I’m gonna post verbatim my contributions to a big thread on RPGnet. Its on a registered-folk only section of the board so I won’t link to it. Its fairly long, but I would really appreciate feedback.
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(post #1)
On Saturday afternoons I run a roleplaying club that is focused on recruitment (lately we’ve been creating 2 new gamers every week, which is pretty damn snazzy).
We meet in a cafe seating area that is located in an internet barn – so there’s an island of cafe-style tables, where we hang out mixed in with random cafe people, and surrounding the tables are rows and rows of computers offering internet access. (It’s an easyInternet, for those what know the brand.)
So Saturday I was co-GMing with a guy who was running his first game (which he was doing only a month after trying RPGs for the first time) – a fun Mutants and Masterminds thing he’d come up with. As he was doing okay, my mind wandered a little and I glanced over the back of the section wall at a row of computers.
There was this guy there, who looked to be in his early 30s, and he was gazing at and writing messages in a chatroom that was bannered ‘juniorteenschatsite’ or something.
It was obvious the site was Not For Him.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t, in the end, do anything. To be quite honest, I forgot about him when the 14-year-old-newbie-filled game needed my guidance – he was gone by the time I thought of him again, which was at least an hour later.
I’m thinking back on it now, and wondering if I should have done something, and if so, what?
Erg. *shudder*
(post #2)
I was definitely aware of that possibility, that he was there legitimately. Something in his body language just screamed ‘yuk’ to me, though.
The easyInternet chain have no onsite staff to bring in.
I’m not naive about this – I know in my head there’s a lot of this goes on. But I’d never seen a genuine in-his-habitat pretend-juniorteen before. It was unnerving.
I’ve just realised, this isn’t just idle thought – if he comes back another Saturday, and I see him, I’ll be wondering what (if anything) to do.
Pretending to be a teen in a chatsite, that’s hardly criminal in and of itself, of course.
Erg. I dunno.
(post #3)
> Innocent until proven guilty, chums.
Absolutely. I’ve always been harshly critical of this country’s tabloid-driven paedophile hysteria.
But I just got bad vibes from this guy. Which ain’t worth anything to anyone who doesn’t trust the calibration of my vibometer.
(post #4)
There’re a lot of voices coming in saying ‘its not illegal’. We know this already.
*No-one* is jumping to conclusions here. The actions that have been suggested are of the ‘get someone to check things out and make sure they’re on the up and up’ variety.
The easyInternet site requires registration to contact them. Dumb. So I’m not emailing them for advice as to whether or not its possible to monitor chat logs. And there’s no-one on site at the cafe to talk to (only coffee staff and cleaners who know nothing of the internet stuff).
If I see this again, and I’m uncomfortable, I don’t see that I can do anything about it. At most, I could go and talk to the person and say ‘I noticed you’re on a junior teens site and it’s making me uncomfortable’. If I don’t choose to do that, I sit back and don’t think about it.
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Argh. I don’t know. I’m really troubled by the notion of an adult hanging on a teensite in ‘disguise’. Just because it happens a lot doesn’t make it right or ‘acceptable’. (Any more than stupid trolls are right or acceptable.) Social interaction is the way to deal with these sorts of concerns.
I’m twisting in the wind here. I think I need to think carefully about what my obligations are in this situation, in order to be a responsible and reasonable member of society/community.
(post #5)
> The presumption of innocence only applies to the legal system.
> It does not apply to the opinions of private citizens.
FWIW, I’d prefer a world where it did.
(post #6)
Oh man. Can of worms well and truly opened here. Just watch your analogies, guys.
What I saw was a man in his thirties sitting on a computer participating in a chatsite that was specifically, clearly and exclusively targeted at 12 year olds.
What I know is that there are a surprising number of men who visit such chatsites and pretend to be children.
So analogies with anything other than a website that is explicitly for young teens don’t hold. And analogies with schoolteachers or school volunteers don’t hold either – there’s no possibility of deception there.
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Now, I know full well that there are legit reasons why he might be on that site. But, as I understand it, the odds of this guy being in that chatroom pretending to be a kid are vastly higher than the odds of him being in there legitimately. I also got the proverbial ‘bad feeling’ about it.
Where does this leave me? I don’t know. While Radical and Cessna are seriously misunderstanding/misrepresenting my position (and quite unpleasantly I might add), I am leaning towards their point of view – that ultimately, it isn’t my place to do anything.
All the measures I can think of to intervene are too intrusive. They all get too close to ‘guilty until proven innocent’ for my taste. I’ve mentioned before in this thread that the culture in Britain of hysteria about paedophiles disturbs me. This is the microcosmic form of that.
If I believe that we should give people the benefit of the doubt in order to prevent unreasonable suffering by the innocent, then I have to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.
That doesn’t mean I need to feel entirely comfortable about doing so, of course.
