Can you handle the truth?

The Internet is a wonderful place.  On the surface.  Deep down inside it is not so much.  The Internet is in many ways something you need to learn how to limit yourself when you use it, because the Internet won't stop you from seeing or doing things that you really don't want to, or things that you'll really regret.

The wealth of information available to us online can at times be quite dangerous.  Perhaps in no other way than by blurring the line between what we want to know, and what we don't - sometimes erasing it completely.  We often find out things online and realise too late that it's something we didn't want to see, much in the same way as when you tread in dog mess, you don't realise what you have done until you feel the squish and the revolting stink lingers long after you clean it up.

While some things can be cleaned, others are a lot harder to overcome.  Forgetting something you have seen is hard to do; at times it is true what they say, what is seen can't be unseen.  I recently had an experience like this, I googled someone's name and I happened to click through a few tumblr profiles and stumbled across one belonging to someone I know online.  The problem isn't the fact they have a tumblr profile, but what was on that profile.

What do you do when your casual internet stalking of someone you know throws up something you wish you hadn't seen, but just can't forget?  When the content is something that is not easy to bring up in conversation, or when the truth of your behaviour is rather uncomfortable to admit?  How do you say to someone "Oh by the way I found your Neo Nazi loving tumblr page; let's talk about Hitler" or even admit you were googling them in the first place, which, the only real reason for doing is the obvious - to find out what you can about them. 

I've spoken about privacy in the past on other blogs and the one thing it always comes back to is the same - how much do you really want to know about a person?  If I could somehow forget what I saw, would I even want to forget?  Would I want to know someone like that, and be completely unaware?  This does raise the question not only of how much you want to know about someone but also the question of how much you have a right to know - or how much you should know about someone.  It's something they shared with the world, on a public profile, but never told me, does that make it wrong that I found out, or wrong that they never told me, or both?

If someone does something that might upset you, and they never tell you to avoid upsetting you, that doesn't change the fact it's upsetting.  This poses an interesting question for all the couples out there - even though this particular person was not a romantic connection it still this applies to couples too - is there anything your partner could have done, that would make you leave them?  If there is, have you ever asked them?  Would you ask and risk ending your relationship, or would you want to continue not knowing and preserve the relationship?