Wednesday, March 15, 2006

B, Monique's Shoes, and MySpace Stalking

First things first… for those of you who haven’t done so, go see my renter B at AllNight.org. Your failure to do so is bringing down my boast of having a bigger fan base than that fool who started crap with Mystickal because SHE had been cruel and unusual to a renter. Do the right thing and show that I have the biggest and bestest fan base because I am the KING OF ALL DRAMA… and tell her to tell Wolf I said hi.

Second things first… you guys need to go see Monique’s favorite date shoes. They are a VERY nice pair of leopard prints that she got from DSW. With a pair like that, how can any guy follow the “chart”… Grrrr!!!


Now today’s social debacle comes to you courtesy of Fox 12 in Oregon who reports that a mother in the area feels that MySpace.com has endangered her 15 year old daughter. Yes… that’s right… MySpace.com has traveled through cyberspace into the real world and is stalking her daughter. Oh so NOT true.

I know there are a lot of people out here who trash MySpace.com and view its users as pathetic uncreative fools who just copy and paste HTML code for icons and blinkies and stuff. I think it is important to keep in mind that MySpace.com started out as a way for musicians to network with each other and their fans. It has evolved into a sort of cyber social club.

Perhaps I am dating myself by calling the ethereal realm we all dwell in as cyberspace… with spheres of people floating in it such as the Blogosphere itself. So maybe I shoudn’t have a MySpace.com page… but I do… and am a member of the MySpacesphere as well.

MySpace is a lot like blogging. You’ll get out of it what you put into it... especially if you put TOO much into it. So when someone says that MySpace has brought a stalker to their doorstep… that is because whoever used MySpace did so in an unsafe manner. They probably put up information that allowed someone to pinpoint where they lived, went to school, and of course what they looked like with pictures.

I remember similar incidents when the Web (the www you type in a URL btw stands for World Wide Web, the official name for what you are in right now) was new and people were using GeoCities for personal homepages. Again, because information was put out there a few people with perversion and social dysfunction used that information for ill doings. Does this mean that MySpace, the Web, the Blogosphere, and everything else we do are all evil and should be shut down???

Absolutely not. At some point we need to take a little bit of responsibility for our own actions, including making sure our teenagers aren’t giving out our home address to the world through a MySpace profile. It also might help if instead of becoming a totalitarian parent we take an interest and provide some input into what they are doing… even if it means putting down the most recent Danielle Steele book and reading MySpace for Dummies instead.

Let’s face it, kids do some crazy things, including posting pictures of themselves and their friends smoking from a bong that any law enforcement agent would LOVE to see (yes my little zooted and polluted minions... this is directed at you!). Is it because they don’t know better or because they think that what they are doing is an ethereal plane that can’t possibly affect them in real life? I tend to think it is the latter… because I know quite a few bloggers who have done the same thing and have been run out of the blogosphere because of it. Those bloggers by the way are over the age of 15. I myself have let a few things slip here that in hindsight may not have been the smartest thing… so to a large extent we may all be guilty of it in some form or another. Luckily there is probably a ratio of 1:1,000,000,000 psycho sickos to internet citizens.

It is unfortunate for those who do fall victims, but do we blame the system? Do we sue a city or home builder when we are robbed because we decided to leave the front door open? No, because we need to be cognizant of our actions or inaction. Don’t blame the system… blame the users for misusing the system.

The fact is that information is power. Now write that 100 times on the blackboard and remember it the next time you do something that requires input from you. Empower yourself... no one else.

TAGS:Privacy, MySpace, stalker, information, blogosphere
Posted by New York City's Watchdog :: 3/15/2006 04:03:00 PM :: Permalink :: 4 Bones Added to the Pile

Pick a Bone

<< Back To The Pile

..........:*:..........