Online Friends

11May09

**EDIT: Best screamer EVER! Help find my missing dog!

I swung by Jessica’s site for the first time in ages to see how things where going, and noticed a new post, something about how she was freaked out about people disappearing from the face of the, erm, internet. This kinda got me thinking.

Sure, I might have made like 3 online friends that I don’t really talk with at all, maybe 1 that I talk to a bit…but I don’t really have any strong online friendships. Sure, I go on some anime fansites to talk to fellow [insert-random-anime-here] fans on Chatango, and I have made some acquaintances, but I don’t really get all too close to them.

Hm. It’s not like I try to stay distant from online friends, it’s more…what’s the word. I do it without thinking. I don’t know this person, I have only information they might offer online that might not even be valid; whether they seem legit or not, I can’t take chances. Sure, I’d love to think I could be Ninja and take that karate class that my mom had told me she was thinking about so I could kick bad-guy butt, but unfortunately that is not reality and the most I could do is pin down a scrawny “tuff gai” kid. Remember that, huh, huh? Well, that was on an old blog account. Which don’t exist anymore. Trust me, you don’t wanna know.

When I type a blog, comment, message, email, IM, tweet, whatever, I try to be conscious of what the receivers could do with the information. Whether it goes out to anybody who is willing to read it or just a few selected people.

I’ve given my first name, middle name, last name, age, state, city, and some other bits of information that are probably useless alone to random people I don’t really know it real life. I don’t just tell my age to any random person who asks for no reason, and I definitely overlook the situation, and decide upon that.

For instance, one time I was on the [insert-random-anime-here] Chatango chat-room, and one person asked where I was from. Although the reason why was because it seemed that everyone that was on the chatroom at that time coincidentally where from the Philippines, and since Anita (my name) is a Philippines (and spanish) name, they where curious if I, just signing it, was from the Philippines too. So I answered honestly. But, I wouldn’t have answered if some random person just asked that for no apparent reason. 

Some people are too careful. I’ve seen people afraid of putting their first/last name on the internet. Honestly, unless you have a crazy first/last name, I don’t think anyone would possibly be able to find you with only a small bit of information like that.

Man do I hate writing the closing paragraph for a blog. So I’m just not going to say anything.

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