Some Internet providers allow patrons to create their own rooms that are somewhat semi-private. It’s a great place for family, friends or business associates to hang out without getting clobbered by unwanted intruders and spammers. Another drawback with public chat rooms is that everyone Tom, Dick and Harry gets your screen name and clogs your e-mail box with junk mail.

If you dare enter a public chat room, be prepared to have an e-mail box full of credit card offers, specials on Viagra, and sites that promise nude pics of your favorite celebrities for FREE.

 If you don’t want to fight, find another room

Stay in a chat room long enough, and place begins to turn into a bar with someone eventually typing in capital letters (viewed as SHOUTING) claiming God doesn’t exist. Or someone will spill enough racial slurs onto screen that would even make Archie Bunker cringe. These arguments can get pretty heated because everyone is anonymous, shooting their mouths off, and taking some nasty shots at others. Don’t engage in hate speech or get involved with those trying to make trouble. Some chat rooms allow you to ignore certain people, or even allow you to report those who are disrupting chat room.

* Don’t let your children enter public chat rooms without supervision

Too many children are taken advantage of in these chat rooms and terrible things have happened to them. Sometimes, they believe they are chatting with someone their own age, when they are really chatting with an older person who spends his time on Internet trying to lure children into a trap. Make sure your children never reveal their names, telephone number, address, school name, password, state, city, or where their parents work, in a chat room or IM.

No one wants to be taken advantage of, so it’s especially important that you keep your guard up when you enter public chat rooms. Enjoy chatting with folks from around world, but remember to keep that line of not-giving-out-personal-information deeply drawn in sand, and don’t cross it. . .ever.

Strangely, I'm not sure that most men are aware of "the Pain of Being a Man" themselves. I asked every guy I know about this secret man-pain thing and they all looked at me like I was pulling their, uh... legs.

WOMEN GET "BOTHERED"

"Bothered?" I hear you asking. "What hell does that mean?"

Dunno. I mean, I know what bothered means. It's that gnawing little feeling of contempt we get when other people don't have sense to be more like us.

What I don't know is why botherEE would naturally assume that her botheredNESS was of teensiest modicum of interest to botherER.

The opening phrase "It bothers me that..." smacks of a woman freshly empowered by her personal assertiveness coach, stamping her little foot down on any and every subject which arouses her miff... price of bananas, holocaust, video rewind charges, etc.

Dear Ms Cox,

It bothers me that you compare price of bananas with holocaust in which six million yaddas were yadda yadda'd and yadda yadda yadda.

Yadda,

Barbara J. Moral Compass At Large

Bothered schmothered. Incensed, irate, fuming, outraged... those are emotions that get things done. Bothered is a scrawny little turd of a response, notable mainly for its prissy self-importance.

Bothered isn't a strong enough emotion to fuel much of an effort, so about only place you'll see it is on call-in radio shows, at PTA meetings and in hastily dispatched email.

In above case, for instance, Barbara might have enough passion to dash off a "bothered" email, but I doubt you'll find her tirelessly stalking geriatric Nazis throughout darkest Argentina armed with a car battery wired to a set of nipple clips.

Though I doubt her husband gets off so easily.

IN SUMMARY

I live in an idyllic part of America where polite motorists still honk and give each other finger rather than less cordial hail of gunfire.

On information superhighway, however, only regional barriers are language-based, so it's not so easy to remain insulated from baser natures of our fellow travelers.

Or our own! I'm sure we've all been known to pop off a few rounds at our fellow netizens now and then.

Hell, it's half fun!