The Internet can be a Very Scary Place

I have been on the Internet since I was in the 5th grade. I am 31 now so it was pretty new back then. I started out on Prodigy when it was just message boards. Looking back now I realized that I was a possible victim of solicitation of a minor. I remember  when I was on Prodigy, a guy asked me what my bra size was. I had no clue I was a naive kid. I said 50. No letter just 50. When I got AOL in the 7th grade I started going in to chat rooms. These were just town square rooms. I was 13. I would talk to these guys who I thought liked me. I felt special because they were like 17. I remember one in particular who was 17 or 18 could have been older. He told me that he had a sister my  age and I chatted with her. I never questioned if she was real or him on a screen name. I just thought it was so cool that this guy was talking to me. I am sure that is a common feeling for girls that age. He lived in Lakeland Florida and I lived in the suburbs in a nice community in Indiana.

There were other guys that would talk to me, some not so appropriately.  They weren't totally vulgar but more sneakily vulgar. There was definitely grooming going on too. That's basically where they get you to trust them and are really nice to you. The good thing is that they were all over the country and I wasn't stupid enough to send pictures of my body. Even good girls can be fooled. It is so important to monitor your children online. I hate to say it but trust is not enough. You can trust your child but you can't trust the other person. It doesn't matter what the kid says it could be all a lie. Pictures don't mean anything. Anyone can pretend to look like someone online. Teach your children when it comes to people online to trust no one.  I don't care if they are nice. It doesn't matter if they are cute. You don't talk to strangers when they offer you candy. You don't have private convos with strangers online. Even if they say they are a nun.

It really concerns me because even though we know more about online predators and pedophiles, with social media and everyone feeling the need to share every location and thing they are doing, it's really harmful. I see that kids have Facebook and Twitter who shouldn't. People are posting their private business with the masses. I think that Facebook and Twitter should tighten up their age requirement. Facebook and Twitter should require an actual way to verify age. Parents need to install monitoring software. This is not a trust issue. It is not a oh my kid is a good kid and wouldn't do that issue. It's a safety measure. If your perfect little angel becomes a victim of an Internet crime including bullying. You need a record. You need to be able to know who these people are in case there is something that needs your attention. If your child decides to meet someone online you need to know who this person is just in case. Some kind of contact number or an ip. Just having your computer in an open space isn't enough you can't watch them like a hawk all the time.

Your child probably will be mad if you monitor them with software. They may question if you trust them. You might have an argument over it. It's not a trust issue it's for their safety and when they are a parent they will understand and probably thank you. They will look back and think wow I really was fearless and did a lot of stupid things. Just as I did. I was totally fearless. I was a good polite kid and I did a lot of stupid stuff that people probably thought I wouldn't do. I thought I was invincible and nothing could hurt me.

Noah's Lego Pathfinder

Noah loves to build things with Legos. He also loves NASA. He watches the NASA channel more than any other channel. He likes to make different vehicles out of Legos. He recently made The Pathfinder and asked me to Tweet it to the NASA Twitter handles. He gave me suggestions of people to follow on Twitter one day including the International Space Station. I wanted to honor his request of taking a picture of The Pathfinder he made and tweeted it to NASA and NASA Langley. I checked my mentions and sure enough, NASA Langley not only Retweeted Noah's picture but tweeted me too.

That was pretty freaking cool and Noah was ecstatic. I wonder if Kevin Ford saw his Pathfinder. Yes we know the commander of the International Space Station's name and that he went to Notre Dame. We love NASA and the fact that they connected with us!

The Birth of Social Media

Everyone is always joking about what we did before Facebook or social media. It has been a topic that is always brought up and surely due to our dependency of social media. I am a blogger so of course it is a huge part of my job. The real question is what did they do before social media? I am 31 so obviously I haven't always had social media or the Internet. So, what did people use? Sure there was regular mail and the phone but to share with everyone that would be a lot of time on the phone and many stamps. They had weekly dinners and would see people at the store or at the beauty parlor and around town, but that didn't reach everyone. I guess they spent a lot of time wondering where people were or did they?  Was there perhaps a "Facebook" before Facebook?

