Part CMXVII of Abby responding to dumbass parents
DEAR ABBY: Our 13-year-old son, “Kirk,” is monitored when he is online, he is given a curfew when visiting neighborhood friends, and he is overall watched like a hawk. However, we have let him play the video game Xbox Live (where kids all over the country play the same games). We recently found out that an adult (posing as a child) had promised Kirk a free pass and asked him to call to tell him where to send it.
Our son, not knowing any better, did indeed call this man. Fortunately, he did not give him any information. But he didn’t think to block the phone number, so now this predator has Kirk’s cell phone number. (We are turning off the phone.)
Abby, please warn parents that video games that allow children to play online should be supervised, too! We have had a long conversation with our son, as well as contacted the authorities in the state where this man lives. We are … TRULY GRATEFUL OUR SON IS SAFE IN THE SOUTHWEST
Now, Dear Abby has long been the bastion of hysterical parental hand-wringing. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve read “Abby, please warn parents…” In fact, I’m surprised it’s taken this long to read a good “ZOMG the childrens is being molestinated by Master Cheef!”
But frankly, Abby’s response should have been “When you bought XBox Live, didn’t you take a cursory moment to put two and two together with the fact that it clearly stated that there was duration to the account, and that it required internet connection, and thought ‘hm, this appears to be some sort of online gaming thing.’”
Or better yet, she should have instructed the parent to ask her son for the GamerTag of the individual who was soliciting his whereabouts so that Microsoft could pass that person’s information along to the authorities.
Abby took a much gentler tack than that and suggested that the conversation isn’t so much about videogames as it is about simple safety guidelines to keep kids from giving too much information to adults.
DEAR TRULY GRATEFUL: I’m sure many parents are unaware that their children are vulnerable when they play online games. Of course, the best way to safeguard a minor who plays these games is to have not just one “long conversation” on the subject, but rather an ongoing dialogue about predatory adults who pretend to be someone they aren’t.
It isn’t the worst advice she’s given, although she doesn’t do much to quell the handwringing that her correspondant displays. Of course, she’s probably none too educated on the topic of how online gaming systems work, especially when popular media education of children + videogames looks something like this:
Which suggests that there are predators patrolling the highway with their DS out looking for children in cars who just happen to have Pictochat running on their DS so that they can message them while driving.
September 16th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I sort of wonder who writes to Dear Abby in these cases. I vaguely understand writing to an advice columnist for actual advice, but who has a frightening experience and immediately thinks “I should tell Dear Abby to warn the populace!”
“Dear Abby,
I am not normally a flip-flop wearer, but about a few weeks ago I didn’t feel like putting socks on, so I wore some flip-flops for the first time in months. I went out and ran some errands and did a good mile or so of walking. Well! When I got back I found that all that walking had worn a gash right into my foot where the strap goes between the toes! I had a painful scab for several weeks! You should tell your readers about the dangers of flip-flops, and warn them not to go straight into heavy-duty flip-flop wearing without getting their feet ready for it first, or maybe wearing some socks with them.
Signed,
No More Flip-Flops in New York.”
In re the Fox News video, I feel bad for Nintendo. They go to all this effort making the least user-friendly online system possible for the ostensible purpose of protecting kids from predators, and they still get shit from hysterical newscasts. At the same time, I feel like Friend Codes are the online predator-equivalent of security theater: It doesn’t actually protect people from online predators, but it’s a huge pain in the ass that causes parents to think their kids are being protected from online predators.
September 16th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Is your knee OK? Because you seem to be reading a lot into the parents’ letter that isn’t there.
They didn’t say ZOMG VIDEO GAMES! or “Please warn all parents never to let your children touch an Xbox”. What did they warn other parents to do? I shit you not: to supervise their kids when those children play online games. Oh, the horror. The irresponsbility. How dare they spoil gaming for everyone by recommending parental supervision.
