Yet another reason to keep your kids off myspace

More details: http://www.mlive.com/news/sanews/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1149859307204910.xml&coll=9&thispage=2



Shawn Lester said the man had two MySpace accounts, one of which portrayed him as a 14-year-old. On her site, Katherine Lester claimed she was married and wanted to visit Israel, said her 19-year-old sister, Mary Lester.

The man wrote to the teen that where he's from, "If wives don't do what they're told, they are killed," the sister said.

She said she loaned her younger sister $100 for a fabricated Canada trip -- not nearly enough to purchase a plane ticket to the Middle East.

"The police told us that whoever this guy is, he has money," Shawn Lester said.
...
With two bags packed, Lester drove her daughter Sunday to a Bay City bus station, where the friend's family was to meet them. When they didn't show, her daughter demanded her mother leave her there to wait.

Suspicious, Shawn Lester called the family and learned there was no trip. She brought her daughter home.

Katherine Lester was sleeping when her mother left the house Monday morning. When the mother returned at 2 p.m., the teen was gone -- and so were her bags.

 

This is not the fault of myspace. This is the fault of bad parenting, the cause of most problems with today's youth. And I wish that doesn't sound like a blanket statement but people are way too worried about their jobs that allow them to have the biggest SUV on the block to be concerned with what their kids are doing on the Internet.
I was out for lunch today and three waitresses were standing around, drawing lines between 6/6/06, myspace and The Omen. Of course, they did not know the current Julia Stiles version is a very bad remake of a great horror movie. One pipes up and says 'I read on the Internet that a baby really was born on 6-6-6. Is this really something to be worried about?'
This is where the Internet is flawed. It can disseminate information -- true or false -- to people who are too stupid or too naive to process it properly.

 

I'll preface this by saying I haven't read the entire thread, probably about half of it.

It seems the only time you hear about MySpace these days is when something happens like in the above story about the girl from Michigan. As with any system, MySpace has its flaws. There are also a lot of bad apples out there.

In addition to providing the ability to keep in touch with people you otherwise wouldn't be able to, as has been pointed out in recent pages of this thread, I wanted to share another two awesome aspects of the site. Hopefully I didn't miss a post on this thread that said the same thing.

The music aspect of the site is pretty cool. I've heard it a lot from others, and I've said it from time to time myself - it's annoying to get a random friend invite from some no-name band whose music you probably don't like or want to listen to to find out if you'll enjoy it. But I have also discovered some unknown gems out there in the music world. One of my new favorite rappers was MySpace friends with another artist on the site, and I found his page that way. The networking for musicians really is a wonderful feature of MySpace. My brother started his own DJ business last year at age 14, and has landed some huge gigs for school dances and parties through his MySpace. He's even done a wedding and a retirement party thanks to the site.

Number two for me, which I think is actually really cool: we have a semi-pro baseball team up here that is really the only attraction in town during the summer, a really amazing story. One of the guys who played for the team a few years ago and just finished his senior year at a prominent baseball D-I was selected in one of the early rounds of the First-Year draft this week. Fortunately, I'm a baseball nut at every level of the game, as is my dad, so we were listening to the draft on the Web and were lucky enough to catch the kid's name. It would have been a great news story anyway, and I already had the scoop. But thanks to MySpace, I tracked down the player and his younger brother and sent them each a message in an attempt to obtain a contact number. It paid off, and without MySpace, my article would have been a 8-inch brief without quotes. Instead, thanks to the site, it was twice that length with some good words from both the player and his father.

I'm not saying MySpace is all good. I've had mine since 2004, and it's been nothing but a positive experience for me. I just wanted to share some positive aspects of the site, IMHO, to go along with all the bad press it receives.

 

This statement is absurdly offensive to most parents who are 'worried about their jobs' so they can merely pay the rent.

It's a nice cliche to blame parents for neglecting their children while they galavant in their exciting careers....but more often, you're talking about simple folks trying to raise their families, make ends meet, and keep their kids healthy and out of trouble.

MySpace is great for adults who understand what they're putting out there about themselves. It is not great for kids and teenagers who just don't get it.

 

Don't take this the wrong way anyone, but this is a great story; and by "great story" I mean humorous.

 

And at one point are the parents not supposed to be held responsible for not being around to help their kids and teenagers 'get it'?
I'm sorry but my parents eked out a meagre existence on one salary so Mom could stay home. We had trouble making ends meet and, even when she went back to work, she made sure she was a part of our lives. Parents are too busy to do that today -- for whatever reason.
I'm not looking to get into another scrap today. Frankly, I'm too fucking hungover to care. Disagree with me. Go ahead.

 

That's it, Flash, time to thrown down the gloves and trade ice chips.

I'm Harold Snepts. Who you be?

 

Does someone need a neck rub?

 

Yes, if only parents could all raise their kids to be as together and well-adjusted as Flash.  :

 

A scrap? Thought it was discussion. Would it be better if all the sentences ended in Charlie Brown?

Nice for your parents, truly. Doesn't work for everyone. It also doesn't necessarily work for plenty of parents who ARE at home, with kids and teens who find ways to get in trouble despite June and Ward baking cookies and raking the leaves.  I know plenty of caring concerned parents who are out of their minds trying to keep up with their teenagers.  And if you go back through these MySpace threads, my guess is that the majority people who blame the 'selfish unconcerned parents' for their wild kids are people without kids.

 

Snicker...

 

So is taking potshots ever going to get old for you assholes? Or you just want to sit there day after day flinging shit so you can feel like big men?
Fuck off.