Revision: Cyber Bullying

Our society today is becoming more and softer. We are starting to treat issues like self esteem with medicine that damages your body in the long-run. Kids and teenagers nowadays especially are starting to deal with issues like bullying, popularity, or school tumultuousness by taking medications for depression or cutting themselves, instead of grabbing the bull by the horns. Parents by coddling their kids are not helping the situation either making their kids even more vulnerable and open to these types of threats.

                Suicide is one of the furthest steps that these kids or teenagers take nowadays and it is sad. The suicidal rate for 5-24 has increased in the past decade and we need to look at it and ask is it really because people are so much more depressed nowadays or is there a bigger different issue at hand here. With the use of internet cyber-bullying and other types of online harassment has obviously increased the opportunities for bullies and others to harass someone from school or a social setting.

                The case of Megan Meier (13) is a pretty unique one. Here it was a mother to one of her former friends who ended up using a fake online identity to harass Megan and eventually lead to her committing suicide. This is a terrible thing when an adult manipulates the mind of a young teen in a way that would make the girl commit suicide. That being said are there not things that Megan’s parents could have done to prevent this? Limit her from using the computer and in this case MySpace. Perhaps meet with her former friend and her family to sort out the issues? There are more actions that could have been taken to prevent this from escalading to the point it did.

                When I grew up my parents taught me that if somebody treated you not right or bullied you, you stick up for yourself. This is more of the case of face to face bullying and not really on the internet, but the internet is an easy thing to control for parents. You can limit what websites your kid goes on and not let them use the internet at home, or at least unmonitored. For most teens this is not the case, but parents should spend enough time and know their kids well enough to understand if there is an issue that needs to be dealt with.

                What happened to Megan is tragic and inexcusable, but to prevent this from happening to more kids and teens something needs to be done. Parents and schools instead of babying kids and teens need to deal with the issues that cause stuff like this to arise. Whether that is telling someone that it is reality or punishing a bully, action needs to be taken. When it comes to the threat of the internet and cyber-bullying monitoring what your kid is doing on the computer is probably the most effective way to stop this. There is plenty of software and technology today to where this can be stopped and nipped in the bud, before it is too late.    

Re Write: Habbo Hotel (AIM Project)

For my aim identity I wanted to choose an animal and not like your everyday pet either but an unusual animal. I thought that a regular animal might be too easy to recognize perhaps, considering I have a pretty goofy personality, so I decided to go with Willie the Whale. Unfortunately Willie was never brought to life. So have decided to write about a different experience I had online with a separate identity through the game Habbo Hotel.

Habbo hotel is an online game where you get to customize your own room in a hotel. There are private rooms and there are public rooms. Each room had different themes or activities and different people. Basically you can go to different rooms and interact with other players and participate in games, or perhaps, go to the night club and dance with another user. It is basically like living an alternate life but online. There is money involved, gold coins, which you have to buy with either a credit card, gift card, or text message from the real world. It is not necessary to purchase coins in order to play but like in real life the more money you have the more you can do.

In my experience I decided I wanted to be a club owner. So I started up a club called Vancouver Club. Obviously in order to buy furniture and other amenities in the game I had to buy coins. When I played this game I was about 13 years old so I didn’t have any income. I asked my mother to fill up my pre-paid card on my cell phone, that way I could use text messages whenever I wanted to buy coins. Life was good I bought a lot of coins and soon I had one of the five most popular private clubs on the game. I started employing people to work for me, I organized games where I would give away prizes and I also started charging and entrance fee to my club making a ton of coins, it was all good.

What ended up happening was I started liking the game reality more than my actual life so I began playing the game at home instead of going to school. I started showing up late to hockey practice etcetera. When my parents found out about all these things they were not pleased. So what happened was my mother ended up cutting me off from my phone and computer. This was a disaster I was a huge club owner and didn’t have access to funds. I still had access to the game through our school computers so I wasn’t cut off from it completely. Desperate and naïve in my search for coins, I took an offer from another player who said they could offer me a large amount of coins everyday to help him out. I knew there had to be a catch so asked what he wanted me to do in return. He said that all he wanted to was be partners in owning Vancouver Club(In the game you had to allow people access to roam freely and move stuff in your room, that is how you could employ or split ownership with other users). I thought this sounded like a good trade-off. I agreed to let him be part club owner and he held is end of the bargain as well. I received a large some of coins. Life was great once again. Later that week there was an issue with some members of our club and my partner asked me if he could get the password to my account so that he could take care of it. I felt like I trusted him at this point so, not thinking anything of it, I agreed. Next thing I knew I was logged out. When I finally logged back on after three or four tries, everything I owned was completely gone. It was as if the Grinch had been to Vancouver Club. I was ruined so I gave up the game forever that day.

This experience taught me that even though you are online and you think you know somebody you actually never really know who it really is. He was using a separate identity just like me and he plain and simply conned me. This could be the case on any social networking site, or chat room. You never really know who is on the opposite end of the conversation and it cost me. This definitely was an eye opener not just because I got conned, but also because I spent so much time in this game it started becoming my reality and there was no thought in my mind that someone would try and steal from me. Habbo Hotel was my reality and I thought I was in full control of it, like in the real world. That was not the case here.

 http://www.habbo.com/