I’ve done that. Searched for former classmates, both male and female, and in the end chosen not to “friend” them. Just curious about whether they ended up doing what they planned to do when we were still in school.

It always struck me as odd when a self-professed libertarian runs for office or joins the military.  So you’re  . . .  working to get rid of your job?

Harmful idea? Sex negativity. I didn’t really receive anything yea or nay at home, but the silence had a shameful connotation to it; the broader cultural attitudes toward sex available to me were very much negative and shameful.

I also haven’t been a fan of the way Dan frames it as the snooping becoming “retroactively justified.” It’s a violation whether or not the snooper finds something. It’s just that when they find something, that something is almost always a far greater violation that blows up the relationship, which makes the lesser…

FB is constantly throwing “friend suggestions” at me of people I have never met, and don’t even share any mutual FB friends with. So if their profile pic looks hot, I might check to see if their profile is public.

I look up old classmates all the time, mostly out of curiosity because I haven’t thought about them in ages, not necessarily because I’m looking for wank material. But hey, if there’s a bikini pic or some cleave - BONUS!

Oh!  Forgot the “how I learned better” part - learning more about systemic racism, and how “colorblindness” allows it to continue to thrive.  

Re: snooping, I don’t particularly like the “ends justify the means” attitude - I agree, if something vital was learned it was, in the end, a net positive, but if the snooping was done without any reason to support it, it was still a badly motivated action. It just might be the case that you did a bad thing, but your…

The idea that people can be “colorblind” when it comes to race - that “I don’t see race” is a good attitude. Obviously, racism/bigotry = bad, but race is an intrinsic part of peoples’ identities, and one of the first things we see about them, and it’s at best silly, at worst an erasure to think otherwise.

This reminds me of those letters about people who caught their partner masturbating or found out they had a one night stand years earlier, in that, absent any other red flags, the thing you probably want to examine is why you’re so concerned about it.

Harmful idea: that bisexuality didn’t exist. I grew up at a time when people were JUST starting to talk about the gays in the suburbs and the idea that a person could like boys and girls (and/or nonbinary but gender identity was even less talked about than sexuality at that point) was, like, not even presented as an…

Almost everyone drops that philosophy after Freshman year of college. No one ever does everything without help from someone/anyone else. Ever. It’s just not possible.

“What harmful ideas were you exposed to when you were younger and what helped you change your way of thinking?”

right. sounds to me like those women are likely people he used to know in high school, college, or old jobs. isn’t that kinda what Facebook is for? Looking up what people you used to know are up to? even if these women are former lovers or former crushes, this rates at most a 1.5 out of 10 on the creep scale and a flat…

The guy who sold me those microchips assured me they were itch-free! That’s what Savage Nobody gets for buying his surveillance equipment out of a back-alley van rather than any of the NSA-approved surveillance stores.

I mean, I guess he could be an international assassin who’s looking up his targets’ social media profiles

Actually, the FBI can operate anywhere in the world if they are given permission by the host country they are operating in. They routinely investigate in foreign countries when crimes are committed against US citizens abroad like in terrorist incidents.

I mean, you should see how tenuous the connection is for the NCIS shows. LA is somehow both a regular investigative unit AND a black ops unit with a secret lair.

Plot Twist: The FBI in question is actually not the US Federal Bureau of Investigation but rather the Federation of British Industries, whose agents roam the world looking for opportunities to promote British-made products!

If only there was some OTHER organization specifically made to operate abroad to promote US interests and/or protecting US citizens abroad...

Or two or three organizations.