Have you ever thought about the potential discomfort the author of a vintage journal would experience if it were being shared without their consent on TikTok?
By Tayla Ham - August 23 2023
Imagine inheriting a keepsake box filled with a plethora of treasures from your Grandma. As you explore the contents, you come across journals from her teenage years. Would you choose to read them? And if so, would you share them with the world?
As podcasts and TikTok gain popularity and self-publishing becomes easier, creators are always searching for a captivating story that will attract and retain an audience, leading to subscriptions, followers, or content purchases.
As famously stated by memoir author Frank McCourt, "Everyone has a story to tell." However, witnessing the sharing of other people's stories on social media raises the question of whether everyone would want their own stories shared after their passing and used in such a manner.
My Grandma's Diaries, a TikTok page and podcast, shares the journals of Elisabeth Hartsell to educate about the challenges faced during The Great Depression and 1930s America. The content creators strongly believe that Elisabeth would have approved of sharing her journals with the world.
Elisabeth's grandson, Mark McMiknney, and his best friend, Liz Duren, create all of the content for My Grandma's Diaries. Unfortunately, neither of them had the opportunity to meet Elisabeth during her lifetime, as she passed away unexpectedly in her sleep at the age of 51 in 1969.
The My Grandma's Diaries TikTok page began in November 2022 and has gained over 136,000 followers with 280 videos. Additionally, the project now includes a podcast with 15 episodes and a Patreon account for exclusive content.
Whilst working on the project, the duo soon realised that Elisabeth was an exceptional writer for her age. According to Duren, working on Elisabeth's journals is “like trying to solve a puzzle”. By combining the various fragments of information, Duren says they are uncovering “a coming-of-age story that is just as good as a young Laura Ingalls Wilder or other American storytellers.”
However, Duren explains that the project has not come without its share of negativity in the comments around the ethical dilemma of reading Elisabeth’s personal diaries on such a public platform.
“I think she already had a preconceived notion that this isn't always going to be 100% private,” Duren says adamantly, “She knew this would be read.”
Furthermore, McKinney's family, including Elisabeth's children, enthusiastically approved the project before making it accessible to the public.
“For them, they never read it; they don't know what’s in these diaries,” Duren explains. “It's really cool what this is doing for her family. Not only telling them things about their Mom they never knew, making their Mom more relatable than she was before and then sparking memories of, “Oh, Mom, did say something about this,” and it's kind of bringing her back to life for them.”
In the case of Elisabeth's journals, where she expressed her desire for them to be shared and with her family's permission, it may be easier to answer the earlier question of whether it's appropriate to read and publish someone else's private diary on a public platform.
Other TikTok creators besides My Grandma's Diaries also share diaries of people who have passed away. Diary.Of.Nellie, who is the largest of these other creators, has 315.9 thousand followers.
Where our ethical question diverges, however, from My Grandma’s Diaries is that the unnamed creator behind Diary.Of.Nellie found Nellie’s diaries in a thrift shop.
It is interesting to note that, unlike the negative and offensive comments that the My Grandma's Diary team has encountered, such behaviour has not been observed on the Diary.Of.Nellie’s TikTok page.
Diary.Of.Nellie's creator has no personal connection to Nellie, the original writer of the journals, and has not obtained approval or consent from Nellie's family to share this private information, unlike My Grandma's Diaries.
Nellie's diaries have a distinct writing style and cover different subject matter compared to Elisabeth's. Elisabeth's story portrays “a beautiful life, through a teenager's eyes,” according to Duren's description. Unfortunately, Nellie's diaries do not share the same fortunate content.
The main diary used in Nellie’s content is from 1957, when Nellie was 71, only three years before she died. Nellie regularly references her six children and grandchildren, who could still be alive today.
It's difficult to anticipate how a family might respond if one of their members stumbled upon someone reading their great-grandmother's journal from the 1950s while scrolling through social media.
Could they be displeased about an unknown individual who has no relation to their family gaining popularity and potentially profiting from their family member? Or will they approve of the project similar to how Elisabeth's family has?
However, this does beg the question of why the journals were in a thrift shop in the first place. Does the individual who has passed away simply have no surviving family?
“I think of a diary, and that's been donated? Somebody didn't care about it,” Duren says, “There is no one there to say “Hey, that's my Mom,” and then it's kind of like there's no one to tell the story anyway. So, in the end, I think it is a matter of how dull we think our lives are. We all have a story to tell; go tell it.”
For a long time, society has been reading the diaries of people who have passed away. Examples of these include The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Journals: Captain Scott’s Last Expedition by Robert Falcon Scott, and On The Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's possible that you have read one of these diaries without considering the ethics of reading someone else's private thoughts.
This is likely due to they were presented in a traditional media form, of a published book, not a TikTok series. Additionally, as with Elisabeth, these were all heavily endorsed by the family of the person who wrote the diaries.
The information and eyewitness accounts contained in all of these diaries are invaluable for understanding history and learning about the daily lives of people during different periods of world history.
Nonetheless, there remains an ethical dilemma that anyone working with diaries must confront. Would the individual who has passed away approve of their personal information being shared with the world?
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