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I’m not entirely convinced of this, mind. I also feel that I am part of a community and as such I have a responsibility to look out for trouble and act when I see reason to.
Mostly that’s simple stuff – if there’s a broken bottle in a children’s play area, I’ll go pick it up.
This is not simple. If I get an idea that something bad is afoot here, I have no way to check it out without overstepping what I feel are appropriate boundaries. So I either discount my feeling or overstep those boundaries.
I’m sticking within the boundaries for now. But I’m not entirely convinced its the right choice. Maybe neither of them are the right choice.
I’d love to see people keep talking about this, because I’m not finding it a simple situation. But please, no snarkiness, and no more dumb analogies.
Considering that your vibometer tripped and you are still discussing it (on more than one public forum no less), I’d take it that the actions of the ‘guy’ were dodgey enough to warrent your attention. But really the internet is a vast place full of things and people who visit it that do not make sense for this scenario to be only a minor transgression. Worth observing but not worth confronting. So yeah, I think you did the right thing – nothing.
Also I reckon that while you are still thinking about it you’ll be on the look out for this guy next Sunday and the Sunday after… If this guy is a creature of habit (a stereotype that I think we all place on dodgey people) you’ll come across him in one of the next few weeks. In that case I reckon the best option is for you to deliberately try and trip his vibometer and make him as uncomfortable with the idea of looking at that stuff as you are with him…
So remember that the force is strong in you to do good. You’ve already done it – I reckon the camera footage of the cafe last Sunday would show the guy leaving 5 mins after you got engrossed in your game again. Don’t underestimate the power of being pegged by you! If you ever gave me a questioning gaze I’d run for the hills!
Unless you actually read what he was posting(?) I guess there are legit reasons why he might have been visiting such a site… perhaps he is a guidance councillor or teacher and was doing research? I could see how it might be helpful in some jobs (Yeah, yeah, I know I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt). However, there are also some very dodgy reasons…
The problem is, short of a degree of censorship and scrutiny by the “authorities” that both you and I would be darned uncomfortable with, I can’t see any way of stopping predatory adults accessing chatrooms and e-groups aimed at teenagers on private computers… but internet cafes often have policy on such things… if he comes back you could mention it to the manager… I think I would…. you might at least be able to limit his access to more public computers.
Yeah… it is icky, though (assuming it stops at chatrooms) unlikely to do any real damage…
Okay… just read the rest of the post… no manager to mention it to… in which case I can’t think of anything you could reasonably do… now I’m feeling queasy in sympathy!
if you come across him doing it again, send one of your 14 year olds over as bait, and have them say, “hey, i use this site, you’re old!”, and see if he runs or pounces.
sorry. 🙂 🙂
i don’t see what you can achieve without considerable effort and subterfuge. you need more information to approach any authority. confronting him at present would at most send him to another internet cafe.
other than that, trust your instincts and act with pure motives.
Okay, I didn’t read everything – way too much to read but I know the basics and I feel your yuck.
On a basic level I see the whole concept as something akin to roleplaying. In general I have no problem with older people pretending to be what they are not. I do it all the time when roleplaying, so do you. I don’t really see a difference when the internet is concerned and certainly realise that many people use different personas on the internet.
Does sex have anything to do with it? I don’t think a 12-year old is going to get caught up in sex stuff, they probably just won’t get it. For 13 -year olds and higher mucking around when sex on the internet, in chat rooms and stuff, seems to be a learning thing that to me doesn’t really seem that harmful. I personally didn’t have sec for the first time until I was legal but I had definitely exposed myself to it before that time. I’m pretty sure girls are the same. Internet or no.
When does it get wrong? There are sexual predators out there and some of them use the internet to hook up – bad.
Where does this lead? I like to trust instincts and vibes. I also think that perhaps you noticed the particular chat site he was on for a reason. I don’t think the question is whether what this guy is doing is wrong or not – I don’t really see how it can be (but that’s a personal thing). The real question is whether the guy is dangerous or not. Dangerous = bad and possibly why you are getting bad vibes from him.
What can you do about it? To be honest I can’t answer that for you, I don’t know the environment or the place, nor have I had the vibes from the guy. I expect an aproach probably won’t achieve very much. It is unlikely to make your vibes go away nor is it likely to make the guy any less dangerous (assuming he is dangerous). Perhaps you yourself could log onto the chat room and see what goes on there, perhaps even log in while the guy is there, lurk a bit and see what he is doing (you might need to sneak a look at his id). Investigating what he does there and what he is trying to achieve might set your mind at ease or help with your conviction that this is a bad guy. If it is true that he is dangerous then knowing for sure would make it easier to act.
This potentially ended up much longer and way more rambling than I thought it would. Hope it helps.
A school teacher’s approach: stand behind him and pretend to be noting down details.Move casually away.
