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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 5, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does your significant other know about your use of The motte, and if so, what do they think about it?

She knows I ramble around arguing on the internet, and I know she does (she had a semi prolific career trolling a certain corner of Twitter) but we never share accounts or websites specifically. I'll often bring up a topic discussed here, whether because I want her opinion or to give her a play by play of a highlight, and her thoughts are interesting; but we both believe in zones of privacy in a relationship.

Yeah, basic Opsec would suggest you shouldn't even give your pseudonym to your SO.

Similar to how they shouldn't need to have a recording device listening in to all your daily conversations just in case.

If they're worried about you sneaking around talking to other romantic/sexual partners behind their back that's another thing altogether.

you shouldn't even give your pseudonym to your SO

You should. Have 2 accounts.

  • The supposedly pseudo account you use to comment about anything within the overton window.

  • And the another one that she never suspects exists because she already knows your pseudo-anonymous account.

Social engineering & ML is going to make hiding accounts very hard if someone is motivated enough. The key is to satiate their curiosity, not make them extra suspicious by pretending you don't have a presence.

Wait are we still talking about hiding this from your gf/wife or have we taken a left turn somewhere?

If your SO is that snoopy, dtmfa and move on. My wife doesn't know my accounts and doesn't look for them, simple as.

If you hold relatively extreme views, hiding them from your SO, or anyone else IRL, might be a pragmatic move. Like, if you're a literal nazi (although things similarly-extreme, not necessarily in a similar direction, to "literal naziism" are probably true *, so it's not just evil people who have this motive). Even if your SO is also a nazi, separating IRL and online pseudonyms is still a good move - your SO's probably less privacy-conscious than you are, and little bits of info slipping out here and there are very dangerous if random antifa people want to dox you.

* and you can see this by historical analogy - take a person from 1500 or 2k BC and our views are closer to literal naziism than that - so looking today's technological and societal rate of change, beliefs, or whatever the AIs do, 2k years from now will be weird

Hiding your views from your SO is probably not a good base for a relationship, at least not in the long term. I mean, if you just have somebody to chat and occasionally tumble under the sheets, who cares, but if you are building life together, at least in terms of years, it's not gonna work. OpSec may be good to not share accounts, have separate computers, etc., maybe not even show up at the same forums if they are of a variety where participation can lead to bad consequences - but there's difference between OpSec and hiding your views.

Yeah, but revealing you're a nazi, or something as 'bad' as a nazi but in a different direction, is also rather bad for a relationship - in most cases worse than hiding views. I think one could somewhat-honestly claim to be a traditional conservative (or equivalent)

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Nope. My wife doesn't know about my activities on the motte but she doesn't care. If sees me and asks, I tell her posting on some internet forum and that's the end of it (cause again it's no big deal).

If they're worried about you sneaking around talking to other romantic/sexual partners behind their back that's another thing altogether.

I've gotten laid in some weird places, but the day people start getting laid on theMotte, boy, I don't know.

Anything's possible.

One of these days the Friday Fun threads may just get out of hand.

Oh lord, I can’t even imagine a real life Friday fun meetup. The possibility is simultaneously horrifying and maybe slightly interesting….

Honestly it hypothetically wont be soo bad, communities centered around doing things, in the mottes case discussing ideas are infinitely less cringe than ones centered around being things, those optimize for attention seekers who really tune up their characters to comedic levels.