The past few weeks have been tumultuous in regards to the online world and privacy, specifically Facebook. Is there privacy? Was there ever a promise of privacy? How do people handle that? What do widely different demographics think?

The thing is, the right answer is all of the above. Everyone and their view of Facebook and privacy is right because it’s emotional; privacy is, after all, a personal thing. Someone shouldn’t necessarily judge someone else because they feel uncomfortable — it’s their feelings and they have a right to them. The data coming from various trusted sources doesn’t help because there are studies and anecdotes proving every opinion every which way. I read one thing last night, I heard another today, etc. all from people with solid track records.

That said, I’ll share the advice that I put to clients:

It’s all one and the same now.

I do believe a promise was broken, and I also believe Facebook needs to learn some PR basics as they’ve handled the situation horribly by not communicating well, but it gets down to the reality of today’s online world. That reality is: There are no longer any boundaries between the “work you,” the “personal you,” and the “family you.”

That choice has been decided for all of us. Online society has “opted us out” of that choice.

In this “new” era that some of us have been living in for a while, there is no separation. That’s a boundary I know many will have issues dealing with and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a whole new practice of psychology to deal with this.

It’s nothing less than a cultural shift at our very foundation.

Cultural expectations and boundaries are being re-written as you consume these pixels.

Although more subtle, this is a time of cultural change not unlike major shifts in American history. In other countries, the results are more visible — for instance, in Germany, Google is in extreme hot water over their use of Street View because it feels so wrong to German society to have that “invasion of privacy.” I use quotes because that is, and should be, defined by them, not us.

You need to be the arbiter of what you share, knowing that absolutely everything online that you produce could get out. Don’t want that picture to be public? Don’t post it. Did keg stands and it’s on Facebook? Yeah, your employer will see that. Political affiliations, religion, the whole deal. And there will be people who don’t like you. Good and bad. The seal is off — and in many ways, has been off. Want to have a private conversation? You probably should use the phone or see them in person. After all, due to errors, your chat logs could leak out.

In some ways, I see a trend coming back to the internet of old — I know plenty of folks who do not use their real names on Facebook. In fact, many “kids” do this now. It’s not much of a foil, but some people do it. I know marketers who have many Facebook accounts (as many as 20), and others with two — one for work, one for personal. Forums, message boards and blogs are still alive with traffic (and you should always have a place that you own that has YOUR content for a lot of reasons, which is another post for another day).

You can either choose to live in the digital world – and be smart about what you share – or go dark. But going dark will become less and less possible.  To be honest, the ones I see getting jobs and advancing in this economy are the ones who are “in” and yet maintain privacy simply by not sharing everything with the world — and sometimes, sharing things that make them people. Because at the end of the day, you’re a person.

After all, even Steve Jobs is answering his emails these days.