In our real lives, how do the majority of us communicate, interact with, and make sense of our fellow man and surroundings? We use our senses, right?

How do you tell a good meal from a bad one? Does it smell burnt? Does it look raw? Are the vegetables hard and undercooked? Does it taste delicious, or foul? Are the other diners relishing that same meal, or pushing their plates away from them?

How do you tell if a 6 month old child is ill? You check. Are they pale, cold, hot, clammy, crying, have a rash, spots, gripes, sore gums, runny nose, etc; Right? We make sense of our world and come to decisions, by using our senses and our experiences.

To communicate properly, in real life, we use our facial expressions, gestures and more subtle signals, {some that we are not even aware of such as the dilation of the eye when we see someone we are attracted to} to get our emotions, moods and meanings across. The facial expressions of people expressing the most common emotions of pain, joy, anger etc, are understood right across the world, on every continent.

With the Internet, we are robbed of this facility, our means of understanding, so we devise ways around it, and thats why we use emoticons, avatars, pictures, colours, nicknames, capitals letters, exclamation marks and lol, lol!.

Are you still with me? ;-)


So, if we go into a chat room and see HotStud4UXXXXX parading a "Stallone in swimming trunks" avatar, using all capitals to ask A/S/L?, we don't assume that that guy is a brain surgeon, do we?

Similarly, if we go into chat and state our age as 23, 37, 49, we dont expect to be targeted by a paedophile, do we? If we are not targeted by a paedophile, does that mean there are no paedophiles there?

No, of course it doesn't!

What would you do if you made chat friends with a guy of, say 45, who seemed interesting and nice enough, but who kept asking in chat if there were any 12 year old girls who would like to PM?
Would you become suspicious? Would your senses, your normal family type senses become alert?

Would you say or do nothing, because he seemed a nice guy to YOU or would you say or do something, alert someone, because of the perceived risk to the 12 year old girl?

Ok, so lets look at the people who use chat sites; some are intelligent, some arn't; some are lonely, some arn't; some are geeks, some arn't. some are nasty, some are nice. The range is enormous; but they all use senses, experiences and other aids, to communicate with and assess their fellow chatters.

People who use CerTain chat sites, such as those ones that specifically advertise themselves as suitable for families are also incredibly diverse, yet don't we all have an understanding about what family means? Is it safe to assume that family in this context, means an age range from 10 to 70? Can we, should we, assume that swearing, lewdness, violence, and all other inappropriate material normally accepted as not fit for familys is not to be allowed or encouraged in this family environment?

Are we allowed, expected, even encouraged, to feel safer, more comfortable, less on our guard if cerTain chats sites also advertise and make much of the fact that they have a working security force in place for the overseeing and protection of the chatters? Is that not one of the reasons why we actually choose to frequent such sites?


So, we are in our "family" chat site, using our senses and experience to assess our fellow chatters, feeling safe with the presence of security officers and we see someone making naughty chat; is it OK to complain? We see a picture that is not pornographic, but very violent; is it OK to complain?

What happens if the naughty chat is being laughed at by the security force?

What happens if the violent picture belongs to a security force member?

I am not saying that the naughty chatter or the the person with the violent picture is wrong; I'm saying that the administrators, owners and head honchos of that site are wrong!


Discipline, rules, regulations and enforcement come from the top down.

Ask any Army Officer, any Police Cadet.

When the head honchos and security force ignore their own senses and experiences to tell them what is right for a family site, or worse, allow friendships and alliances to colour their acceptance level of what is allowed in a family site; when those same head honchos and security forces do the very actions and chat that is unacceptable from others, in a family site they should be ashamed of themselves, step down and let the site be run properly.

I do not blame the young girl or boy in these places who get carried away and put up a risque picture; I do not blame the male chatter who forgets himself and on the odd occasion says something slightly naughty. But I DO, vociferously, blame those in power who, by their own actions, or lack of action, encourage and allow these sites to degenerate far past the acceptable use of the word FAMILY

When there is no discipline, when the rules are continually bent and pushed, when the enforcement of those rules is arbitrary dispensed with eyes on friends, popularity and/or promotion, my senses are outraged.

When a few truly bad people get into positions were they CAN, DO, and ARE, pushing the boundaries and slowly eroding away the basic instincts for normal good taste and sense, knowingly, wickedly, for their own selfish, depraved tastes, and I complain about it, try to warn people about it, does that make me a nut? A zealot?

When I and others can visit those sites and find many raunchy nicknames, bad pictures, naughty chat, and questionable items within an hour, am I wrong to question the integrity of the administrators, or the actual work and dedication of the Security, of that site?

If I, and others, use senses that have not been dulled by exposure, and are truly amazed and disgusted with our findings, have we not the right to alert others to what we find?

This is a "heads up" call readers, and if you cannot see that, or try to deny it, or choose sit back and ignore it and do nothing, then be that on your conscience!

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