You are quite often lulled into the false sense of security that you are only dealing with this one person, head to head, rather than a media that can be round the world in less than a day, copied to any computer in the world. You think you are exclusive, when all along you find that your messages are being sent to the world and their significant other. Just because you are sitting alone and wouldn't dream of passing a received message to the world, doesn't mean that the other person wouldn't either. It's so easy to forget just how public this forum is..... and that people talk to other people. If you want a secret kept, don't be posting it on a thread you think only certain people read, or sending a message you think will only be seen by one person.

Quite often it's a response to the flaming, I admit that there have been one or two postings that have caused me to send something I regretted later, and an awful lot more that I didn't actually send.....

People get to know each others' 'persona' very quickly online, so an illusionary intimacy is established. We're usually rudest to people we know best. With strangers it's ill manners, jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst immediately.

I've never met anyone who admits to being a bad driver, despite evidence to the contrary. Just like I've never met anyone who says they're rude on the internet......

LTS