I often get bored and search things. I am constantly seeking to learn new things about anything I can. I have always been interested in family history and learning more about family. My grandma Rose wrote a complete family history of her dad’s family. I used to read it over and over. I loved to hear stories about my family. Family is really important to me. So, I decided to yet again Google my Grandma Rose's name, I am not sure why as there is never anything new. I ended up adding her city because there was another person who was dominating the search results.  I had found all the normal information about this person results, an article a distant relative wrote about our family history and even her obituary.  I also found something I had never seen before. A newspaper clipping that my Great Grandma wrote, thanking her children for taking care of her when she was sick. This was actually the newspaper. I kept looking through newspaper articles that I found and there were a ton about my family.  It wasn’t really news as in the traditional sense. It was like Mr. and Mrs. SoandSo had their children over for Sunday Dinner and Mrs. SoandSo is sick and was taken to the hospital and is now at home resting.  I really love those people that decided to scan in old newspapers so I could discover this really cool family history.

I thought it was really cool that I was reading about all of this. My grandma Rose always wrote things in datebooks. You could look at it and find out who called that day, who visited, who she called, what she did every day. I still like to look at them.  At first I thought, they must have no news in this town. I knew it was a really small town as I have visited them still having family living there.  I had to share this with my mom thinking how cool it was and how she would probably get a kick out of it. Then I realized, this was their Social Media. This was the way they communicated with each other in their town. This is how people in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s did it. I obviously know that newspapers have been around for forever, but now you can’t find out that your neighbor had their family over for dinner or your neighbor’s granddaughter was a finalist for the National Merit Scholarship Award.  Those are the things we would write about on Facebook or tweet on Twitter.  They didn’t have the internet so they couldn’t just send an update instantly.  If they haven’t see Thelma in a while, they couldn’t have signed on Facebook and saw that Thelma was in the hospital. They would read about it in the paper.  The news in the paper wasn’t always about crime and politics and traditional news. It was about your neighbors’ news, the people that you shared your lives with daily, your friends, that was the most important news.

 In my opinion social media has been around a lot longer than you think, it just wasn’t digitalized until recently.

I am Jack's Bot

If you know me at all, ever had interaction with me, you know how much I love the movie Fight Club. I have seen it a bajillion times. I know the whole movie by heart and love to quote it and tweet about it. I feel sorry for my friends like Brandy of Happily Blended because she has to deal with me all the time talking about it. When I found out she hates Fight Club, I was completely baffled. How can someone hate Fight Club? How can one of my dearest friends of all people hate Fight Club? It was almost terms for ending the friendship but I gave her a pass. Of course I am kidding but I just don’t understand. I would never sit down with my mom and watch it because I know she would hate it, but she is my mom. I just thought that everyone loves Fight Club because it’s Fight Club. I have known people that have never seen it and won’t. They are really missing out.

To be fair I have a faint memory of being at Blockbuster a long time ago and my friend or someone I dated, it’s been a while, asked me if I have seen it and I said no, don’t want to. I thought it was a boxing movie and I hated Snake Eyes. It wasn’t until a year or so later that my ex bought it at K-mart and had me sit down and watch it. I loved it, I watched it over and over. I demanded that I got to keep it when I kicked him out. I got to keep all my favorite movies because he kept his guitar. Fight Club is not about boxing and it is hardly about fighting. It is just like a small part of it. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. It is brilliant. It is definitely a movie for adults. I wouldn’t recommend watching it with your children, it is very inappropriate for anyone under 17. They talk about Martha Stewart in it. You know how much I love Martha.

Shortly after joining Twitter and tweeting about Fight Club I noticed that I was getting replies from someone called Iamjacksbot. In the movie the narrator played by Edward Norton reads a series called I am Jack’s Colon; I am Jack’s Medulla Oblongata to name a few. He also uses I am Jack’s to describe how he is feeling in certain parts of the movie. IamJacksBot is an automated bot (I believe) that whenever anyone on Twitter mentions the words “Fight Club” it will tweet you a random quote from the movie. One day recently I wanted to mention IamJacksBot in a tweet and if you look at the top it will tell you who you follow that also follows someone. There is was…. Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart follows IamJacksbot on Twitter. She won’t follow me, but will follow the Fight Club bot.

I didn’t realize that Martha Stewart was such a big Fight Club fan. I mean Martha Stewart just doesn’t seem like she would be a fan or condone such a movie. I was floored. I guess Martha is an interesting person and created Whatever Martha where her daughter and friend made fun of her. I wish they would bring back that show. I loved it. The talk show is not very good in my opinion. I guess you can learn a lot of things about celebrities on Twitter. For the record it made me love Martha even more.
What do you think of Fight Club? Have you seen it? Its brilliant isn’t it?

Twitter

So I finally got Twitter. My Twitter name is Sheilacakes7. Someone already had Sheilacakes so I just added a 7.