For two hours, I approached perfect strangers about their private lives on the street outside Harvey Nichols department store.

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It can rear its ugly head at friends, colleagues, celebrities, bosses, family members, and perfect strangers (in no particular order).

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Someday perfect strangers, each wearing their personalized databases, will encounter one another's digital fantasies--the cyberversion of two dogs sniffing each other out.

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Thackeray, indeed, remarked on the corsetless dress of rural Irish women, and the fact that they kissed perfect strangers in greeting, their vast bosoms swinging.

NEWYORKER: Fjord of Killary

And unrelated birds that had been reared together for a short time scorned their broodmates and preferred to lek near relatives who were perfect strangers instead.

ECONOMIST: Team players

We've seen first responders and National Guardsmen who have dashed into danger, law enforcement officers who lived their oath to serve and to protect, and everyday Americans who are opening their homes and their hearts to perfect strangers.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama at White House Correspondents Dinner

There was something to that argument: credit is a learned thing, both a legal concept and a social one that emerged in the developed world over centuries, whose core component is the creation of a sense of obligation between two perfect strangers.

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It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

CNN: Transcript: 'This is your victory,' says Obama

Build out your social networks, perfect your social media skills, and get comfortable asking friends, family, colleagues, customers, and even strangers for money.

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