Is trust an issue on Gransnet?

WE should never put anything on an open forum like this that we don't wish the world to know. I would hate it to get out that I was really a wealthy oil barron with a string of race horses, a Roller for week days and Ferrari for weekends. oops, that's the cat out of the bag.

In your dreams Pompa

You will never be sure

Juliette I think that often our comments aren't answered specifically or individually...It took me a while to get used to it.

Well I have met absent and I guessed right away that she had been a lady of the cloth, it was the saying of grace before we started lunch and the bless you as we left

I don't care if X lives in Devon not Derby or if Y isn't really a retired MP.

As someone else said, "trust them to do what?" I'm here to chat and be amused not to make life long bossom buddies.
I'm sure there are one or two people on any forum you care to look at who create a false persona because they think they have boring lives, or just for their own amusement.

Is she the one who irons wearing only her underwear?

Better than frying sausages in the nude.

I'm fairly trusting by nature and assume people are posting honestly. However, this is the internet and you need to be realistic. If someone posts then disappears I just assume they either got something off their chest or didn't feel GN was for them. I certainly wouldn't say anything I wouldn't want overheard.

..or rockgran they appear, yet again, under another name!

Oh dear - perhaps there are only a few members all with multiple personalities -i'm gettng paranoid now!

I agree with ninathenana and don't think that it really matters.
I know that there are meet ups but I am unlikely to go to one- it is a virtual world to me and I don't mix it with the real one.
I like the anonymity and also don't post too many personal details.

I know that some other forums (fora?) display a count of messages posted alongside the usernames. I have often found that useful. It isn't a precise measure of how trustworthy people are but it does give you some idea of how committed they are which can be helpful sometimes.

I have met several of you in the real world and found you all to be lovely genuine people (or Oscar winning actors).

Pompa can you take me for a spin in your Ferrari at the weekend?

Ana Have you never see the posts about Absent's leaving do and some meet ups in the Northeast before she left?

There was mention of that a few weeks ago on one thread. I don't know what went on but it appears to have been memorable.

I'm sure that GN is to be trusted but it is an open Forum and I have never put anything really private on it. I just can't! I read what others write and am amazed that they write such private things on an open Forum.

There is the private messaging available and I have used that. I am not a groupy anyway and I'd rather write to one person if it is something important to me.
Which doesn't mean that I don't enjoy GN, I do, and I realise if everybody was as closed up as I am then GN would not thrive like it obviously does.

Pittcity, sure thing, would love too, just one condition. You must come in your alter ego as a leggy, sexy blonde. oops sorry, I shouldn't assume that you are not a leggy, sexy blonde. You will be safe in the Ferrari, not enough room for hanky panky.

Hello, Juliette and welcome!

I agree that one needs to take most posters at face value to begin with, but over the years I have become happy to trust most people I "know", and more (but not all...) that I am now meeting, and now that I have met quite a few my trust has been confirmed in many ways.

Phoenix is right, sometimes a post doesn't ring true, or you feel that someone is deliberately stirring things up, but it usually gets sorted out.

I think this topic has arisen (and I welcome it) because of comments on another thread.

I get irritated when I see that genuine people send long and well thought out replies to somebody who ends up to be just playing around. The vast majority of GNs are caring people, there are one or two who want to make mischief and then vanish but they are in the minority.

There's more to trust than possible trolls.

Following you around, Anya! Yes, you are right.

She's behind you !!!

I tend to put finger to iPad without thought and do not preview unless I'm struggling with stupid emoticons and then notice me grammer and me speling. I've never met a gransnetter in RL to my knowledge although one frightened my little cotton socks off wanting to meet and confessing she made notes of what people said. But she no longer posts.

Well I know that I am really me. I nipped my arm and it hurt !

I have met quite a few gransnetter's in the flesh Stansgran and they were all very nice although not sure about that weird vicar

I really don't know where trust comes into a forum.We can choose whether everything posted is true or not but it doesn't make a difference to my life if it isn't all true.If we were being asked to invest,either financially or emotionally in someone it would be different but we can read,reply or not and then it's done. I have to say I do not believe everything I read on here, but that is the cynic in me and it doesn't do me any harm.