Privacy is when there are aspects of your life that you feel you don't want others to know about and it has no relevance to them whether they know or not!
Lying would be if someone said "are you a swinger?" and you said "no", you could always avoid lying by saying "its non of your business" which quite frankly it isnt!
As for the hurting people bit, who are you hurting? surely not your friends and family etc, as really it is entirely up to you to tell them.
We don't let anybody know what we do in our "private time" as really it is non of there business as much as its not mine if Miss SRNE's dad goes fishing two nights a week, he doesn't need to tell us!
As for the secrecy bit, a secret is fundamentally just something very personal and/or private between one or a group of people who donot wish "it" to be common knowledge.
Hope this helps or at least gives another viewpoint?
I've said this before but...
I think on a site like this that lying is envitable. People will lie to get what they want. It is envitable because of the way the site is set up. There is no person contact intially so it is easy to lie about who you are, what you are as the facts cannot be checked. It is easier to lie because it doesn't feel like you are dealing with real people. The internet is a wonderful buffer to reality. People will write things here that they would never say in public.
The site is set up based on a series of lies or at least on misleading information. We operate with code names and odd photos to protect our identities. It's true, in reality I am not a small child in a blue hat with a duck as a friend.
I think you just have to accept that people lie here and get on with it.
Thanks All for replying!
I believe I am being private and it is my own business, but it was interesting to have another who is not so "available" throw back my privacy as a lie/secret that is comparable to their own.
I guess the debate supports my own feeling about on-line friendships (or more) that "until you can look them in the eye, it is not really real"
This is refering to many things - from sexual chemistry between people, to honesty, to the start of trust, to deciding how or if to proceed. This does not mean we should dis-trust but we should accept that we do not know everything about a person other than the often confusing medium of type where emotion and context can often be lost.
Hell we even get it very very wrong with people we have only ever met face to face!!!
We are all able to improve our own PR in this anonymous internet world - whether intended or not. Most of us do not realise how different we can be in our own perception of ourselves compared to how others see us. I do believe that most of us want and try to be honest, at least as mush as we can while still protecting ourselves but sometimes we believe our own PR a little more than we should?
Thanks xx
