Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Are Chat Rooms Safe for Kids?

For the past few weeks I have seen some disturbing events unfold on CNBC. They have been doing an ongoing series on men who use the internet to attempt to hook themselves up with young girls. Reporters all over the country have been going undercover posing as 6th and 7th graders to expose this atrocity. A fair share of men have been caught on camera showing up at an underage girl’s house after learning that the parents are out of town. Some guys even have the nerve to bring beer.

These are the sickest of people. They are the scum that make the rest of the decent folks on the World Wide Web look bad. While we are reading news and commenting on the issues these guys are out here in chat rooms looking for a good time with our daughters and little sisters.

There is no shortage of these people as I recently found out firsthand. I decided to do my own bit of undercover reporting on this subject. After creating the bastard child of Shoutwire and Yahoo, Britneyfannxoxo92, I embarked upon the chat rooms of the internet to find out for myself how many guys would agree to have cyber sex with an admitted 14 or 13 year old girl. I even used a picture that my fellow editor Generositus found for me. The picture I used was of a girl who was clearly very young.

It wasn’t long before I got my first proverbial bite. It was a user with the chick magnet handle arun_1981us1, a 24 year old male from Chandigarh, where ever that is. . I sent him the picture I mentioned earlier. He sent me a picture of himself accepting some kind of award. What follows is a part of the conversation:

britneyfanxoxo92: wat do you want to do to me?
arun_1981us1: i wanna cress ur b**bs
britneyfanxoxo92: and?
arun_1981us1: i want to lick ur *****
arun_1981us1: then i want to **** u real hard

At this point he knows for sure, or at least thinks he knows, that he is talking to a 14 year old girl. To the majority of us this is irreprehensible. Upon finding out he had just been owned, he tried to weasel his way out of it and say sorry. Needless to say, sorry does not cut it in this instance.

Next a champion of the internet by the name of neal_niick, a 20 year old male from India, sent me a message. By this time I was feeling pretty dirty but for the sake of the story I continued.
Now this guy I almost lost interest in. He told me he liked younger girls but then backed off a bit so I figured maybe his conscience got the better of him.. I didn’t tell him what I was doing and just kind of stopped talking. Then, for the next hour and a half or so he sent me those little love icons. It made me feel even dirtier and he even messaged me from another name after I blocked the niick ID. I think he fell in love with me. By this point I am over the dirty feeling and am just plain scared shitless.

Over the course of the next few hours, I was hit on by six different men, all over 25 except niick, who was 20. One of them even sent me a picture of his nether regions. Each of them thought I was a 13 or 14 year old girl. It is a sick internet and I seen the worst firsthand.

Thankfully, it wasn’t all bad news. Most guys, upon hearing the age, left the IM session quickly. Only about 20% in this case responded suggestively. One user who was noble enough not to try to virtually sleep with me stayed around for a bit to discuss what I was doing. He was behind the idea 100%. The majority of the computer-using communities, as I said before, are decent folks. However it only takes one bad apple to ruin the internet for us all.

I know, this was dirty reporting. It was a pretty low thing to do, even by my standards, although I do not believe it was as low as grown men trying to have cyber sex with little girls.

Even though one could make the argument that it isn’t real it is still wrong. It has always been the people who police the internet. While we can’t stop this behavior altogether, I know the people I talked to last night will think twice the next time they decide to try to get dirty with an underage girl.

Shoutwire

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