Apart from the costs of foregone growth, information sharing has its downsides. The community can be very intrusive and cloying, poking its nose in members’ private affairs. Gossip can be helpful in straightening out aberrant behavior, but it can also be mean, hurtful, and intolerant of deviance from age-old traditions. Transparency can highlight budding problems, but those in the community fishbowl, naked to the view of all, may be civil in public while hiding seething resentment. By comparison, the anonymity of the city can be liberating, even though it distances us from social
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Fishbowl vs anonymity
