Do you tell your real life friends/partners/family about Fluther and/or encourage them to join?

I’ve mentioned to my wife and family about fluther. None showed any inclination to become involved.

I enjoy it immensely and hope my contributions are of some benefit to others. (No feedback requested)

I talk about it, but I don’t ask them to join.

I have not gotten around to sharing my fluther experience with the few friends that I do have.. I did let my husband in on it since he notice I’m on the same site a lot. Once he answered a question for me because he was familiar with the subject. But he hasn’t shown in further interest in maybe joining. I wish he would, he needs the comraderie and plus he’s pretty damn smart.

Total secret to everyone except my better half.

No, I like having this place all to myself. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I guess I would feel somewhat exposed and feel as if they would be using this site to ’check up on me’. I know it sounds strange, but some of the things I discuss here aren’t things I talk about with family, therefore it’s not really any of their business and I like discussing these things outside of people I know in my personal life – the anonymity has something to do with it. I feel more secure in being able to express what I want to express without anyone keeping tabs on me or trying to use something against me in face to face interactions or something.
Besides, there aren’t very many people I know who are even interested in social networking sites, let alone q&a sites.

I know how you feel. I’ve shared the site with my fiancé, and as expected, he checked it out because it is something that interests me, and has probably ignored it ever since. He isn’t a socializer, so only a few posts in the General section would interest him enough to read and respond to, and I respect that. It is the same with the vast majority of my friends.

I mention it to those of my friends who seek advice (so what’s better than Fluther?) or want to share their advice. It just depends on the person, some of my friends find this interesting, while others wouldn’t care. Fluther just doesn’t come up in conversation, and if it does, some of my friends check it out and either love it or hate it, while others just don’t seem to like it. It’s their opinion, I like it, and if others do or don’t, it’s their decision.

I’m with @Vunessuh. I have never told anyone that I am on here. Sometimes, when I’ve been helped with an issue/question, I just say, “I was checking out some postings on (computers, art, books, health, DIY, whatever my question was) and they suggested…”

What is really funny is that I once had a question about something (can’t remember) and I asked one of my best friends if he had an answer. He said no. So I went to Fluther and typed it in and got some great responses. Then, my friend gets back to me and e-mails me my own question and all the answers from Fluther!!! “Hey, isn’t that strange that this person had the very same question you did?” Oh, yes, very strange indeed.

Fluther is my family. It’s probably the only place where I feel I can be free. I would not feel the same if any of my family members and/or friends were watching me or checking out my questions. I sometimes ask personal things or refer to personal things that I just don’t need to be “tut-tutted” over.

I suppose if I ever did tell my friends about Fluther…I would never let them know who I was. So, no one knows that I am here….except you my fine Fluthered friends!

A few people know about it, but I prefer that they don’t join. My opinions expressed on here are potentially too strong for my real life friends, and in real life there are times when you just need to keep your mouth shut. What I write on Fluther cannot be attributed to me as a person, since none of you wonderful people know who I am, so I feel I am more free to express myself.

I’ve suggested Fluther to two people…
My wife, who joined…tried it for a little bit and dropped it;
And a friend, who seemed interested, but never joined (to the best of my knowledge).

In truth, I kinda like having the joint to myself.

My partner’s on here already, my best friend had enough with wis.dm and I’ve told anyone that wants to know what I’m staring at half the time but no one has joined.

You know….an afterthought (after my original answer)....I have wondered if anyone I know is in the Fluther anyway? Without my knowledge? Someone as anonymous as I think I am? Someone that I may know/or knew…an old boyfriend or friend or…? And I have this vision that one day…I will have written something about my life…and someone recognizes himself/herself and screams: “Hey…wait a minute….she’s talking about me! ” LOL

I told my therapist. She thinks you’re all nuts.

:)

I’ve mentioned it to my wife and son, but neither have shown any interest in joining. My wife and I were reminiscing today about the good old days in Santa Barbara and some delicious, sinfully moist bran muffins that a place there sold. They had crushed pineapple chunks, raisins and honey in them. And she suggested I ask online for a recipe, which I did. We both reckoned we’d get a better personal recommendation that the recipe comes out good asking in social Q&A than just doing a search and sampling whatever we find. Funny that she doesn’t seem to be interested in interacting any more than that.

Hell no. This place is almost like a journal for me. I share a lot of personal stuff; I talk about my friends, boyfriend, etc. I do not want them here. This is my place :)
Sometimes I’ll be catching up on replies while video chatting with my boyfriend, and he goes, “What are ya doing?”
“Just reading something…”
“What is it?”
“Just some… forum thing”
“Link!”
“No, no it’s not that interesting!” * starts paying attention to him * :P

Plus, on an old website I used to go on, my friends knew about it and read some posts I wrote. One in particular offended them, they got really upset with me. It sucked.

