I find this the
RUDEST thing anyone can ask, and I usually hurt people when they do ask it. Once, back in the day (
1996-ish) I was in the
Gamepro chatroom, and someone said
IT. I proceeded by asking "
What are the three most common questions asked by internet pedophiles?".
6 people instantly left the chatroom. Good
riddance.
And now some actual content to go along with that antidote!
One of the greatest parts about the internet is the fact you can be
nothing-in-particular. When you walk down a street in the real world, you are judged on the
spot. For example, I'd be
judged to be a
short,
17 year-old male, who looks very pale. In chatrooms, this does not instantly happen. We can not be instantly judged, unless IT comes up. If we are not instantly judged by our obvious traits, many
sterotypes never occur. For example, I was once in a chatroom where the issue was never brought up until I existed there for almost 1/2 a year. Then when they guessed, I was much older, as I seemed more
intelligent. On the flip side of this, one could say if it was initially shown, that I was not so old, I would have appeared to be less intelligent, and treated as such.
So, to recap, why do I feel it's rude? By allowing your judgements to exist before you have a proper
conversation with the person is both unfair to yourself and others. Please remember, if you absolutely
MUST ask a person there age, sex, location - do so after you've had a nice conservation with them, for on the internet the only thing that really matters is how you present youself, not what you present yourself as.
To bitter_engineer: I'm sorry, but your methods just suck. If you goto into a San Diego chat room you should not try to pick up anyone, perriod. They have special rooms for that. People in area specific chat rooms who are trying to have friendly conservations and relate to other peopls worldly experences don't give a damm about your libido, goto romance chats for that. Your next argument is the mail-oder bride idea, which just shows your american centric viewpoint of a good match is poor at best. Next you say youth cannot provide a challange in online games like scrabble, does Bobby Fisher ring a bell?
I'm glad to see we still live in a world without sterotypes.
You follow with some tips, which I agree with. If you absolutly must know, bring the questions up in between other things. However, your example would offend lots of people, including me - in fact, if I met anyone said "Damn. Sorry to hear that, bye." crap to me on the street, they'd need a doctor asap to fix all the internal bleeding.
Sorry for the rant.