I'd like to think that all of my friends are as open as I am, and would be comfortable talking about it. That being said, if I knew them really well, I'd definitely fuck with them a bit. Send them a weird PM or something and after a few exchanges come clean as to who I am. By now I know my friends well enough to know if they'd appear in a place such as this in the first place.
If it were someone I recognized but didn't know (someone I work with or a client or regular customer) I'd just leave it be and maybe bring it up once in a while and see where things go.
If it were a family member, I'd just try to ignore it and pretend I'd never seen it. I am honest with my family for the most part, but I like to keep my personal life separate as much as possible unless directly asked.
Awesome post, and interesting to see several different hypotheticals from the same person.
🙂 I'm loving the idea to have some fun with it if it's a close friend that you have that sort of dynamic with!
I've already posted my two cents worth but coming from a poster who has pictures on here, no matter what you upload you never expect someone you know personally to see it. I avoided posting pictures of myself here for years in fear that someone from my real life would see them and out me. But finally I just grew a pair and realised that I couldnt let the threat of something so unlikely to happen ruin my interactions here. I know I've essentially "put myself out there" by having pics up, but if my boss, or a friend, or someone I interact with on a day to day basis saw them and then contacted me about it I'd feel embarrassed and caught out no matter what they said in their PM.
If I wanted people from my real life to know about my fetish I'd post it all over FB or talk to them about it openly. I don't want them to know, thats the point here. Just because I post photos to show a little bit more of myself doesn't mean I'm inviting people who recognise me to send messages or approach me about it because it makes them feel better. Its a very fine line we walk when we entertain scenarios such as this one. In a fantasy world it'd be amazing to find out someone you know shares the same interests, but in reality, its a much more complicated issue and everybody will react differently.
First of all I absolutely agree that people will be bound to react differently, which makes the OP's question very difficult to answer unless you narrow it down.
However, I'm curious about a couple of things you said. Fair enough that the scenario we're discussing is so unlikely that I'll simply grant you that you can "put yourself out there" with pictures and still not expect to be recognized, but, without singling you out I feel as if a lot of people here sort of glaze over the fact that you and this other person in this scenario would both have to be active enough on the forum so that one will inevitably notice the other. This means that you will have to share the forum with each other, like it or not, and completely disregarding the option to send a PM for the moment, what if this other person decides that they want to put themselves out there with pictures too? Should they simply avoid that because you were here first, or because since they know about you, they have some sort of responsibility to keep you blissfully ignorant? Like you said yourself, you didn't want anything to "ruin your interaction" here, but surely the same would apply to them? Or am I completely misunderstanding you?
Anyway, I'm curious if you would rather just have a poster you have seen around here suddenly add a picture of themselves, from which you instantly recognize them from real life. They haven't sent you a PM or anything to "make
them feel better," but they have completely refrained from letting on to you who they are.
Either you can panic and delete all pictures of yourself and hope that they haven't noticed you, but you will presumably just have to keep wondering about what they might or might not have seen of you. OR it will be so painfully obvious that they have known who you are all along, because they have responded to your posts or vice versa, and then, if you are worried about being outed, wouldn't the fact that they haven't said anything to you be equally unsettling? Again you are just left to guess what's going through their mind, and it may well be YOU who end up having to initiate a talk with them.
I guess I'm becoming a bit longwinded, but basically my question is if you would still prefer either of those predicaments and all the second-guessing they imply, over simply being contacted from the start and come to some agreement about sharing the forum like adults? I understand being embarrassed, but I really fail to grasp the idea of just ignoring the issue, so if you would indulge me I could obviously benefit from some elaboration on why you feel the way you do.