I remember when the internet was still new and shiny. Back then if you were one of the folks who actually had a computer and, on top of that, the “luxury” of an internet connection you could pick a handle to be known by and spout off whatever you wanted to online without fear of the people in your “real life” finding what you said. Oh, sure…it happened on occasion. I’ll bet most of us who were around back in those days had at least one uncomfortable moment where we were confronted with the person who we had slagged up one side and down the other on Live Journal. There’s nothing quite like that sinking, horrible feeling you get in the pit of your stomach the first time someone says “I read something about me on your blog” when you didn’t know the person in question even could even figure out how to turn a computer ON. On the whole, though, the internet was a vast anonymous playground in those days. The people who knew you in meat space were likely in your social circle and could generally be counted on to be trusted confidants. You could talk about anything you wanted to, and we did. Oh did we. We talked about our sexual conquests. We talked about how insane our families made us. We talked about our jobs, and what we really thought about them. We talked about our secret dreams. We talked about recreational drug use.
We swore a lot, too.
Those days are over.