Can we trust each other?

[Snowdog]

So that username should have been BeardinPants?\
As for the answer to the question asked at the beginning of this thread... no.

Although I have gotten to know a few folk I have met over Tolkien messageboards.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

can you trust most people? no
can you trust me? yes, besides i will never meet any of you guys ( ) but i can asure you, i aint a 40 year old pervert

[Lotesse]

Well, why the hell not?? Why on earth would anybody need to lie to people ON the INTERNET, for crissakes? How ridiculous. One of the premier reasons why I enjoy Entmoot so much is because it allows me the freedom to express exactly who I really am, without worry or blame, and without having to be concerned with incriminating myself or inadvertently freaking people out who could alter my life negatively. All the shady sort of stuff I've mentioned or complained about here & there are things which I do not and cannot and will not discuss with anyone-ANYONE-in my non-virtual life. It would be nice to meet some of you all someday, though, but I doubt that'll ever happen. You never know, tho...

[Nurvingiel]

I totally agree Lotesse. I think one reason some people lie about who they are on the internet is because they can, and they don't like themselves. I think that's a real shame. My mom says "If you can't be yourself, who are you?"

I don't lie about myself, but I do behave differently in real life. I talk about trees, academics, and food way more IRL and much less about religion and sexuality. There are only a few people I know in real life who would want to get into a long discussion about religion, and I have with them. (And I sound pretty much like I do here in the religion threads).

Since I wouldn't start a romantic relationship with someone over the internet, the 40-year-old pervert issue isn't a problem.

[Valandil]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

:
:
Since I wouldn't start a romantic relationship with someone over the internet, the 40-year-old pervert issue isn't a problem.

Why do you guys keep SAYING that!??!??

[Nurvingiel]

Because Blackboar started the thread with this:

Originally Posted by Blackboar

How much do you lie on the internet? How much do you trust your internet mates? Are you who you say you are?

We are all regular users of the internet, what do you think of all the 40-year-old pervert issues?

However, I don't think this is as widespread a phenomena as the media/random people would have us believe. Besides 40-year-olds aren't pervs, we should all know by now some random perv you met in a chatroom or whatever can be any age.

[Snowdog]

I wonder what the odds are in running into an undercover FBI agent looking for 40 year old perverts as opposed to running into a 40 year old pervert?

[Falagar]

The media had a big coverage on this a few weeks ago.

However, I don't think this is as widespread a phenomena as the media/random people would have us believe. Besides 40-year-olds aren't pervs, we should all know by now some random perv you met in a chatroom or whatever can be any age.

Try logging on to some of the larger chats (at least here in Norway) with a nickname like "girl14" or "hotchick13". The article I refered to above had a journalist log in on a chat-room with a name like that, and she was instantly contacted by at least 5-10 people (can't remember exactly) who, some after a bit small-talking (some also used a lot of time), some right away, wanted to meet (and pay) her for sexual favors. She met up with 3 of them, all much older than they had claimed, and insisting that they hadn't really wanted to do anything when she told them she was a journalist.
May have been a bit overblown, but a few friends of mine tried with the same result.

Of course, it depends a bit what kind of circles you move in. I'm member on a Tolkien-forum (and chat-room) where I've met at least 50% of the most active members, all of whom have turned out to be who they said they were. I doubt you'll find many such perverts around special-interest chats like a Tolkien-board.

[Pytt]

Yeah, I can back up what Falagar says about the chat channels. And there was alot of people messaging us. It was a bit shocking.

The same thing as Falagar says about meeting people. I have meet some of them myself, and all of them turned out to be what they said they were.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Falagar

The media had a big coverage on this a few weeks ago.
Try logging on to some of the larger chats (at least here in Norway) with a nickname like "girl14" or "hotchick13". The article I refered to above had a journalist log in on a chat-room with a name like that, and she was instantly contacted by at least 5-10 people (can't remember exactly) who, some after a bit small-talking (some also used a lot of time), some right away, wanted to meet (and pay) her for sexual favors. She met up with 3 of them, all much older than they had claimed, and insisting that they hadn't really wanted to do anything when she told them she was a journalist.
May have been a bit overblown, but a few friends of mine tried with the same result.

You could read similar things in the newspapers here. Some journalist had pretended to be a 14-year-old girl and lots of 40+ people had given her their phone numbers. The journalist then called them but they all hung up on him when he told them who he really was and started asking questions.

I've done some experimenting myself and it's amazing how many middle-aged men start talking to you when you choose a girl's name in a public chat-room.

[Morelen]

yeah...my friends and I went onto a chatroom once and signed in as "sweet_thang" and in seconds at least three people talked to us and asked us a bunch of stuff...'twas tres funny because there we were, four white (well, two of us are half-native american) girls all under 14 from the US midwest, and we convinced some guys that we were "Lela", a 17 year old latino-africanamerican mix living with her dad and stepmom in San Diego California. Soon enough we made up a different sn and profile, and away we went. It was great.

The freaky part was, the guy we were talking to ("anthony")told us all this stuff (he's 19, black, etc etc) but when we typed something like "lol" or "ttyl" or "imo" or "jsyk" anything else like that he'd be like "What does that mean?" Being young teens hyped up on sugar late at night, we made up all these uber-creepy scenarios---we finally agreed that he was a 40 year old police detective in D.C. looking for pedophiles!!! (we were kidding...we don't really think that now.

As for revealing info, I am generally pretty open. When someone says "asl" I say my real age (15), my real sex (female, duh), and my vague location (Minnesota, USA). I talk to people by their first names online all the time, and I suppose if someone REALLY wanted to stalk me, they could. Maybe. But pro'bly not.

[gollum9630]

if he said he was 19 then i doubt he was looking for pedophiles. if he said 14-16 then maybe