Oh, wait, I forgot the First Creed of Gamers: Parents suxx0r, man.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:35 am
I dont think parental supervision is a bad thing at all, since maybe that may catch some of that hate speech out early, with all the sexist comments, rape jokes etc. I just think this letter is trying to preach something that should be common sense with parents whose children may take an interest in this particular thing (online gaming). Perhaps they may even feel a little guilty, as clearly little “Kirk” didnt get enough schooling in online safety, so now they are trying to compensate with this letter. I dont know really. Perhaps Id like to have thought we were at a point where this is the technological equivalent of writing to Abby (what the smeg is all that about anyway?) and telling her(?) that kids shouldnt play with matches. Though clearly thats an overestimation of parents in general, and an underestimation of how bad ignorance around gaming is.
Just one unrelated comment though, not so much in regards to this letter, but mythago’s “First Creed of Gamers” point. Id imagine the “creed” was thought up with the “teenage boy gamer” in mind perhaps? Its nothing important, but it just got me wondering when was the last time I read or heard something about or in regards to teenagers without it being condescending. It doesnt bother me that much, as Im on the very last “teen” year. But I since I see it so often, and I only have to imagine myself a few years ago to know that I would have been annoyed by that kind of thing. So I just feel a little sorry for teenagers really, even if some are deserving of a little condescension.
Just a little off rant really, and I cant really know what you meant by your “Creed of Gamers” so dont take what Im saying too seriously. Just an idle thought.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:14 am
myth — Abby’s advice wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t complete. Rather than just helping to “sound the alarm” that the XBox is crawling with predators and children need to be supervised while they play (I do agree that rather than hanging over your kid constantly you should just educate them that attention and approval from adults is not the end-all and be-all, and that they should guard their identity), Abby should have taken the moment to explain to readers that parents need to 1) take a moment to better-understand the sort of games their kids want before you buy. XBox isn’t necessarily live … you have to buy that, just like you have to buy a game–and parents are pretty good about investigating game content. This parent already knew that the online world was fraught with peril, simply investigating that “hey — this is something online — I need to follow up” would have been pretty basic common sense. 2) Abby didn’t do basic follow-up with Microsoft to tell her readers what do do if their child is propositioned or otherwise “approached” by an adult online. This is what really makes me angry — because without this information, parents who read Abby’s column are going to believe that there is no redress in the event that someone tries to go after their kid, and wrongfully think that they’re just throwing their child into the wilderness if they get an XBox. Abby should have contacted Microsoft and printed instructions about contacting them with grievances. Not having that information in the column fails even the most basic journalistic litmus test.
September 17th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Also, It’s interesting that The Tehran Times (you know, Tehran, Iran, the “evildoers”) posted a much more positive article for adults concerned with their children’s videogame habits. It doesn’t really address the problem at hand, but a lot of the advice it gives would have gone a long way with this particular situation.
September 17th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Yes, Abby’s letter was incomplete. But you took a letter that said “hey, our son made this mistake during an online game, we’ve talked to him in more detail and want to warn others that this happened” and used it as a launching pad for a Those Darn Parents rant that, bluntly, made shit up. There’s nothing at all in that letter about video games being evil or parents ought to protect their little flowers from the Xbox.
TheBends, I hope you didn’t read my post as being a criticism of teenagers as it wasn’t meant to be. Just that as a parent and a gamer, I am really freaking sick of the idiotic everything-you-do-sucks-man attitude from the gaming community at large, which seems to rather be projecting its own issues with hectoring parents.
September 17th, 2007 at 10:28 am
The problem is that the letter follows the basic premise of “our little flower started gaming on XBox Live and now some creep knows where he is” without pointing out that XBox is not the same as XBox Live — and that the choice to wire up the XBox is something different than just getting an XBox … a lot of parents who read Dear Abby are going to get the wrong impression that just getting an XBox means that their kid is now open season for online predators, and that should a kid be approached, there are better systems in place to go after the creep than there are out on the internet.
That said, I wasn’t trying to rag on parents. As you’ve seen, I’ve pointed out on this blog that by n large, parents are actually doing a good job of monitoring what their kids are doing with videogames.
Abby dedicates a lot of her time to making her readers afraid, and I think that this letter falls into the ‘be afraid’ category rather than a simple reminder to readers that kids should be talked to about online interactions.
