In light of the recent revelations about the U.S. domestic surveillance program, I just have to come right out and say it: this weekend, I got a haircut.

Whew. It feels good to get that out there. And to some complete strangers, no less. The modern world is truly great. In the old days, I couldn’t have shared updates on my personal hygiene so easily with all of you! And now the boys in black suits and sunglasses know about my trim, too. (I apologize for keeping you federal lads in the dark for nearly a week. Next time, I promise to discuss my style choices over the phone so you know what’s happening in real time.)

I’ll admit, all this talk about “invasion of privacy” and “collection of metadata” made me nervous about announcing my new ’do. It’s one thing for corporations to track my habits and algorithmically predict my next big life event and, therefore, what I’ll soon be buying. (Stores like Target can figure out you’re having a baby even before you tell your parents, which isn’t at all creepy and invasive. So save those diaper coupons!) The government monitoring my communications is a different beast altogether. I mean, they’re not even using what they learn to send me killer deals on federal services. Did they really want to hear about my haircut?

I was getting angsty about whether or not my civic duty was to keep my personal information to myself. If I don’t have anything to hide, I should have no problem putting it out there. On the other hand, I really didn’t want my hair trimmings to clog the pipes of information collection.

But then I thought about it. If all of us honest citizens stopped announcing our big news to the world through the newspaper, Facebook and text messaging, then only terrorists would use the newspapers, Facebook and text messaging! The only solution was to keep going. By gum, if the Brits can keep riding the Tube after the trains get bombed, then I can keep talking about my haircuts with whomever I please.

Sharing every little update with everyone in town is the least I can do. Besides, it’s just SO EASY thanks to smartphones, social media sites, and weekly alternative papers with liberal letter policies. And I’m in the clear, so long as anti-patriots never use “haircut” as a code word for an insidious plot to leak information about the President’s personal hygiene.

No matter how we look at domestic surveillance, we must acknowledge that our world has changed. We have several options for how to deal with the new Peeping Sam state. One such option is to resist the program through organized protests in the streets, grassroots-supported legislation, and reasoned consideration about how we choose to interact through smartphones, social media sites, and letters to the editor. But like I said, if we hinder the surveillance programs in any way, the eeeevil folks win! More importantly, those options are, like, hard work and stuff. So unless our citizenry decides to adopt fun, French-style rioting and car burning, scratch those solutions.

The second option would be to shrug and go along with the programs. This one seems easiest and simplest. It would be business as usual. I will post on Facebook about my haircuts and read about my friend’s aunt’s dog’s toenail fungus. I will talk on my cell phone while checking out at the grocery store, and I will eavesdrop on intimate smartphone conversations that take place in public. We all put this stuff out there for the world to read and hear, so it’s no big deal if private contractors sift through our digitized conversations and musings. It’s all chaff, anyway.

Or – and this is a big “or” – there’s Option Three. Option Three is my favorite. Option Three is where we all embrace our inner exhibitionists and give the feds a helluva show!

Think about it. The poor feds (and even more, their poor computers) are having to sift through billions of hours of conversations about cat pictures. If such struggle had happened during the Great Wars, entire towns would have stepped up to support our hard-working boys on the front lines. The Red Cross nurses would have put together digital packages of scandalous content to keep up morale. Children would have salvaged scraps of dignity to be melted down for ammunition. Entire industries would have flourished, just to keep our spies supplied.

We may not be one of the great generations – yet. Our best chance is to give the government some better stuff to sift through. I’m not just talking nudie pics and throaty phone calls, though they would be undoubtedly appreciated. I’m talking every intimate and personal detail that could give someone the thrill of voyeurism. Problems with your prescription? Success in the powder room? Heretofore undiscovered ways of punishing unruly children? Bring ’em on.

Anti-surveillance pundits seem to think Americans are acting far too docile about all this. They think we citizens are just sitting back and accepting this surveillance state without merely a sound. I agree. A culture founded on sharing the progress of toenail fungus should be nothing but noise! It’s no surprise that our collective flippancy about our individual privacy has led to a government wanting to know all the juicy tidbits. We created this monster; now it’s our patriotic duty to feed it until we all choke. I hope it likes hair trimmings.

– Zach Hively