There is almost nothing worse than a post-social flashback; a sudden, salient, mental replay of waxing lyrical to your boss at the pub about the time your grandma fell over the rug drunk at Christmas – or some other nonsense they didn’t need to know about. The shame of overfamiliarity can be cheek-reddening. We spend mornings-after ruminating over verbal incontinence, making firm self-promises to be much more mysterious in the future, or else.
Over sharers, generally, get quite a bad rap. Like when Prince Harry revealed in his 2023 tell-all memoir Spare that his penis was suffering from frost bite at William and Kate’s wedding (along with all the other private information he shared about the inner dynamics of the Royal family). Or when Norwegian Olympian Sturla Holm Laegreid recently confessed in a live TV interview to cheating on his girlfriend, moments after winning a bronze medal. Both were highly criticised for their decisions to veer off-script.
