I tend to agree with you that we will become desensitized to less important behavior, overall, as people become more directly associated to their activities onl

I tend to agree with you that we will become desensitized to less important behavior, overall, as people become more directly associated to their activities online. Most people who travel the world and eat "wacky" food become more accepting of experience they would previously regard as unusual. I see something similar happening. Of course, I'm speaking from the vantage point of someone who does silly stuff and has a fairly libertarian attitude. After the US elections, I was asking one of my gay friends what he thought about the defeat of Prop. 8 in California. I guess, not living in California, he could be more philosophical. He said that a lot of people who voted against it are going to feel awkward in 10 years when their kids are like "That was dumb. Who cares? What were you thinking?" I tend to agree that within free societies, as long as they remain free we'll move towards a point where repercussions only occur for online presentations of illegal activity, and then only if the illegal activity is also still taboo in the perpetrator's peer environment. One example might be illegal drug use, which could have serious, trivial or non-existent repercussions depending on where you work and who you run with. People will continue to only care about serious things, but the definition of "serious" will narrow on the old stuff and be newly set on brand new stuff (cloning ethics, or something).