I was 19 or 20 when I first logged on to Undernet and started talking to people in chatrooms. I am usually honest to a fault - but some of them presented a fa ade that showed only part of who they are, maybe the best or most interesting parts, but they left out a lot of other things that would have impacted how I thought of them. I saw all kinds in IRC, and I had to learn how to deal with them. Fortunately, the various online groups of which I was a part were dedicated to the safety of the people who chatted there. People approach IRC relationships differently.
Inhibitions fall by the wayside and stupid mistakes are oft made.
The third rule would never have come into being except that my ride's car broke down one time when I was supposed to be getting a ride back to another city after a get-together, and I was basically trapped in a city that is a 2 hour drive away from my home with no money and nowhere to stay. Channel managers would do their best to keep things safe by holding any get-togethers in neutral places, so no one would find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. All of the gatherings were on major transit routes in the city where most of us lived, and it was at these get-togethers that I first started meeting online people. It was interesting to put faces to the nicknames I had learned to call people by, and I managed to make a lot of friends that I still spend time with - many of the core group still have picnics or go out for dinner or coffee. Perhaps 5 out of the few hundred people I have met online have become close friends in Real Life, which is a pretty high ratio if you think about it.