Prepiquette

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

You’re a survivalist, Im a survivalist, we’re survivalists. And although we’re on the same page on a bunch of things, one of the things we really need to be on the same page about is privacy and not being offended when someone leaves you out of the loop, to a degree, to protect their privacy.

Example: I’d had some back-n-forth online with a fella for a while and we agreed to meet for lunch one day to talk about guns and generally get to hang out with like-minded individuals. As we wrapped it up and we were leaving the BBQ place, it turned out we were both walking in the same direction to our vehicles. And walking. And walking. And…walking. See, he didn’t want to get into his vehicle and have me know what he was driving (and, presumably, catching his license plate info) so he walked past his vehicle. And I walked past mine for the same reason. And…kept walking. We still laugh about that.

Unless you’ve been friends for years, try to be mindful of the other person’s privacy and desire to keep some things private:

  • Ask what they like to shoot, don’t ask how many guns they have
  • Don’t ask where they live (or work), although you can ask what they do for work
  • If someone politely declines to answer your question, or tactfully evades a question, recognize that they are very politely trying to tell you it’s none of your business…accept it gracefully and move on.
  • Do not ask if they know so-and-so or if they are related to someone
  • Let them be as vague as they want to be
  • Don’t follow them to their vehicle as you leave
  • If you are joined by a friend/relative of theirs, assume that those people are ‘outside the loop’ in regards to what you’ve been discussing. If you’ve spent a half hour talking to your new friend Steve about his $10,000 Barret 82A1 and his wife sits down to join you, do NOT say to her “Steve here was just telling me how much he enjoys his Barrett” because the last thing you want is her saying “What Barrett? You told me you weren’t going to buy that thing!” Don’t be that guy.
  • Never ask for someone’s contact information, instead offer yours and if they want to give you their info they will reciprocate.
  • Don’t overshare. It makes the other person uncomfortable and puts them in the awkward position of feeling like they aren’t being equally forthcoming.
  • Don’t name drop.

Obviously, if you’ve known someone for years to the point you’ve had then to your house, then it’s obviously a different story. These suggested guidelines are for new people you meet.

And for Crom’s sake, don’t overshare. It’s better to hold back too much info about yourself than it is to go dig a six-foot hole in the National Forest because you told someone too much too soon. (See, ya gotta have that hole already dug…cause if you don’t, you could be digging it and someone comes along and sees what you’re doing. Now you gotta dig two holes. You could be out there all night!)

 

 

12 thoughts on “Prepiquette

  1. Commander, this is probably one of the best posts I’ve read on this blog. Thank you for posting this, because it is so very true.

  2. I’ve been following this blog for a few months and I love. Good stuff. Thanks for your devotion to it man

  3. I was reminded of this principle a few months back when binge watching season 4 of Bosch on Amazon Prime Video. I forget which episode – it’s in the last few, either
    Dark Sky or Rojo Profundo – but there’s a back-and-forth between Detective Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector) and Sergeant Amy Snyder (Winter Ave Zoli) in which Snyder asks Edgar a couple of pointed questions about his relationship with Detective Bosch and he dodges both answers with relevant questions of his own that carefully re-direct, but not stifle, the conversation. When I watched the entire season again I noticed several other places where the Edgar character does that.

    In this example it’s very careful Hollywood script writing, but it’s a very useful skill to cultivate in real life.

  4. Interestingly enough, my privacy software is alerting me to to trackers on this page. Paypal and Yahoo webhosting. That stuff is really hard to avoid. PerSec in the real world is much easier than PerSec in the virtual world.

  5. Commander:
    An important, thought-provoking piece!
    Do you plan a companion piece on how to combine the VERY difficult crossover between opsec/persec and networking with like-minded others for the possibility of forming a group?
    I know that the simple answer is that the way to do it is the way a pair of porcupines make love – With great care..
    Any ideas?

    • I’ve covered that a couple times in the past. Dig around, the posts are there.

  6. “Now you gotta dig two holes.”

    I’m thinking the question is whether 2x decomp is more of a target indicator than two separate sites.

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