Creepers on the Net

Run! Happened to my daughter. Old bf from jr hi tracked her down....eventually ask to marry him...she bought a dress....he was still married....

 

I've been listening to my basketball team chat as we travel to games lately (the girls' team) and I've been surprised at how common creepiness is out there for teens, and somewhat impressed that they recognise and deal with it so easily. A number of them (maybe most) have been inappropriately "friended" on FB... kids they've told they don't want anything to do with, kids (?) from other schools, and even worse, creepy adults they've never met. They deal with these things almost as a joke.

One guy insists that he has been looking for one of my youngest players since he got out of jail!! I suggested she mention that her mother, father, and step-mother are all cops, and that her father is a member of the ERT. She said she's showed it to them, and they have simply told her she needs to tell them about ones like that, then ignore them.

The kids are quite blasé about unexpected friend requests, and fairly selective about accepting them, but they all know kids who just accept every request they get in the race to 5,000. I'm careful about my kids friend lists not because of the obvious weirdos who make requests... it's the smart, patient ones out to build trust that worry me most.

 

Yes, you can't just defriend, they still creep around. Blocking makes them disappear for good.

 

I guess this is one of those things that virtually only ever happens to one of the sexes. Because when I get messages like that it's always porn spam.

Some people forget that though the medium feels anonymous, and as such fails to engage the part of the brain responsible for social propriety, it isn't.

Still, it feels insufficient to write this off as general internet assholery and I'm sure there is a deep social science synthesis that likely links the two points (despite my abhorrence of the way term 'privilege' is thrown around, 'male privilege' certainly comes to mind), I don't really want to get that far into that right now.

 

And that right there is something that goes on, a lot, and younger folk need to be really careful off.

 

I think that's Russian spam.

 

Now that's one I never heard. hehe!

 

Your daughter agreed to an online marriage proposal after having no contact with the guy since the 7th grade?