Lately, I've been getting a lot of inquiries--not from here, but from another popular web-site much larger than this place--asking who I am, in real life.
Inquiries which make me, like, really nervous.
Some might remember Fat Che, the piano-playing primitive, and a couple of others, who during the Scamdal four years ago, plastered my identity all over the internet.
Fortunately, no harm was done because I happened to move out here two months later, changing addresses, and the current address shows up nowhere on the internet, because I don't use it.
Also, the tables were turned on the culprits who, having made threats, were reported to law-enforcement, which did some digging, and for my own protection, gave me details about the four. This is what happens when one makes a threat on the internet; the potential victim ends up knowing more about the perpetrators, than the perpetrators know about their potential victim.
I would recognize Fat Che or the piano-playing primitive from a mile away now, and not just because one is flappingly fat and the other scrawnily short; there are other characteristics about them that would immediately identify them.
Despite this happy ending, I still get nervous about it.
And being deaf, I am in a peculiar situation. For the deaf, the only "reality" is what one sees in front of one; the back and both sides don't exist.
Well, we know they exist, but lazily--and humanly--assume they're unimportant, and so we don't look over our backs or at our sides, just straight ahead.
Which makes one vulnerable, but as the only alternative is to live like Pedro Picasso, in a perpetual state of fear and paranoia about what's unseen that's going on, I'd just as soon take my chances.
At this site, I know only eight members, from communications with them in real life, or even encounters with them, and I'm comfortable exchanging details with them.
There was a member here, still registered by not active any more, who upon my arrival here (I was a little later than most in coming here, as I like to be sure a ship is sinking, before I jump off, in this case being up to the shoulders in water before I leaped), sent me a personal message, asking me please to send a photograph of myself.
Yeah, right.
I didn't respond, and thereafter ignored that member.
Excepting for the absence of ears, disguised by wearing my hair a little bit longer than is usual for a male, I look utterly normal and average, sort of like a more mellow and laid back older brother of my fellow alum Skins. Just an average-looking person, no special characteristics.
But I don't think it's a good idea for people to send photographs of themselves to people they don't know in real life.
Especially since one expects to win the Powerball some day.
There was a recent example at this other web-site, where someone sent me a message, asking who I am in real life. The person gave me enough details about himself to convince me that, yeah, I might know him in real life, and after some dancing around, happily it ended that yes, we did in fact know each other in real life, and had nothing but pleasant things about each other to remember.
Currently there's another case where someone else on the same web-site inquired who I am in real life, and gave me enough details about himself to convince me that, yeah, I might know him in real life, but this is real recent, and we're still dancing around.
But there's six others, who wrote me just asking "Who are you [in real life]?" and nothing else. Internet security compels one to not reply. I frankly suggest that others follow this practice too.
