So, what you're saying is... you might have a job you can get me...? Thanks man, I owe you a biggie. I dunno, I'm pretty sure we're saying the same thing after around P3. But that can wait for a second. In regards to P1-3: sounds like some good reading. I kind of love this field of discussion, but as you may have surmised, haven't gotten to study up on it in any academic sense. I'll have to check those out. Regarding the whole "honesty" versus "tact" thing- you've got my idea a little spun around. I don't equate honesty with tact. But I come close to equating the inverse, and your words read as though you kind of agree- "'tact' is being mildly duplicitous in the interests of fostering communication." So yeah, I believe that in some cases, no, a lot of cases, tact is a form of dishonesty. Or at least a bending of light around honesty, which is, by any other name, dishonesty. And I don't think this is a particularly naive or offensive viewpoint, but rather an interesting one. That's me and the ol' feelings again, though! After that, it sounds like we're saying the same thing. Except for the waiter thing, which, I gotta admit, I didn't go out yesterday for a meal. But! I'd argue for the hell of it that a "waiter" (or, I guess in your original words waitress) is a role being played by a person. Something along the lines of "user" as a role being played by me. Each role requires a certain amount of shaping/shading/ignoring of the truth to function as it should in its setting. Thus, I can look at my waiter, but I'd have a hell of a time seeing the person behind the waiter's costume. In something of the way I can see the username, but not the user behind it. Each has its strengths and weaknesses as far as the parameters of human interactions go. Yeah, with my hypothetical waiter, I can observe metalanguage in a way I can't with people online. But then again, that metalanguage is still being strained through the waiter persona. So unless I'm really really good at registering, say, pupil dilation and sweat levels and tiny facial movements (and I live in the Pac NW, so half of that hypothetical face will be covered by beard), I'm only going to see what the person lets me see through the "waiter" disguise. Anyhow, conversely, with online interaction, I only see what the author lets through to the narrator. And that doesn't include metalanguage, unless you count italics or emboldening or caps- thanks for employing all three by the by, it helps me "get" what you're saying! But even the way somebody crafts their online persona might tell us something of the person behind that persona. In a way that we don't learn from the waiter, who's constrained not only by their social role, but their professional one. They can only volunteer so much in the name of being a waiter before they're tipped poorly or fired. With online interaction, I'm allowed to be much less tactful/much more honest because they only thing riding on it is my online reputation, which may or may not have any meaning to me. So there's that. Only other thing I'd say is that I never really said you were wrong, only that I disagreed. Also, that I may or may not have understood a few points. But I think you clarified some of them, so there's that! Seriously though, give me a job I need money.