I’ve told people about it and about some of my experiences on here, but I do not particualrly want any of them to join.

People know because I made the mistake of talking about it. I won’t do that again.

LOL, even if my fiancé became active on Fluther, our postings would rarely cross.

I’ve tried and tried to get my husband and my cousin to join but neither is interested. Which I find sad. I think they would both really enjoy it. I have talked about it to a couple of friends, but they didn’t seem interested at all.

No way!

I don’t. I just prefer this to be my thing. And that really doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’ve talked about my friends and family on here and posted pictures of them. My brother has definitely seen me on this site many times. Whether or not he’s gone and investigated this site, I don’t know, but I haven’t seen him make an account yet. That would be so weird… :P

I’ve thought about asking my boyfriend to join, but I still haven’t done that…

i have talked about some very private stuff on here, and if i told someone to check out the site, i am afraid they would figure out who i am. with that, they could research and learn all about me, things i’ve done, things i like including sexual stuff, and my opinions on all kinds of stuff, my hopes, my dreams. sometimes i refer to people i know, and they would probably be trying to figure out who i was talking about. someone could really get to know the “inner me” if they know I was JCA and they read all my posts. i would not want to be exposed like that.

@jca Isn’t there any chance that someone would get to see the inner you and like what they saw?

@ETpro : yes absolutely. but would i want my friends or family to know all about me, no. for example, just a quick example i can think of: i posted an answer once about anal sex. would i want my friends or family reading that? no. or let’s say i posted something about a friend of mine who gives gifts that are never quite me. would i want her to read that and get her feelings hurt? no. those are just two examples i can think of offhand. i’m sure i could come up with better ones.

I keep Fluther to myself.
Though I have shared some information that I’ve learned on Fluther with people in real life, without stating my source.

One reason is that almost all of my friends (even my extremely gay friend) are pretty right-winged, that’s the price of making friend in a farm town in a conservative county. a) Fluther is rather left-winged, b) I don’t feel like having them go through my old posts and being like “omgz you support gay marriage! You’re an abortion lover! You don’t hate everything about Obama? how could you do such things?!”

Also, Fluther is a bit like my journal. I don’t pour out my soul, but I do talk about things on Fluther that I wouldn’t bring up in real life. The partial anonymity is really comforting. If I knew my friends/family would read this all, I would’ve worded myself differently.

Plus, that would just mean more guys on here to compete with me for all of the lovely Jelly women!

My closest acquaintances are only interested in few topics, none of them popular on Fluther. I also open up more about myself here than in real life; I don’t want anyone interfering in my life with some of the information I’ve posted.

@jca I see what you mean. :-)

Now, what was your take on anal sex? :-)

Nope.

Part of me wants to share…part of me wants to be selfish.

So far, the shelfish part is winning.

^^^ Said shellfish.

I wondered whether you’d notice!

After all, I’m a flutherer.

And I thought it was just a cute Freudian.

When I first found the site, I practically shouted it from the rooftops. Except for my daughters, not one of the folks I told about it had any interest in it whatsoever. Since then, I’ve been more selective of who I tell. Folks I think would really appreciate it here. Two of them joined on my recommendation, one more active than the other. I always knew I was weird among my friends… this just seems to confirm it!

Initially, I wished I’d chosen a different username because anyone who knows me would know that augustlan is me. All that said, I’d have zero issue with anyone who knows me well joining. I’m pretty much an open book, so I don’t think they’d be terribly shocked by anything I’ve written here. Those of you who are my facebook friends know that I regularly post Fluther related stuff on FB, which all of my friends and family have access to. So, obviously, I don’t keep it a secret.

I have some irl friends on here. It’s a bit odd, but makes for interesting conversations with them when we see eachother.

I’ve told other friends about it because fluther/wis.dm friends are about the only people I talk to on facebook, as apposed to the few hundred irl ‘friends’ I have on there.

The wife rolls her eyes with complete distain, understandable. My kids regularly chuckle while observing some of the more conceited responses.“Chill out” & “get a life” are aimed at those members regularly.High fives all round in that scenario.

Just show them how you’re improving your spelling and grammar and they will respect you, @ucme. E.g., it’s disdain and not how written.

High fives all round, yes he did say you would respect me if I spelt that word correctly kids, but that’s no excuse for hilarity. Well yeah it is, laugh it up. Wait for the next response be even better, what oh Mum’s calling? Yeah time to go out for the day, better things to do. @zenele Good of you to call yourself out there appreciate it.

@zenele : your username should be Loving_Grammar_Nazi :)

I’ve shared fluther with a few friends and my partner does know about it but as far as I know doesn’t participate. In our very scant free time then we try to do things together so things like fluther and video games fill the odd spots.

No, I keep it a secret more or less.