Just wanted to say I’m with you on the “part of a community and responsible to look out for trouble and pick up broken bottles” etc point.
I believe that most of the big problems in the world could be considerably reduced if more of us were willing to take responsibility, and less of us were prone to say “Yeah I know it’s awful that this thing is going on right under my nose, but it’s not my mess to clean up so I’ll go back to picking my nose or whatever.”
There’s probably a thin line between that and being a nosy busybody, but the line does exist, and I think there’s a larger element of cowardice in a lot of us making this decision (scared of looking bad as much as of coming to grief), rather than of altruistically minding our own business. ‘Cause if we were really doing the latter we wouldn’t be rushing off to gossip about it, would we?
This doesn’t help your situation much, it’s more saying “I feel your pain.” I guess I’m more talking about knowing something bad is happening rather than merely suspecting it.
At the end of the day you are neither a policeman nor are you Batman.
Thanks for all these comments, guys. Much appreciated.
It wouldn’t surprise me if everyone in that chatroom was a sad old git in a raincoat.
*cough*
Social niceties be damned. I reckon you put on your best light-hearted Kiwi voice and go “Jeez mate, are you some kind of perv or what?” If he has a good excuse, then that’s his big chance to trot it out. If not, he’ll be far too much on the back foot to retaliate. It seems to me that anyone with legitmate research interests would be doing it in business hours in their office.
Ugh, I feel your pain.
I have no idea what *I* would do in this situation but it would make me uncomfortable.
Things I think regarding this:
1. That the leave others alone instinct is strong in us, and in western society (I have noticed that ‘meddling’ is much more common here in India) and that this is often a Bad Thing. Predators rely on the non interferance policy that has started to pervade out post modern morality. I like that you have ‘look out for the community’ attitude and I am sad that I don’t see more people with it.
2. having said all that I don’t have any advice for _what_ you can do – though Stephens approach has a lot of appeal. But, as soemone else said, is all you’ll do is send him off somewhere else. Still, it’s better than nothing and maybe he’ll think ‘People do care, they do watch, maybe I should stop’. Okay that’s a pretty far fetched hope but you never know. As silly as it was I liked Billy’s idea as well, of sending one of your fourteen year olds over to hassle him. But it’s probably inapproapriate.
3. I disagree with some of wehat Jarratt said about 12 years olds not being interested. Not too long ago in the UK a 12 year old ran away to paris with a 30 year old she’d met on the internet. Also, the major consumers of pornography are boys between the ages of 12 to 17 so they are *targetted* by porn sellers. Teenage girls are the major female consumers of it. When I was 19 I hear of an 11 year old getting pregnant to a 12 year old, we have school in NZ for teenage mothers. The reality is that our society sells sex as safe, consequenceless, and harmless fun and teenagers buy that message. And often suffer the consequences for it.
4. I think you are right to feel disturbed by this, and I am not surprised that you don’t know how to act. Culturally we’ve been taught not to impose our values on others, this is so ingrained it’s hard to overcome, even when you are aware of it. There are times when this attitude is good, and there are times when it’s very definately not. Your moral compass is having trouble finding true north, or to put it differently you have two moral imperatives to cope with: One to not impose your values on other, and one to protect the innocent in your society. I think the latter should win.
In my blog I talked about being confronted with a potential incident of gross bullying. In the end I decided to act, but the situation defused itself before hand. I was afraid of the consequences of acting, but I thought that I had to do something because I beleived what was going to happen was wrong. I could have suffered injury for it. And yet in some ways I feel more at ease about that than your situation. Simply because it was clear cut in my view, and the action i would have had to take was clear cut as well. The difficultly in your situation is not determining that it’s dodgy, your instincts have already told you that. The trouble is working out how to act upon that belief.
Doing nothing *is* a choice, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s not. I may be the right choice, it may not be. In this case I think you could argue that it was, in a sense you have given ‘benefit of the doubt’ to the guy. But if you see him at it again, then it’d be harder to justify. As to what you do, well, I really don’t know. Sorry. I still don’t know what I’d do. Probably tell someone braver than me (like my wife) and get them to go and check it out.
As for it being a teacher, this seems very unlikely to me as a teacher (both computing and guidance counselling). Teachers work face to face with their charges. As for a counceller of some description *maybe* but again this seems very unlikely. Perhaps the most likely legitemate thing is that he was an ‘official moderator’ for the chat site. Though this too seems unlikely to me.
Really, I go with your instinct that the chances of legitemacy are remote and the chances of dodginerss are high.
Dunno if any of this helps really. It’s a bit of a ramble. It’s a tough situation Morgue, but trust your instincts and do right by them (and in doing so by others).
One last comment. Whose rights are more important, a relatively defenceless kid (the number one concern amongst teens in schools in the UK is being kidnapped assulted and killed) or an adult who should know better?