Internet Paranoia.

One of my recommendations on YouTube is a TED talk called ‘The virginity fraud.’ Being a naturally curious person I’m naturally curious as to why virginity is a fraud, and so I would quite like to wile away twelve minutes of my precious post-midnight time finding out.

But I daren’t because I’m consumed with the notion that the internet has far more eyes than Bobby Vee’s celebrated night, and that my shameful indiscretion will be noted and catalogued and distributed far and wide to people I probably wouldn’t wish to know.

And what next? Dark blue emails? Enigmatic telephone calls telling me to press 1 now? Raps on my office window at unearthly hours? The police battering down my door without even knocking first because there’s a dubious man prowling the streets of Ashbourne and the data files make me a prime suspect?

Where were you at 4.28 am three nights ago?

‘Asleep in bed.’

Can you prove it?

‘No.’

Aha, thought so. Better come with us, my lad.

See what I mean? Curiosity is insufficient justification to warrant the risk these days.