But if I suddenly do something foolish on my very public and busy street, it will remain an occurrence fairly private to the current street dwellers. It most likely won't be accessible to everyone on the planet for ever, and I think that makes a lot of sense socially.

Let's imagine the year is 1917. You do something foolish on the street, some people see it, and go away. You forget about it, most of them forget about it. But one person remembered it quite well. 30 years passed and this person is still telling "that story of the fool on the street". Soon, this person is elected president, he is being broadcast globally, and he talks about the story of the fool on the street. Then he sees you passing by and yells "that's him! that's the fool I saw 30 years ago!"

Now, the year is 2017 and this situation is much easier to happen because people take videos on their phone and publish it on YouTube. Just to make sure it stays online forever, they also host it on Torrent. What are you going to do about it?