Quote:
Originally Posted by KewlDewd66
The good bit then used to be that no one really felt compelled by the media and marketeers to come out, and wear their sexual orientation on their sleeve. You were who you were, and that really used to be only your business. The notion of the 12 year olds coming out on the Youtube is ludicrous at its best. And ruinous at its worst.
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You know, I agree. There's a lot of value just to try things out and experience life and experiment
before you start publicly applying labels to yourself that will stay around for the rest of your life. That goes doubly or triply or even moreso for kids who are 12 or 13 or whatever.
The Internet, for good or bad, is a permanent record. You may "erase" something, or you think you can, but it never really goes away. There are screen captures or the "Wayback Machine" or whatever database collected and stored by who knows what marketer or agency or what.
As a side point, that's one of the reasons why Keith and I always tried to keep people from putting contact information on the Message Board. I did program the Member Profile pages so that they aren't supposed to get indexed by search engines. Even so, if someone takes a screen capture of your personal information -- here or on any site -- it can't be undone.
As I've matured (I'll be 54 next month!) I came to understand that nothing is "really secret" anymore to anyone determined to know. At my age, I'm OK with that -- or at least I know I have to be -- but for kids who are still deciding who they are and who they will be, it's damned easy to get carried away with the openness encouraged by our culture.
/steps down from soapbox