Parents Beware: What Kids Post on Social Networks Could Cost You Your Job is an excellent fearmongering title for all WASP-y parents in the States. It combines the scare tactics of involving “that there MySpace site”, which people have heard has been sued for allowing child predators to roam freely.
From standard news reports, one would think it’s like being dropping your child into a zone of no-good older men; possibly something like a pit full of defrocked priests. I think the biggest dangers coming from MySpace are as follows, where “OR” is an inclusive OR.
- Blowing out your speakers because somebody embedded an auto-starting Lil’ Mama and Avril Lavigne remix (this IS the most horrible song in the world) OR
- Searing your retinas because somebody decided that they’d not only use yellow background and black, blinking text, but that they’d embed seizure-tastic YouTube clips in about four different places OR
- Screaming over your monthly bandwidth allowance because somebody thought it’d be a good idea to link to a 5000×5000 BMP file as their background image… in every table cell.
Never mind the court decision over the sexual assault case where the parents sued MySpace: the judge actually pulled a Dr. Phil and bitch-slapped their poor parenting:
“If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace,” the court ruled.
So why do I bring up this specific case of fearmongering? Aren’t there enough idiot news channels, like Fox, doing reports on 4chan and other Internet memes? Well, it’s all about who they quoted in the article.
Many families are getting hurt according to internet safety expert Parry Aftab.
“I’ve represented a lot of parents who’ve come to me when they have been fired, they’ve been demoted, or they’ve been called on the carpet because of what their kids posted online,” Attab[sic] said.
Internet safety expert, huh? Where have I heard that name before? I believe it was attached to a post called “KILL IT”:
That’s right! She was the one Something Awful absolutely ruined for having zero credibility!
People, do your research – Digg will go absolutely enraged over this, not realizing that this woman is the equivalent of Jack Thompson for Internet safety.