Internet Safety: It’s No Laughing Matter, Or Is It?
Learning not to indulge in risky online behavior is a serious subject that merits a certain degree of gravitas. Or so I thought.
Published: March 17, 2006
I’ve spent the better part of this year speaking to school groups about Robin’s Rules for Internet Safety, especially as they pertain to MySpace, Facebook and other social networks. But lately I’ve enlisted the help of two really funny guys: Demetri Martin and David Lehre. What they do, that I can’t, is let kids laugh at themselves. Don’t underestimate the ability to laugh at the jerkiness of your ways. It goes a long way with the under 21 crowd.
Take a look at TrendSpotting by Demetri Martin, a segment that appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Martin, a Beatle-haired twenty-something (?), is an equal opportunity comic when it comes to making us laugh at our own stupidities. In his Social Networking piece kids come off as jerks for getting sucked into a scene where bits and bytes are your only friends and adults get scoured for believing that social networks are nothing but dens of shallow inequities.
By the time Demetri takes us on his guided tour of MySpace, where the millions of people who hang out there are his so called “friends” and where tidying up his cyber-grill is a “hot night”, the kids are howling. At the same time they’re also learning from a smart-older-brother type just why posting sexed up pictures and false information is kind of lame. Martin flashes his impish smile as he matter-of-factly comments to Stewart in the post segment segue, “The down side of MySpace is that there are a lot of sexual predators. The upside is that there’s lots of sexual prey.” I could not get away with that line.
Next up is a 21 year old named David Lehre who’s made a parody of MySpace called <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFT-lyFN3BM&search=david%20lehre”>MySpace: The Movie</a> - a series of vignettes that each teach a lesson. (The lessons are my interpretations whether those where his intentions or not.)
Episode One:
PRIVACY COUNTS
Teenaged boy is in the bathroom. He’s grooving to the music while snapping photos of himself, ostensibly for his MySpace profile page. As he gets into it, the clothes start peeling off. He hops on the countertop to photograph himself ala Markey Mark wannabe, when his mom knocks and enters the bathroom. The sudden transition from sex kitten to a self righteous person whose privacy has been violated by mom is a gem!
Episode Two:
YOU DON’T KNOW A THING ABOUT A PERSON YOU MEET IN CYBERSPACE
Two teenage boys visit the MySpace profile of a girl named YETI. To their eyes she seems like a hot East European dream babe. But a meeting in real life proves that a YETI is not what she seems.
Episode Three:
CHAIN MAIL IS DUMB
A pre-teens worst fears. Their chain mail doom prophecies comes true.
Episode Four:
YOU CAN LOSE A REAL RELATIONSHIP WITH MYSPACE
A real life girlfriend freaks out when she find out her password is not in her guy’s top eight fantasies.
Episode Five:
THE PARTY SCENE CAN MAKE YOU SICK
Tom, the co-founder of MySpace and everyone’s first friend on the site when they sign -up, shows up at a party and makes a jerk of himself by partying until he drops to his knees at the toilet bowl.
Thanks, David and Demetri. I’ll go on helping parents and kids find their way through the digital world, but I really appreciate the help… and the laughs.