”
Usually, there is a mature, respectful response where things can be handled correctly.
That is the best version: two people agreeing what should be kept, what should be deleted, and what should be left alone.
Sometimes, it is like someone ran out of the room screaming, did not shut the door behind them, and you are standing there thinking, “Umm, are they okay? Are they coming back? What am I supposed to do with the mess here?”
It is a sentiment maybe some people do not experience, for lack of whatever.
Lucky.
I, being someone who has had enough experience with this, am left with these thoughts more often than not.
That is why I believe if something is in my possession, belongs to someone else, and no longer has any use, it should be discarded.
Because I cannot reliably control the future of that information.
And how could I, when there is always the secret audience: the platform or platforms being used for communication?
Leaving things alive in these places leaves them open to all kinds of unknowns.
Who can see it later?
Who can access it later?
What story can it create later, out of context?
These are matters neither person can fully anticipate once the material is left behind.
That is why, when it comes to relationships that have ended, I choose to erase and rewind.
Of course, deleting something does not mean it never existed.
It just means I am not volunteering to keep it alive.
“Hey! Zan! You got it all wrong! When you send something to someone else, that becomes their property! You are being unethical by destroying their property!”
Umm… okay.
For some bizarre reason, there seems to be a conversation in certain online circles about whether messages or media sent to someone else become their property once they are sent.
I mean, I could debate that all day, but let’s try to keep this short.
I can write from what happened to me without turning someone else’s private archive into public property.
If a person asks for messages to be deleted, and it is reasonably doable, that should be respected, unless there is a legal or safety reason they must be kept.
If a person wants their messages deleted, and the other person is not reachable or is not being reasonable, that should still be understood as a healthy, privacy-minded response, not a declaration of war.
If neither holds true, then you, as the receiver, should do your own housekeeping so you are not becoming free cloud storage for something that can cause issues later.
When it comes to personal communication, it does not need its own Lost Media Wiki page.
It needs someone responsible enough to know the difference between something that has ended and something that should be gone.
Companion Track: “Erase/Rewind” – The Cardigans
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