Steve Gaunt Pontificates
The
Internet and personal consequences.
The Internet has been with us for some time now, and boy has it
become a monster.
We all know about spam messages, and the sort of bad stuff that
can be picked up like an infection, a virus, spyware and the like.
I spend a lot of my working life keeping our computers free of
that sort of thing.
But what I want to talk about today is the social effect of Internet,
how it can break up families and cause personal grief.
OK I need to give an example..
You will no doubt of heard of the Internet victims, in some cases
these are individuals who up sticks and run off with someone they
met on the Internet.
Why would they want to do that and what might the consequences
be?
A typical candidate might be a young woman stuck in a boring marriage
that she only entered into to get out of the shadow of a parent
who makes it clear that they are expected to do as well in life
as they have (or might have).
Ok you say well that's good reason to opt for the opportunities
of cyberspace.
But think about the consequences, suppose this young woman has
young children, suppose none of her family really knows what has
happened to her, you can see where I am going here.
make no bones this sort of thing does happen.
Those left behind can only guess at what’s happening but
here are some possible scenarios.
1. Under control.
You will no doubt have heard of the sort of person who lures children,
by pretending to be one of their peer group. Well I am sure this
can also happen with adults.
Once in the physical world of the Controller the victim can be
effectively held captive. and to fool the rest of the world into
thinking everything is ok, the Controller sets up an elaborate
Internet world for the victim to inhabit.
They could join the expanding group of social networking websites.
in fact the more the better as far as the controller is concerned.
The casual web watcher sees an ideal world, where the individual
appears to have lots of friends (many of these can also be constructs
of the Controller, how would you know?).
On the face of it they are now easy to contact, but no this isn't
the case, because everything that happened online is controlled,
write a message on a social networking site and it gets deleted,
the controller may even make abusive or inaccurate comments berating
the people who are trying to make contact. And making them seem
the bad guys.
Attempting to contact the so called friends obviously gets the
same response.
But here are a couple of clues to look for that might let you see
what’s happening.
There are many other things, always keep and open mind, and think
about what you see online.
A} The abuse received from 'friends' takes the same format as the
abuse from the Controller.
As an example, if the social networking website has a set of terms
and conditions.
The victim might suggest that whoever is trying to make contact
has broken these rules, but might abbreviate this to T.O.S (Terms
of Service), if the 'friend uses the same abbreviation then that
could be a clue.
B} A sudden change in attitude. The victim might start to make
contact, and then this is spotted by the Controller, to be honest
this sort of thing is easy to spot.
2. Barking Mad.
In fact the signs of this are much the same as above, but this
time there is no controller the Internet eloper, has created their
own cyber world.
Both scenarios are stressful for the family, but this one more
so because there is even less that can be done, possible causes
are Bipolar Syndrome and Paranoid Schizophrenia.
So how do we avoid this, that's easy to say but hard to implement.
The Internet is bad place, no-one kids or adults should be spending
their whole lives on/in it.
If it seems like a loved one is doing this then keep an eye on
them.
Your views on Steve pontificates.
I would be a hypocrite if I didn't allow any replies to my pontifications
so if you want to contribute send your piece to steve_gaunt@huddersfield1.co.uk
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