A question for you young'uns

[laurabryannan]

When I was a teen, having very strict parents, it was my way to lie to them about where or what I was doing and then go do what I wanted. In the days before cell phone cameras and smart phones, one could get away with just about anything and none would be the wiser

Comments

[thenakedcat]

Heh. I had the opposite problem: I have to keep my wild online hijinx from getting noticed in my flat-out monastic RL. In high school I stayed closed up in my room so much that my parents actually worried about my lack of rebellion. My mother threatened to send me to a psychiatrist the year I told her I didn't want a birthday celebration and I think my father was creeped out that the incense I burned in my room was just incense and not covering up smoking something. The one arena where I had a social life and had to be careful to cover my tracks was online. Dad was convinced that all the people I met on the internet through fandom were sexual predators, so I had to hide the letters and gifts Paula from Amalgam sent me and I've always kept my online presence very separate from my RL (except for on Facebook but I'm careful not to post anything that links that account to any other part of my online identity).

[laurabryannan]

My online hijinks didn't begin until I was 36, so parents were well out of the picture by then, but I was too cavalier in the mid-90s about my RL identity online, so I've had to pay for that. But I was definitely up to no good whilst a teen living at home, so it would not have been a good thing for Facebook to exist at that time. :P

[whitebengal14]

Honestly, I'm too lazy to be a rebel kid. I'd rather be in the safe confines of my home than at some 'party' with music and dancing and possible drug-usage.... Hell, the kinda parties I would try to sneak to would be the video gaming ones and I have to have my parents drive me, so

[laurabryannan]

Go you for being a good kid. I hope my son turns out more like you than me.

But yes, it's the tattling that would worry me if I were a teen nowadays. My folks were so strict, I would have had zero social life if I hadn't snuck around behind their backs.

[3_jane]

Hee. I went to college in the early nineties - which, I can remember using the school's clunky computers for email, but the internet was still not really a useable thing - and still got busted for being in the wrong state: in hindsight, I should've probably foreseen that my brother would've wanted to watch the Badger-Illini football game on tv and the camera would zoom in on the girl wearing the Badger sweatshirt in the middle of the Illini section. Totally worth it, though. (I continue to hear about this on a regular basis from him.) :D

[laurabryannan]

Hubby likes to talk about The Law of Unintended Consequences, and I think he's onto something. But yeah, a red sweatshirt amongst all that blue and orange.... :DDDDD

Great story! It's amazing how clueless people can be online. Granted, I must count myself amongst those numbers, but I learned my lesson and will never be so stupid again. I'll never have a Facebook/twitter/tumbler/etc. in my RL name.

[3_jane]

It balances out -- he was busted during a city council meeting for rolling his eyes during the public comment portion of the agenda, and the woman who was making the comment told him off at great length for rolling his eyes; I haven't seen it, but it cropped up on at least one of the local tv stations according to him. *snorflesnorfle*

I am Anastasia Beaverhousen on Facebook, but there's at least forty Anastasia Beaverhousens there, so. :D

[laurabryannan]

Anastasia Beaverhousen. I love it! :DDDD