I think everybody comes into it with so many different past experiences with the way they relate to people online, you know?
I've had enough experience with people online not being who they said they were (not personally, but with friends) that I'm pretty wary of people. There are a lot of warning signs that will make me suspicious -- people refusing to give out fairly harmless details about their lives, only having one or two photos of themselves (or none!), having too much going on in their lives all the time, etc. -- and it takes a lot for me to get past that. There are still a number of GCers that I wouldn't be surprised aren't legit. And semi-recent events on GC have just proved to me that it makes sense to be careful, you know?
There are a lot of people who are a lot more trusting, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes for a totally different way of relating to people they meet online. There are people who assume somebody's a fake until they get proof otherwise, there are people who assume somebody's real until they get proof otherwise, and there are people everywhere on the spectrum between.
When it comes to flirting -- when I said before about how I've had internet friendships get screwed up, flirting played a major role. People are so different on the internet than they are off the internet and especially if you've never met them in real life you have no idea what that flirting is supposed to mean. I flirt a lot in real life -- it's just one of the ways that I bond with people -- and I had one of the closest friendships I ever had ruined by the fact that we first started talking over the internet (though I knew his brother and a couple of his friends offline) and because of that flirting there were a lot of complications and mixed messages when we finally met in real life. And though ultimately we sort of became friends again, the friendship was never the same and it's never going to be the same because of that.
So while I still sometimes flirt online, I do a lot less of it, almost none of it on purpose -- and at least on GC I do a lot more flirting with girls than guys
, simply because I know it won't lead to the same kinds of complications as it did that one time, assuming that they're straight.
Every brings so much baggage to the table that they're bound to have different levels of trust when it comes to the whole internet thing.