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1. If you choose to read what I said, then you wouldn't be confused. He had to have been talking about online people because he wouldn't know whether people online are honest.
Confused? Only because you only had one reason that I could see, and that one reason was easily broken in my next sentence.
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2. Just because people you meet online are people too does not mean the same generalizations apply to those offline. Do the same generalizations apply to criminals and non-criminals? No. Online, it's much easier to lie and you really never know who you are friends with.
I can apply the generalization that people aren't lieing when they tell me 2+2=4 to criminals, ex-criminals, framed innocents, unrelated innocents, whatever.
Oh, sure, having two different groups reduces the number, but if you can apply a generalization to humanity and have it be correct, then that includes people online too, since they're included in the group called "humanity". And being online does not necesarily mean that you will lie more. I know, myself, that my friends that I know in person don't lie more online than they do offline, and neither do I. In fact, one of my friends lies so often that I wouldn't be surprised if he had some kind of psychological disorder. I have yet to see him lie, scam, or even be an ass online. Most people I know are better online than they are offline. Okay, so you're right, the same generalizations can't be applied; the ones that can be truthfully applied to people online are generally the ones that won't send me into a screaming rage and start slitting my wrists with my teeth.
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Huh? What the heck are you saying? I'll rephrase what I wrote, I guess:
If you devote time to someone over the internet that you don't really know, you are a sad person.
Define "really know". I don't see how I "know" people any less online than I do offline. And I also don't see how devoting time to someone on the internet is "sad". If someone I know online is better than most people offline, than they deserve my time. Ooo, they might not really be the nice person they pretend to be? Well, they deserve my time for managing to act like a decent person as well as they did, because not being a decent person only makes giving someone your time harder, so they must be trying a lot harder to be nice than a truly nice person.
And oh, I get it now, you consider it impossible to know someone online. I thought that by "not knowing someone online", you meant knowing them through some other form, in person being the only other one I know of, and the one that you apparently support, so I was confused about taht.
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I'm usually more open with people online than in person. I hold personal friends higher than online ones, but only because I really know them.
Erm, wait... so the closer someone is, the less open you are to them? o_O