Be kind to the oversharers.They're just trying to connect with you

Even the most exhibitionist confessional journalists or Facebook users are probably just doing that most human of things: reaching out

There was a piece earlier this week about vagina detox pearls that caused some division on Twitter. "New bar set for oversharing journalism," said one user. "The reading equivalent of Tough Mudder. NSF Anywhere."

Fair enough. Not everyone wants to read about fizzing vaginas. But given that the internet now has an insatiable appetite for personal stories, and our margins for provocation are growing wider each day, it was interesting to see people react so strongly to a piece about female genitalia. It makes you wonder about what's left that should remain unsaid. At what point does "I" become "TM"?

Editors are looking for writers who can claim authority on a topic that will charge through the news cycle like a lightning bolt. As a piece on Slate said last year: "First-person essays have become the easiest way for editors to assert an on-the-ground primacy without paying for reporting," and are "the easiest way to jolt an increasingly jaded internet to attention".

The confessional hasn't just become one of the easiest ways for writers to get their foot in the door, though - it's encouraged in every part of our online lives. Every day Twitter asks: "What's happening?" "What's on your mind?" says Facebook. Only what's on our mind isn't always welcome. We've found ourselves with a curiously modern tension, I think, between constantly absorbing experiential stuff online and finding our own limits for compassion or suspending judgement reached very quickly.

People seem to navigate every life decision by asking questions on Facebook, posting workout photos, pregnancy scans, and self-congratulatory "I've worked bloody hard and I'm happy with my lot thankyouverymuch" statements. All these things are potentially irritating.

Being cynical and getting annoyed with basic humanity is, well, basically human. Yet so is having an inner life. Our outward projections reflect inner needs and desires. People are rarely "just" saying what they think - there is always another layer.

Twitter and Facebook create infinite, compulsive loops loops of reinforcement that play into how the human brain works - because although we've been given big, complex minds the bind is that there's always something to worry about. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom," but it's also freedom's price tag: no other animal on Earth gets worked up about perception like we do.

Public emotion when a celebrity dies, for instance, seems to really get on people's nerves. A friend posted something emotional on Facebook when David Bowie died, about how listening to his music helped her feel like it was OK to be the weirdo who didn't fit in. Someone wrote underneath: "Not you as well, lol! Seen too many life stories today!"

I wondered why it bothered him so much. Newspaper columnists chimed in, saying those joining in the collective mourning were insincere - but isn't "joining in", mimicking and one-upping what human beings do all the time?

Eva Wiseman wrote a great column in 2014 about the way we grieve for dead celebrities. "The worry is that we're self-identifying, and making a stranger's death all about us. Projecting our own little concerns on to the blankness of a screen," she said. "The worry is that it reveals our own emptiness, our desperation for a feeling or thrown scrap of one."

Behind every "oversharing" Facebook post is something very human. Studies have shown we do it to gain a sense of belonging. My friend Joe is keeping a list of archetypal posts, and what the psychology behind them might be. There are currently 17, but the one that sticks with me is: "Honest sadness (Everyone will think I'm crazy but fuck it: I'm human and why can't I just be straight for once?)"

When I posted something on Facebook this week asking about people's experiences of oversharing, Sam got in touch to say he'd been thinking about posting when he moves into a homeless shelter soon. He's been living with depression all his adult life, desperately trying to hide it from everyone he knows, and his circumstances have become difficult.

"I'm not sure why I'm thinking of doing it," he said. "I know it's partly because I want people to feel sorry for me, but it's therapeutic telling people about my illness. It explains quite a lot about my weird behavior throughout the years... I obviously need as much help as possible form my friends at the moment."

For Sam, honesty had become synonymous with shame and fear. The idea of sharing his situation on Facebook, he says, removes some of the awkwardness and unpredictability of face-to-face conversations. He also knows it comes with its own risk of him being seen as the dreaded oversharer, the sympathy-courter. But would someone in pain courting sympathy really be that bad? Should distress be resigned to private messages? 

There are arguments for keeping some things private, of course. But even the most exhibitionistic oversharers may just be reaching out for a human connection, and we pull our hands away because their need makes us feel icky. And if we continue to spend as much of our days as we already do on social media, it's worth remembering that we're all someone else's Annoying Person.