![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toujours_nigel So I just watched this vid-series about a girl who got sucked into an abusive relationship at 13! with a dude she met online. (link goes to the first vid)
And. I was online at 13, and my parents didn't know how the internet worked, and I was definitely not supervised at ALL. I wanna say I was canny and smart but I mean. I was smol and I always freeze around sexual assault, so. One of the things I am very grateful to one of my older friends is that though he had a crush on me when I was 17, 18, he never said anything about it till I was 24-25, because at 17 I was still very vulnerable and--while not confused about my sexuality--desperate to be liked.
And that was at 17, when I'd dated a girl for a couple years and was finally making friends with more than one person at a time. (College was good to me.) At 13 I had 0 friends irl. At 13 this girl I thought was a friend had stopped talking to me and turned everyone against me for over a year, because I told her I liked her more than my other "friends", so, uh, yeah (eighth grade was interesting).
At 13, I would absolutely have fallen into the grooming trap, I'd have been so fucking grateful someone was paying attention to me, and well at 13 I was still making the transition from "I like kissing girls!" to "I'm a lesbian!"; I mean, it was 2003 in India. I didn't know the word lesbian as anything more than a bit sensationalisation, and would have been extremely relieved to have liked kissing a dude. I was also dark and fat and awkward. (I still am all those things, and I mean I'm darker and way fatter, but anyway.) So, yeah. Fuck the people telling this kid she was stupid. She was a baby.
But I was lucky. I didn't run into creeps. Instead I lurked around LJ and fictionalley and some forums like angelfire and just... gorged on fic and wistfully observed Cool People Being Creative. By 15-16 I was writing myself--my only published stories are from those two years--but I still didn't have the courage to approach these Cool People online, or to publish my fanfic, iirc. Maybe it was the lurking that kept me safe for those 3 years or so; I'm not gonna pretend fandom didn't or doesn't have predators. But I think it's also that the people whose journals and stories I was reading offered such good, strong, role-models of being Creative Types and also of Female Friendships that I sort of settled into wanting that as #lifegoals. Either way I'm grateful and thankful.
And. I was online at 13, and my parents didn't know how the internet worked, and I was definitely not supervised at ALL. I wanna say I was canny and smart but I mean. I was smol and I always freeze around sexual assault, so. One of the things I am very grateful to one of my older friends is that though he had a crush on me when I was 17, 18, he never said anything about it till I was 24-25, because at 17 I was still very vulnerable and--while not confused about my sexuality--desperate to be liked.
And that was at 17, when I'd dated a girl for a couple years and was finally making friends with more than one person at a time. (College was good to me.) At 13 I had 0 friends irl. At 13 this girl I thought was a friend had stopped talking to me and turned everyone against me for over a year, because I told her I liked her more than my other "friends", so, uh, yeah (eighth grade was interesting).
At 13, I would absolutely have fallen into the grooming trap, I'd have been so fucking grateful someone was paying attention to me, and well at 13 I was still making the transition from "I like kissing girls!" to "I'm a lesbian!"; I mean, it was 2003 in India. I didn't know the word lesbian as anything more than a bit sensationalisation, and would have been extremely relieved to have liked kissing a dude. I was also dark and fat and awkward. (I still am all those things, and I mean I'm darker and way fatter, but anyway.) So, yeah. Fuck the people telling this kid she was stupid. She was a baby.
But I was lucky. I didn't run into creeps. Instead I lurked around LJ and fictionalley and some forums like angelfire and just... gorged on fic and wistfully observed Cool People Being Creative. By 15-16 I was writing myself--my only published stories are from those two years--but I still didn't have the courage to approach these Cool People online, or to publish my fanfic, iirc. Maybe it was the lurking that kept me safe for those 3 years or so; I'm not gonna pretend fandom didn't or doesn't have predators. But I think it's also that the people whose journals and stories I was reading offered such good, strong, role-models of being Creative Types and also of Female Friendships that I sort of settled into wanting that as #lifegoals. Either way I'm grateful and thankful.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 05:47 pm (UTC)I am *so* glad that there was no internet when I was thirteen (or hell, when I was in my 20s, given how naive I was *and* how difficult I found it to say "no" and my tendency to freeze when confronted with stuff I didn't understand). And then I'm also grateful that my fandom forays were in a print apazine because I shudder at the trouble I could have gotten myself into on the internet even into my thirties!
Fuck the people telling this kid she was stupid. She was a baby. Yes, so much yes--and why do people always have to default to blaming the victim instead of the predator (rhetorical question, I know the answer, but it still makes me so flaming mad).
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 06:46 pm (UTC)The internet is... I dunno, I want to say both better-police than a decade and half ago but also so very omnipresent in a way it wasn't then? And just, kids are no longer told to not give out contact details and why would they be when their parents and teachers and schoolmates for a large part of their online circles. But that makes it easier for predators or just plain jerkoffs to get hold of kids like this poor smol baby. He had her sending dozens of nude snapchats daily, I'm just so relieved she actually got through it and survived.
