>But they can easily. A webcam watching the street could make it easy to tell whose lights are on a timer, or not on at all. Google not needed.

>There are a lot of pretty girls out there so this one specific girl isn't going to be sought by online creeps around the world.

>Because your crotch-fruit are so special that perverts would see them online and have to have them, specifically.

Besides being unnecessarily rude, you're arguing that since everyone is vulnerable to an opportunistic thief, you are not entitled to protecting yourself from a thief that specifically targets you.

Since you're just like everyone else, you're not entitled to take reasonable precautions to protect your family.

There are PLENTY of situations where complete candor will get you fired or worse. Proclaiming you're gay in the U.S. Military during DADT. Holding unpopular religious faiths or marrying someone of the 'wrong' race or sex. Perhaps you had an abusive ex-partner that you're concerned about.

If my privacy is so worthless, then why do companies like Google and Facebook go to such extreme measures to collect, retain, hide, and protect 'their' data about you?

your privacy is your own responsibility, not google's. there are services you can pay for that will erase your online identity and there are programs you can use to ensure you won't have to use them again.

> >Because your crotch-fruit are so special that perverts would see them online and have to have them, specifically. > Besides being unnecessarily rude,

If calling your hypothetical children crotch fruit is rude you've got another lesson coming to you in the outside world, Susan. The point is that your little bundles of joy aren't everyone else's, and the world is full of them. For an attacker they're fungible.

> you're arguing that since everyone is vulnerable to an opportunistic thief, you are not entitled to protecting yourself from a thief that specifically targets you.

No. I'm not arguing entitlement. I'm saying you're paranoid, as in need to take medicine, for fixating on such non-issues. It's like stranger-danger and everything else our media has scared us with. A non-problem.

> Since you're just like everyone else, you're not entitled to take reasonable precautions to protect your family.

I sure am. Try threatening me and you'll end up with a four-pound steel bar upside the head. But that's protection, not the net-nanny fixation on it.

> There are PLENTY of situations where complete candor will get you fired or worse.

Yup. And none of them involve pretty girls and comic books.

> Proclaiming you're gay in the U.S. Military during DADT.

Being fired from an organization that went on to murder over a million people during that time seems like a benefit, not a loss...

> Holding unpopular religious faiths or marrying someone of the 'wrong' race or sex.

Yeah, and these usually aren't secret, even without the internet. If you were in an interracial marriage in the US south (or select other places) you'd want to keep a gun in the house and shoot anyone you see carrying an oversize cross onto your lawn.

> Perhaps you had an abusive ex-partner that you're concerned about.

You know, detectives were tracking people before the net. It's almost as easy but requires more phone calls. If you're worried about danger, protect yourself from danger. Don't uselessly cower.

> If my privacy is so worthless, then why do companies like Google and Facebook go to such extreme measures to collect, retain, hide, and protect 'their' data about you?

Their marketing value is unrelated to your privacy value. And your false privacy - that sense of security you get by curating cookies or hiding which preschool your kids go to, is useless.

> If calling your hypothetical children crotch fruit is rude you've got another lesson coming to you in the outside world, Susan.

Sure, and we could be talking about this on 4chan. But we're not, are we?

4chan is just something you've heard of, right?

Anyways, in the outside world, the big blue room so to speak, if you brought up something irrelevant like someone's characterization of children as crotch fruit as if you were personally insulted you'd get a laugh, then as your seriousness became apparent, a scoff, rolled eyes, and the conversation would continue without your input. It's not an insult so don't get bent out of shape. This isn't me being rude, it's you being hypersensitive.

I'm not saying your child - Timmy, age 6, blonde, missing tooth, slight lisp - personally is a worthless being. I'm saying that as far as availability, children are a dime a dozen. There's no neighborhood in the world without an over-abundant supply of them. While everyone is a wonderful snowflake, each one of us is just someone's inadvertent crotch-fruit. This attitude of "perverts are just waiting for me to let my guard down" is ridiculous. It's unlikely a kidnapper will ever look at a given child, let alone that children are routinely stalked.

I'm saying that

1. In most professional settings, such a comment would be inappropriate.

2. There's no need to be so caustic.

Commenter was an obvious troll.

>And if you find a girl who doesn't know you collect comics she'll be disappointed when she figures it out. Wear it on your sleeve and be happy. Ditto porn, whatever.

Some things of this nature are illegal, socially unacceptable, or simply result in constant harassment by the authorities regardless of their legality. It is unreasonable, I think, to expect every homosexual man in Iran to wear his pink triangle on his sleeve. Considering that we live in a country in which young people are assaulted by police officers for standing around in public in New York City, I can hardly imagine what would happen to an American who proudly announce to strangers that he or she really enjoys using opium, is occasionally attracted to people who haven't yet turned 18, or believes that the government should be overthrown.

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe the problem isn't you.

> Some things of this nature are illegal, socially unacceptable, or simply result in constant harassment by the authorities regardless of their legality. It is unreasonable, I think, to expect every homosexual man in Iran to wear his pink triangle on his sleeve.

No. In fact, if those homosexual men in Iran want not to be oppressed they have to do something about it. Shoot a local police officer or religious leader or something. (Only sort of joking - who would order or carry out their death if they were caught?)

> Considering that we live in a country in which young people are assaulted by police officers for standing around in public in New York City, I can hardly imagine what would happen to an American who proudly announce to strangers that he or she really enjoys using opium, is occasionally attracted to people who haven't yet turned 18, or believes that the government should be overthrown.

Everyone enjoys opium, that's the point. People younger than 18 are very attractive, that's why we have so many laws against taking advantage of them. And the government should be overthrown if it harms the people.

> If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe the problem isn't you.

No, but if you live in fear because of it, it is.

You're confusing what I'm offering, practical life advice, with me saying I think it's better this way. Realize what the world is like and, if getting caught scares you too much, don't do things you can't get caught doing.

>> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" is bullshit.

>No, it's fact.

No, its bullshit. Or should I really refrain from scratching my ass right now because the internet would say "at 3:40 pm 11/9/30 John Doe scratched his ass"? Or should that not be published online?