Assumptions/Better, by Far

A few weeks before I moved out of my apartment in Miami, I had a new roommate move in. He was a Brazilian, and loved to talk. He would talk about anything that came to his mind. I sat through some long and drawn out conversations. Among his favorite topics were, hostels, travel, the Beaches of Brazil, and women. But what he didn't know how to do was to circumspect himself. He had an unrestrained tongue. Constantly he took the conversation into territory that I felt a little uneasy talking about. Most of these were stories describing conquests with this girl or that girl, how easy the girls in Brazil are and that, when I go, to be sure to leave mine behind and speak nothing of my trip.
But one story just got to me a little more than others. He was on a bus the Uruguay ans he had a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a bottle of Absolute vodka. With extraordinary detail, he described hoe him and a handful of others downed both the bottles on the trip. And with an ever expanding accomplishment in his voice, began to describe the process by which the alcohol did not stay in his stomach. Continuing with the story, he proceeded to tell me of the girl who so readily hooked up with him while he was covered in vomit. While this was one of the more benign of the stories he told me, this was got to me. And trust me there were a lot of stories that I would not write of here.
With every description of a past event he didn't, or maybe couldn't, read my body language. I'm pretty sure it was screaming "I just don't care". My only thought was why does he keep trying to tell me these stories. The only reason that I could think of was that he just assumed that everyone was just like him. It never stopped. Thankfully I had only a few days with him. It wasn't so much his life experiences that got to me. People can do whatever they want. But what happened to discernment? What happened to a little bit of privacy? What happened to being a little better?
There is so much that's just out there right now. Everything can be accessed on the internet. There is very little mystery to people anymore. But I feel it's starting to imbue into how we talk and interact. It's like we have the green light to say whatever we want to, that there is no shock to anything anymore. There is no more crossing the line or going too far. I'm ok not knowing everything about your life.
Now, I understand there a varying degrees of comfort with people. Of coarse you are going to confide in your friends about some deep personal stuff, and stories are more than ok to be on the table. I feel, though, that we can get into a lot of trouble by assuming that everyone is like us. In my opinion, we run a high risk of ending up alienating ourselves creating a lot of problems.