I am not questioning
your caution. I'm just trying to point out that the need for caution isn't appreciably
greater here vs. elsewhere.
I would disagree with that. In 3D life there are usually some fairly easy ways to discern when people are telling whoppers. It will come out soon enough that Joe was let go by IBM. As you pointed out, the mail room guy gets identified as a mail room guy sooner or later.
But on SI, unless people actually meet in 3D, there is no way to confirm that they are what they say they are. People can say they're lawyers, or professors, or ministers, or teachers, or retired government workers, but there is no way at all that we can verify that. That, IMO, is a major difference from "real" life, and a cause for greater caution.
I go back to Beltane, where quite a few people who I believe were probably very dignified in their "real" lives were acting as virtual e sluts in their Beltane lives -- so much that more than one poster was really turned off by it. (Others were, OTOH, really turned ON by it!) But although I don't know any of those people in 3D, I firmly believe that almost none of them were even remotely representing their "real life" selves. (For just one example, look at the difference in the way E acted on Beltane and the persona she presents now on SI. Which is the real E?? And does anybody really believe that in real life I am sexually irrestable and that legions of women truly want to wander off into the mossy glades with me for a night of sexual passion and abandon? If so, I wish those women who believe that would come visit me!) |
