Trust me ?...

"Love few. Trust no one. Do nothing."

- not William Shakespeare -

I don't trust people very much. Yes I'm cynical, yes I believe they are going to stab me in the back or take advantage of me in some rather unpleasant way. I had some bad experiences when I trusted someone else and now I expect betrayal more often, maybe, than I should. When someone says "Trust me", I just replace every instance of their use of that phrase with "F*ck you, stupid".

In the real world, establishing trust is something I expect to take time ( a really loooong time in my case), something developed through cosy familiarity and experience, and tested in mutual interaction and results. Years ago I read that when you meet someone you make up your mind about that person within the first 5 seconds and do so, to all intents, permanently.

Not surprisingly, establishing trust online is a whole different can of worms. Online the clues are missing. You can get references from friends (if you can trust them...) or try to google him or her (not working either, so don't even bother). There's no opportunity to press "pause" and see people's expressions, no way to pick up the nuances of gesture and voice that are evaluated in the blink of an eye through the experience of a million years of evolution.

This means I have an even bigger problem and few solutions. I can only rely on my instinct (yeah, right, as if it had ever worked before !) and my experiences (which are lousy and only make my problem worse). Mostly I don't listen to what is said, but listen for what is not being said as well, but this can only go so far... So where does that leaves me ?

Trust no one...