September 17th, 2007 at 11:23 am
The problem is that the letter follows the basic premise of “our little flower started gaming on XBox Live and now some creep knows where he is” without pointing out that XBox is not the same as XBox Live
Fercrissake. No, the parents did not write a disseration carefully pointing out that nobody should mix up Xbox and Xbox Live and inserting disclaimers that people shouldn’t panic about online creeps and most of the Internet gaming world is perfectly safe as long as you take a few basic precautions.
What they also didn’t do was blame videogaming for posing a threat to their son, rant about how the Internet needs to be safe for five-year-olds, or insist that it was Microsoft’s fault.
What they did do was state that their son played on Xbox live, was approached by a predator, and they wanted to warn other parents that children playing online games needed supervisions from their parents. I would think that’s kind of a no-brainer, honestly, but you went after them with both barrels for things they didn’t say, or even imply, because I guess it was a good opportunity for a Stupid Luddite Parents Make Master Chief Cry! rant, even if that rant had nothing to do with, whatchacallit, reality.
And why yes, I am pissy about this subject, because I am sick to the teeth of a gamer community that simultaneously whines about “parents are the ones who should supervise” and then has a hissy about parents who actually do that, or who insist “parents should make those decisions for their own families” but rant about Teh Freedomz when parents want, oh, crazy stuff like reliable ESRB ratings to make those decisions.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I don’t think you’re being pissy — but I think that you’re falling into the same trap that you’re accusing me of.
It isn’t making shit up to read between the lines. “Kirk,” is monitored when he is online, he is given a curfew when visiting neighborhood friends, and he is overall watched like a hawk.”
Doesn’t mean “We’d talked to Kirk about stranger danger.” And I suspect “monitored when he is online” means that the computer is in a public area of the house (which I think it is a great idea) but it could also be that the parents are logging his online use, which I think is a little bit iffy.
The parent’s not being educated about XBox and videogames is also apparant in the opening paragraph:
“However, we have let him play the video game Xbox Live (where kids all over the country play the same games). We recently found out that an adult (posing as a child) had promised Kirk a free pass and asked him to call to tell him where to send it.”
That is an incredibly loaded statement. First of all, it shows off the ignorance of the writer to believe that XBox Live was made “for kids” and that the adult was “posing as a child” implies that an adult would *have* to pose as a child in order to play against another kid online, because it’s exclusively for children.
It’s not unlikely that the creep was posing as a teenager when he contacted Kirk, but I’m not inclined to believe her when she’s basically laying the groundwork for a parent to pick up Dear Abby, read the column, and decide that any adult playing XBox Live is some sort of predator trying to gain access to kids’ space.
And… when have I ranted against reliable ESRB? (confused)
September 18th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Doesn’t mean “We’d talked to Kirk about stranger danger.” And I suspect “monitored when he is online” means that the computer is in a public area of the house (which I think it is a great idea) but it could also be that the parents are logging his online use, which I think is a little bit iffy.
It “could” be any number of imaginary scenarios slanted to support the Hysterical Parents Make Link Cry theory.
Look: the sum total of this letter was, there are many other kids who play on line, this happened to our son, we are supervising him and suggest parents who were previously unaware of this risk also supervise their children. That’s it. No ZOMG BAN XBOX, no exhortations to install keyloggers, no insistence that our precious little ones be kept off the gaming Internet.
You turned this into “hysterical parental hand-wringing” because, again, you made shit up. It fits neatly into another rant about those darn room-temperature-IQ, not-getting-it parents ruining GTA for the rest of us. And you’re continuing to make shit up by hinting darkly that, gosh, perhaps these ARE hysterical parents because for all we know they’re using activity loggers, and clearly the parents are idiots who want to tell us that they thought Xbox Live was like Toontown. Nowhere does the letter say anything of the sort, and you’re backpedaling because you played an old tape instead of reading what was right in front of you. More fun that way.
(The ESRB comment was in relation to all the asshats who got their undies in a wad that anyone would have a bad word to say about Hot Coffee other than “You naughty boys!”)
September 19th, 2007 at 3:06 am
mythago: And what, exactly are you trying to accomplish by being a colossal asshole about this? I don’t really know, or care, who’s “right” in this situation but I do see you coming to MP’s space and basically being so wrapped up in being unequivocally right that you don’t care how insulting you are as long as you prove your point.