But nope, people are awful to the extent she actually included a devil's advocate in her vid because at this point she can anticipate every victim-blaming 'but why didn't you...?'
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 08:48 pm (UTC)I want to say both better-police than a decade and half ago but also so very omnipresent in a way it wasn't then?
It's hard to say--although I've been absolutely horrified by some of the stories about how school bullying takes place online (driving the victims to suicide in some cases), even more horrified the time or two I read about a parent (mother I think) joining in to harass a child's classmate.
What I've observed myself in terms of my various interests is that there are incredible resources and communities for people in the Gender/Romantic/Sexual minority communities online (things I desperately wish I'd had when I spent years not knowing what the heck I was feeling--not even knowing same-sex love was an option until I stumbled over Mary Renault's Greek novels when I was a first-year university student) while, at the same time, there are horrific new ways of harassing and harming people. I guess like any tool, a huge amount depends on the choices of the people using it.
she actually included a devil's advocate in her vid because at this point she can anticipate every victim-blaming
She's incredibly brave to have made the series, and yes, I'm so glad she survived.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 03:57 am (UTC):(((
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 11:49 pm (UTC)If I was growing up online now I would probably still dodge most of the sexual predators (not being sexual myself, I don't THINK it would;ve interested me), but I would've been super vulnerable to joining in on purity culture wank or something similar (anti-ship fans? your fav is problematic? who knows). I really, really wanted to be part of a group when I was young, and the easiest way to be part of a group is to attack someone else and make them NOT part of the group.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 04:19 am (UTC)oh boy, yes. It felt so odd when that actually became true, because I was 18+, instead of the ritual lie.
(not being sexual myself, I don't THINK it would;ve interested me)
In the case of the kid I watched and then spoke about, she wasn't interested in anything sexual either; it was the (sadly common) case of the dude pushing her to send photos because he was interested, except compounded by the fact that she thought they were friends and was too invested in his well-being to disregard suicide threats.
I would've been super vulnerable to joining in on purity culture wank or something similar
I can see that that sort of group is very appealing to kids, and not all instances involve giving up one's own shipping interests to castigate others'.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 12:41 am (UTC)I went back when I was in college because rl was pretty boring.no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 04:01 am (UTC)Now it's just everywhere, isn't it? My mother legit. panics when I disable Facebook, never mind she is on the phone with me daily.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 01:16 am (UTC)There was, I think, a generation that fell into computers without guidance, followed by one that got the warnings. Nowadays, things seem to have gone backwards—perhaps because computers are so ubiquitous today that adults assume that "everyone knows". Except, of course, that it is the nature of kids not to know. That's why they go to school, for Pete's sake! There are things they don't know!
Once upon a time, you warned them of wolves by telling them about Red Riding Hood. Now, of course, they're too big for fairy tales—but just about the right size to be snacked on.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 04:26 am (UTC)I got warnings but zero supervision. My sister and cousin, who are the better part of a decade younger, got relatively more supervision but not the same warnings, and in any case are mostly in Internet contact with people they know irl: tame Internet, Internet 2.0 where your mother messages you on FB and you dodge second cousins once removed.
But that hasn't actually made the Wild Web disappear, just made it more dangerous because nobody thinks to warn kids, or to supervise them when they go there.
Or no wait, it's worse. On tumblr etc, kids insist they (a) get to be on the Internet and people 25+ oughtn't interact with them, but also (b) people 25+ oughtn't be in the same spaces as them in any case. It leaves them entirely without guidance in brickspace and as well as virtual space, and correspondingly vulnerable. I grew up on the Internet watching and then interacting with a whole group of Excellent Older Women, and it's odd to me that that is now treated as suspect.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 08:53 pm (UTC)Heh, well there used to be some of that in LiveJournal back in the day (and fandom generally) which was just supposed to be for teenagers! What are those old women (nobody ever talked about old men!) doing in our spaces! Given that I was pre-menopausal when I first joined (2003, GULP), and rapidly met a whole slew of fantastic LOTR fans in their forties, fifties, and sixties, I thought it was hilarious.
Turns out I also met a whole lot of amazing fans in their teens but of course I didn't know that until you all were past the 18+ years!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 05:17 am (UTC)Yeah, we used to be better about keeping our mouths shut and just pressing the button that lied on our behalf. *g*
there used to be some of that in LiveJournal back in the day (and fandom generally) which was just supposed to be for teenagers!
I want to say I encountered some of that, but even the one rp I joined where people were younger than me, there was at least one woman in her forties. Not to say there weren't the sort of people you're talking about, of course, but LJ/DW has separation in a way tumblr doesn't, so it didn't spill over as much for me.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 12:54 pm (UTC)As much as I enjoy some aspects of Tumblr, I'm so very glad that I grew up in a very different internet environment - mostly LJ, with some Facebook and Orkut (remember Orkut). And even in fandom, because of my choice of things to be fannish about, I was often the youngest by a country mile, and I had good solid older female friends I'm still close to today.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 02:10 pm (UTC)