Indeed @ckohtala, but the interwebs is not meatspace. Verifying someone‘s skin color here is the equivalence of finding out the color of an IRL acquaintance’s toilet bowl. It’s not necessarily classified information (as in, fine to be shared) and most likely to be white, but choosing who to hang out with based on such information is creepy nevertheless, if not fetishizing.

Now culture, one the other hand, is entirely different, despite the large intersection because the majority of anglophone cyberspace is from the West. A purple guy online is more likely to appear similarly to a green gal from the same hood than another purple guy half the globe away. Shouldn’t our language reflect such distinction?