There’s this thing called diplomacy. It would behoove you to learn it, unless you honestly don’t care how you come off to people who might otherwise be sympathetic to your argument. But, if that’s the case, why the hell are you even bothering to comment on someone else’s blog?
September 19th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Myth, I think the problem is that the letter does fit into a larger hysteria that the media fuels with its endless “To catch a predator” fixations, and the tone of the writing does suggest that no matter what you do to keep the precious little ones safe predators will swoop down off of the nasty videogame internets and get your son’s cell phone number. You see “parental alert” features on the nightly news that instruct parents to read their kid’s diaries and put keyloggers on their kids computers. So yeah — there are hysterical parents out there!
And the letter does say that the XBox is for children, and that the adult her son encountered was posing as a child. It’s right there in the first paragraph. If this is the first thing that someone reads about Xbox Live (especially if they don’t know the difference between XBox and XBox Live) they’re basically set up to believe that it’s Sesame Place and that any adult in that space is the creepy man next to the bathrooms in the rainjacket.
That said — I really enjoy having you on this blog (and Tekanji, and everyone else — I was actually telling angrymob last night how happy I was with the level of discourse my regular commenters bring to this blog). It’s not exactly fun being in your crosshairs, but I respect you tremendously and hope you stick around.
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
[...] Part CMXVII of Abby responding to dumbass parents [...]
September 24th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Dude, mythago — Link doesn’t cry. o.O
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:36 am
Sometimes I seriously wonder if the majority of parents really understand what their kids get up to while online. I putter around a few social networking sites where kids (I’m guessing 13-16 years old) wander around asking strangers to cyber. I imagine they have some sort of mental image that everyone on social networking sites is a teenager like them, I’ve had a lot of them flip out on me for suggesting that maybe they should only try to solicit the virtual nasty from people they know from school because, surprise surprise, life doesn’t end at age 18 and there are some real creeps out there. I suppose it’s a tough subject for parents to talk about sex, let alone virtual sex, but I don’t think that parents really understand how their kids could get into real trouble doing an updated version of what horny teenage kids have always done.
Leaving aside that bit of uncomfortable parenting, a lot of kids simply fail to understand the axiom “If it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t.” Three hundred posts a day on online game sites stating “omg, I wuz hacked!” leaves me with almost no doubts that they really don’t understand the concept of a con artist. Parents, in general not specifically anyone here, need to stress that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch and that nobody wants to give you a pony. Skepticism and cynicism are crucial survival skills which must be nurtured and cherished.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:40 am
There’s this thing called diplomacy. It would behoove you to learn it
There’s this concept called “hilarious, unintentional irony”. It would behoove you to grasp it, or at least cease to be an example of it.
Sara - I stand corrected.
Myth, I think the problem is that the letter does fit into a larger hysteria that the media fuels with its endless “To catch a predator” fixations, and the tone of the writing does suggest that no matter what you do to keep the precious little ones safe predators will swoop down off of the nasty videogame internets and get your son’s cell phone number.
*headdesk*
The problem is that this letter IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE of the larger hysteria. You took a reasonable, sensible letter from concerrned parents who did NOT wring their hands about teh evils of Master Chief and his predatory minions, and warped it around a hundred and eighty degrees to fit into a rather generic “oh my god ‘rents are such a drag” rant. The letter doesn’t have the tone you claim and it doesn’t even say many of the things you insist it does: “kids all over the country play the same games” is not “The Xbox is for children”. You characterize the parents as hysterical, stupid and hand-wringing because, if you can f’in believe it, they advocate SUPERVISING your kids if they play Xbox Live! Two words: UN BELIEVABLE!
As a parent and a gamer, I promise you that I’m probably way more familiar than you are with the ZOMG TEH INTERNETS WILL EAT OUR PRECIOUS LITTLE ONES!!11!! hysteria. This ain’t it. It’s actually a refreshing, sensible change from that hysteria. But because it was in Dear Abby and written by a parent, you just wrote the script you wanted to see.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:47 am
You get a Pony here.
Every Day.
Aw yeah.
