It happens about once per month. I'll get an email in which someone who knows me only through this page purports to know me. Sometimes the emails are thoughtful, even concerned and psychoanalyzing. I'm too self-flagellating, too hung up on something in the past, etc. And sometimes the emails are less kind.
One day a few weeks ago, I received two such evaluations of myself. The first proclaimed me a thoughtful, sensitive, ideal man; the second derided me as a misogynist and included my favorite line of all time. Consider the whole paragraph [sic]:
Guys like you make me happy with my hairbrush, because you are a repulsive and self centered twat. Hey yes, how does it feel to have some of those sexist drogatorys used, you would be proud if I called you a dick, but no, I am calling you a twat, and you are a bitch too, and even a cunt, even a cunt from hell. And incompetant, so how do you expect us to find you sexy?
Marriage proposal or drogatory, I found the confluence of those emails to be pretty scary. If you know me just through this page, then you don't know me at all.
Despite appearances, the content here is not all that intimate. You don't really see the wrinkled old man behind the curtain. The Stank persona, while me, is but a carefully controlled subset of me. Everything here is cherry-picked to serve that persona without betraying my privacy. You don't see me rip friends until I've given up on the friendship. Likewise, you never know when I'm dating, let alone who. If you need to know who I'm angry with/sleeping with, you already do. Likewise with my demons. By the time they become fodder for this page—the exes, Dad, Mom, etc.—you can rest assured that I consider them long past. They're harmless, slayed demons. You don't get a whiff of the harmful, live ones. Does this make me dishonest? That's subjective. I would say "not always forthcoming."
Either way, the headline stands. Before you tell me who I am, please consider that you likely haven't a notion, yourself.
I will admit to one gleefully deliberate form of dishonesty on this page, something I just can't help: sometimes I crucify Dorkass by cherry-picking facts about her. For instance, when I chided that someone from her IP address was searching for the word "Dorkass," that was true enough. What I didn't say: it was me, visiting her house. The more I cheat, the more agitated she becomes, so the more I cheat. And the circle of strife continues.