If adversarial lawyers can exploit such revelations, so can savvy adversaries. Not only do such revelations open the discloser to extortion in flagrant cases, they also offer information that gives adversaries the means to influence or recruit the injudicious discloser who is too free with personal details. What is behind such impetuous self-revelations? Perhaps it is just a natural byproduct of people falling prey to instant intimacy at their own and at their employer’s expense. In professional and personal relationships, as a journalist and long term observer of the social scene concluded, “There is no such thing as instant intimacy.” (Per J. Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005, p. 107.)
Indeed, as a student of violent victimizations found in uncovering methods common for attackers when attempting to get close to their victims, this effort to establish instant intimacy presents in the form of forced teaming, a technique whereby the assailant creates a false bond with the victim by making common cause and saying “we” in referring to self and victim before launching attacks from rape to abduction. (See G. de Becker, The Gift of Fear, New York: Dell Publishing, 1998, p. 64.) To the defender, whether on a personal or professional level, attempts at instant intimacy deserve more suspicion than receptivity.
Always remember that trust is earned, and earning trust is something that takes time, hence traditions based in etiquette that reflect this classic insight:
Human nature does not change. It still takes a while to get to know and trust people, and the phony use of the manners of friendship by strangers and mere acquaintances only misleads people into thinking that instant intimacy is pleasant and safe. (A useful reminder from J. Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn of the Millennium, New York: Fireside, 1990, p.4.)
-- Nick Catrantzos
