• Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    I used to frequent IRC servers as a child (~age 10-13) and won a contest once that earned me voice (+) status for a week after sniffing out the most pedophiles in a dedicated kids channel. Was easy enough to do by running a /whois (or whatever the command was) on participants to see if they were also in channels like #dadsforboys and reporting them to channel operators (who were probably jerking off to us also).

    The fact that this was all perfectly normal to me by that point, and that I was so wholly unfazed by these types that I would sometimes fuck with them, is kind of alarming. I guess I’ll just carry that awareness going forward with my own children and keep them off of IRC/Roblox/whatever else might expose them to the vast world of internet cum creeps.

    It’s worth mentioning that I had a number of IRC girlfriends back then as well, and I suspect at least two of them were adult men pretending to be adolescents. I remember one “girl” in particular was from San Antonio and insisted her 12-year-old ex-boyfriend from Canada (who her dad called “Moose”) had already flown down to stay with them once. I guess I was next (not that my mom would have allowed that). However, I didn’t realize at the time that she/he was Hispanic, and eventually sent them the comedic “Mexican Americans” song by Cheech Marin in glorious .wav format, to which the recipient became deeply offended and stopped speaking to me entirely.

    Might have just saved my life.

    https://youtu.be/LLqqZmNFa_A

    • Virtvirt588@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Most people nowadays unfortunately. And it ain’t limited with discord - especially while we are in the AI era.

    • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Replace either with AOL chatroom and you have the elder millennials who are now saying the stupid shit in discord.

  • HexesofVexes@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    So, a lot of people think the best way to prevent this is to destroy digital privacy. However, hear me out, much more good could be obtained by simply teaching kids to use…

  • jonesey71@lemmus.org
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    3 days ago

    In the AOL days of the internet my dad thought TV meant a chat room for television and not transvestites. It was funny till I explained it to him, then it was REALLY funny.

  • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 days ago

    I thought I was unique for being on the dw when I was 13. I assumed that I was the youngest in all the chatrooms. But more and more I learn I probably wasn’t even in the lowest quartile age-wise lol