quote:
Originally posted by SSJ4Sephiroth:
The media gives false portrayal of such things. I know this for a fact as all the time on the news we all hear about how someone was killed when they went to meet someone they met in a chat room, or how someone was missing after they went to a meeting spot. Why do none of the success stories, which are much more legion than those disasters, always make headlines? The answer is simple. Nobody wants to hear about people being happy because it makes them realize how bleak their lives are. They like hearing about how someone was kidnapped, killed, or molested. They don't like hearing about people meeting, being happy, and just having a jolly good time.
I don't think this is the answer at all, Seph. Yes it's true that a lot of people are wary of meeting people on the internet, and for good reason. You can't know for sure whether people are telling you the truth, and if you're planning on meeting them in real life then you do have to be careful about when and where you do it, at least initially - it's just common sense. I recently had an incident where I discovered a person who I had met on the internet and had trusted (to a certain extent), had been feeding me a pack of lies; reasonably harmless lies, but it was easy for this person to do so because I had no means to verify what was said.
However having said that, you should also be careful with people you meet in 'real life'. I don't think it would be any more prudent to go somewhere secluded with someone you didn't know who you met in real life than someone you met on the internet. People are just as capable of lying to you to your face as they are in a chat room, and it's a sad fact that most people are raped by someone that they know.
Also I think it depends on where you meet people on the internet. For example, I don't feel concerned that people here are misrepresenting themselves - why would they? It's a gaming forum, most people will never meet each other and there is clearly a wide range of ages etc so there is no good reason for people not to be honest about themselves. However if you meet people in chat rooms, like I saw one the other day for 13 year old girls only, or ones where people are actively trying to meet potential boy/girlfriends, it would be easy for people with nothing better to do to lie and lead them on, and some people find that sort of thing amusing, or worse.
And it's not true that the only picture the media paints of the internet is a negative one - I've seen many feel-good programs showing fairytale stories of couples meeting on the net and getting married in real life, talking about clubs and groups that meet on the internet and bring people together etc. Yes they don't often make the headlines, but then the news always has a disproportionate amount of bad news compared to good, that's just the way it is. It's not exactly newsworthy that, hypothetically of course
, a 14 year old boy from Sallisaw meets 14 year old girl from Boston - it might be interesting for those involved
, but not really front-page stuff. And it would be irresponsible of the media if they didn't warn people of the dangers of trusting absolutely people you meet on the internet, because it is foolhardy, and lots of naive people don't understand the risks.