Dani Garavelli: Youthful follies follow you online
IN the movie Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, a couple who have been through a painful break-up go separately to a clinic to have their memories of each other obliterated. It’s a poignant film which reflects on the power of the past and the relative merits of clinging on to it and blocking it out. The title is taken from an Alexander Pope poem, which includes the lines: “Oh happy is the blessed vestal’s lot, the world forgetting and by the world forgot”. And who cannot identify with that? Who doesn’t sometimes crave to erase or be erased from the public consciousness? Who has never yearned for the opportunity to wipe the slate clean? No technology yet exists which allows us to rid us of our memories so we are fated to spend long, dark nights reliving the worst of them. And as for other people? Their ability to recall our humiliation depends on how well-disposed they are towards us. How keen to see us fail. How willing to cut us some slack.