the darkside of the internet
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| Thu, 09-21-2006 - 6:39pm |
Kristen had her first experience with the darkside yesterday. Nothing too dramatic, but I think a lesson.
She created a guild on the neopets website which is essentially an on-line club where you find "friends" with common interests and you discuss avatars, or different characters and vent about your homework. They also do quizzes and work on the design. So she saw a message from a girl saying she did layouts. So she did a great layout for the guild, joined and then convinced Kristen that because she did the layout she should be on the "council" giving her the right to manipulate the site along with Kristen, her best friend and another on-line friend.
Last night Kristen receives a message from the designers saying "why did you kick me out of the guild, what did I do?" So Kristen looks and ALL of the members of the guild have been deleted. There is no one left except her and as the owner no one can delete her. So she gets up sets, thinks it couldn't be her best friend, it can't be done accidentally as you have to do each individual separately, was it the other friend? She starts digging around and looks at the log for the guild and it was the girl who e-mailed her who went in and individually deleted each member.
So this "girl" deleted everyone, then send a neo-mail to Kristen to make sure she would check the guild and find it all deleted. Kristen was like "But why would she e-mail me?" I said that she did it so that Kristen would look and find the mess and be upset. It possible if she hadn't received the e-mail she might not have noticed for days. So she learned that everyone who pretends to be nice and your friend is not necessarily so. This person will move on, find some other guild to join and get them to give her power, then ruin it for them too.
So while not a dangerous lesson, its just an on-line group, not the end of the world, I'm sort of glad she had this experience. I think it kind of opened her eyes to the reality of on-line life. I do monitor her guild and what they are talking about and its been all innocent so far.


Gosh it sounds like the "mean girls" of the internet! LOL! What was the point of that anyway? Matthew has a couple of boards where he's the moderator and I check them out every so often. It's boards relating to teen titans but he hasn't been on in a while. Kids come and go and sometimes some use foul language. How rude to trick someone into being a moderator only to sabotage them. UGH! The most important thing is it was just a "friend" issue and not a safety issue.
Quinn plays a role playing game on-line called 'Runescape' along with several of his friends. They complete quest & while they are working on the quest, they chat with each other, give each other tips, make trades & etc. Every once in awhile someone will somehow get log info & pretend to be that person playing. They will make trades & not keep their end of the deal which causes the players account to be shutdown or they will use foul language, again, causing a shutdown of the account.
Quinn has only had it happen to him once & it was like hundreds of people (perhaps thousands) accounts were tapped into via a glitch. He 'lost' a lot of stuff he had collected/banked (or whatever the term is).
Now...His bestfriend let his cousin play on his account by giving him his password & login info. (Yes, it was dumb) His cousin managed to get him permanently banned. While this happened to Quinn's friend, he learned that people cannot be trusted.
It's like you said, it's not dangerous, but it just reminds them that not all is sweet & good. I also remind him that when he is chatting/trading with someone he doesn't know, to keep in mind that person could be a compleatly different person. If someone says they are a 13 year old guy from Texas who enjoys skateboarding & pizza, it really could be a 50 year old woman from New Zealand who likes to kiss young boys & smokes cigerettes. He replied "Ewwwww! Gross!"
You are right that the person does this because they like the power. And they have too much time on their hands! In real lifem they must be lonely & have a low self esteem.
Yep, your right.
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