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I could blame Myspace, Twitter, your haggard mother, Jerry Springer or Jersey Shore, but you know what? I blame you.

Yes you. You there, on your cell phone at the back of the number 48 bus. Yes, you, the girl with the fake Chanel bag and Hello Kitty phone cover. You.

I don’t care what you wore, that he said you’d call, or that it now burns when you pee. Neither do the rest of the hapless commuters being subjected to your inane recounting of every sordid detail from last night’s hookup. Your shrill monologue is echoing the entire bus length, polluting the entire route.

Let me be the one to tell you: he isn’t going to call, your butt does look big, and that burning? I think I can smell a new diagnosis of genital herpes even from here in the second row. Somewhere in the world, Miss Manners is delicately wiping away a tear, shed for the demise of decorum, with a lace edged hankie.

It's time to make shame a popular emotion again, and privacy a concept beyond restricting your Facebook profile. In 2010, we’re buffeted by a constant deluge of information. Status updates, Tweets, and headline news are all delivered directly to our cell phones, in an attempt to inform, entertain, and bring us closer together. It’s true, social media allows us to stay in contact with old friends and make new ones, but what is the impact on us when our lives become news? Does the desire to seem newsworthy erode privacy and encroach on intimacy?

Maybe it’s a stretch, but that’s the only reason I can think of to broadcast your breakups, hookups and meet ups to all four hundred of your closest acquaintances on Facebook. Beyond potentially netting a stalker and dashing future political ambitions, having your life on blast has important repercussions for how we interact. When the private becomes public, we sacrifice privacy and trivialize our personal lives by making it common.

Let’s conspire for a coup d’etat of courtesy and ignite a revolution of respect- turn off your cell phone and keep the details to yourself!