Toward the end of the 'John Titor, anyone?' thread, there appeared a poster calling himself "John Thomas," with his sock puppet, "Jason Cox." Agent Orange did the heavy lifting from the scientific standpoint, while I chimed in as second fiddle. I thought I might have ragged on the guy a little too harshly. Though it seemed all in fun to me at the time, I was later troubled because we can never know, really, to whom we're speaking on the Net (I'm a cat, posting as a man, after all). I wondered if he might be very young or mentally ill, judging by some of responses. His sense of humor was limited, and he wrote about nothing but his Titor obsession. Read it and judge for yourself.
Of course, the wheels of social interaction are greased by what are termed, "little white lies." If someone asks me, "Does this make me look fat?" I'm not going to say, "Yeah, buddy, like a beached whale. Beluga!" I would probably say, "No, but I don't like the color on you," or some such thing. There is also value to pretending in the "Fake it till you make it," sense. Does this constitute dishonesty? Technically, yes, but the value to me of not hurting the feelings of the people I care about is of greater value to me than honesty for honesty's sake - in the small things. Obviously, there is a time to speak up, especially when someone could be hurt, but again, it is hard to draw a distinction, sometimes, between sharing prurient gossip and telling a person something they need to know. I don't have the answer. Maybe I was just looking to justify my behavior, rationalizing that I was upholding the great value of Honesty. Truthfully, I think I just bashed the kid around because I could, and I'm not proud of it.