Your comment really does make me wonder about the very nature of being a teenager, which is learning (hopefully not the really hard way) that it is a predatory world out there and that your expanding ability to reach out socially and create your own identity doesn’t mean that there will be people lining up to celebrate this — there are in fact people lining up to exploit this. I remember some pretty fucked-up situations that I was in as a teen — online or not. Lots of luck and a little self-awareness kept things from getting bad, but it made me a little wiser in the end.
I don’t think this is a recent turn — it’s just getting more press now.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:52 am
Myth — doesn’t it bother you at all that in the first paragraph the letter-writer describes XBox live as “for kids” and that the person who contacted her son was “posing as a kid” ? Don’t you think that that’s fueling a popular conception that videogames are all for children and that anyone playing videogames online is posing as a kid in order to prey on children?
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:49 am
Doesn’t it bother you at all that you are continuing to make shit up?
The letter-writer does not say that Xbox Live is “for kids”. In fact, the phrase “for kids” does not appear anywhere in the letter. She describes what Xbox Live is, and notes, parenthetically that is is a gaming environment “where kids all over the country play the same games”. Including her TEENAGER. She’s not exactly trying to portray it as Club Penguin.
Don’t you think there’s quite a difference between “some morons are going to misread this letter and blow it out of proportion” (um….) and “the letter-writer is a hysterical, hatin’ moron”? Because your entire post was about the latter. I remember reading the letter in the paper and thinking how cool it was that finally, here we had a parent who sensibly offered a precaution about online predators, WITHOUT saying that games are evil and they’ve burned their PS3 and their precious child will never be allowed to look at a video game again.
And then I come here and read a bizarre post that suggests you didn’t so much read the letter as chop it up and plug it into a Dude, Parents Suck, Wanna Frag Somebody? rant to fill space.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:24 am
*I’m* making shit up? “the letter-writer is a hysterical, hatin’ moron”? Because your entire post was about the latter. Ignores the part where I mention that Abby could have given out practical advice about how to actually go after a predator who contacts your kid, how otherwise Abby’s advice wasn’t necessarily bad advice, and how the letter writer’s tone dovetails nicely with the media ramping up the next stage of “Too catch a predator: Videogame edition.”
Yes, I maintain that this mom was misleading potential readers of her letter that XBox Live is Club Penguin by explaining that it’s “where kids all over the country play the same games.” People play these games — kids adults, etc. To say that the purpose of the XBox is so that kids can play the same games and then proclaim that the person who contacted her son was Posing as a Kid is, to me, like saying that TGI Fridays is a restaurant where children go to eat and that an adult went in there posing as a kid and tried to lure her son into the bathroom. We don’t need to worry about people misunderstanding the purpose of TGI Fridays because of their obnoxious advertising. But there are a lot of people who don’t understand the current state of videogames. Just yesterday I was talking to an online friend about the Wii: how it works, what’s involved, parental controls, the ESRB ratings, WiFi, the whole kit n’ kaboodle. And this is someone who is online quite a lot. Parent’s don’t know about this stuff and it bothers me when someone writes to implore Abby to please, warn parents when they aren’t giving accurate information about the demographic of the system.
YES, parents need to have a good dialog with their kids about protecting their privacy online. And frankly, I am annoyed that this parent couldn’t put two and two together regarding the subscription fee and the networking requirements of the XBox to come up with “online system.” But just because she isn’t proclaiming that videogames are teh evil and that her house has been exorcised doesn’t mean that a bunch of other people reading this article aren’t going to draw that exact conclusion based on the information she gave them.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Okay, I give up. You’re reading a fourth-dimensional version of this letter that contains information not visible to us stupid, breeding Luddites who can only perceive what was actually printed in the usual three dimensions. If only I had the wit to read nonexistent, between-the-lines quotes where the parent proclaims that the purpose of Xbox Live is to be Microsoft Club Penguin, that she had no idea that there was this whole *on line* thing, and where she slyly encourages less-reasonable parents to use her letter as an excuse to get Wal-Mart to refuse to sell any game rated T.
Now I’m going to go to your room and throw out all your comic books without asking. You know how parents are.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
[...] No, the feature I caught it midway through was on online predators getting to your kids through their game console. We’ve seen this before. [...]