Exceptionalism

So I walk out to a patio and opened my laptop.  These two guys are talking trash about guys in the Phoenix gay scene who talk trash about everyone.  I started typing stuff that was not their conversation, but was admittedly eavesdropping on their juicy, well-enunciated conversation being projected as much towards me as each other.  It was mostly one of them, who proudly proclaims himself as a "Big personality", which I have learned means "flagrant narcissist who dominates every conversation with their treasure trove of brilliance", which is fine if you are OK with being that, which this guy clearly is not, indicated as the conversation funnels from the frustrations of dealing with shallow people who only care about how they are perceived by strangers to a specific person who they were likely referring to all along. I started discreetly typing their conversation:

"...but people rot from the inside out.  Like, their souls. I don't care what someone looks like, but inside...  He did someone at Weston's on New Year’s Eve and passed out on the lawn across the street.  I'm trying to wake him up and this jogger goes past and I'm all like, "Good morning..."  And I have to get his 250 pound steroided out… whatever.  And I had to watch over him all  night at Nestor’s, and he wakes up and pukes on me, and what's the first thing he says? “Who saw me?”  Not “Thank you” or “Sorry”.  Anyway, so I had to go find Jim.  Hey, uhh… “ Then he gestures towards me and the other guy slyly glances at me and says “Uhh, yyyyeah” with as much hostility as possible.  They then permit the first silence I heard since I sat down, get up and leave without saying a word to each other, and once at a safe distance start discreetly (quietly) talking, ostensibly about what some stranger might have been typing about them.  

Now don't get me wrong, if I knew someone was listening in on my conversation, I would be uncomfortable as well.  Who wouldn't be?  That is why people speak at reduced volumes in public places.  But try to imagine the level of paranoia required to come to that conclusion about someone who is only occasionally typing (completely out of sync with the conversation), is mostly reading this fascinating interactive article about the NSA files, and has not visually acknowledged you... but maybe I am wrong?  I mean, I was typing what they were saying as they suspected, which it seems like they ought to expect given the volume at which they spoke.  Should people just expect that their conversations are being overheard and judged by strangers who will then report on them in their blogs?  I guess what I'm wondering is if I'm no better than the NSA. I could resume the practice of wearing earbuds to avoid detection, but isn't that the same thing as the phony cosmetic NSA reform bill proposed by Dianne Feinstein? Do the people who speak publicly in my presence deserve better?  Should I approach them and say, "Hey.  I can hear what you are saying and I exercise very limited control over how that data is used, so please speak accordingly."?  Or is the onus of privacy on the speaker? That there are places and ways to have private conversations, and loudly on the crowded patio of a cafe is not one of them?  That sounds about right.

What I did in the previous paragraph is make my case for being an exception to an opinion I contradicted while caressing it in my thoughts.  I would pay $20 to hear how those two gossip hounds make theirs.  I choose to pay $20 because the alternative is a society where people are asked to give an account of themselves at moments that serve the questioner more than the questioned, which would enable people to fortify their mental tabloids of everyone they meet with phony interviews.  That $20 is the barrier between everyone having to come up with a reason for why they were looking at that/them, why they wear/drive that.  When one of them muttered "...he could have just..." as they walked away, my $20 was spent to make whatever verb came after "just" unnecessary.