The Internet is Gross: and other things I've learned this week

So it took me a while to get into this whole internet craze. My dad was actually the one who first got me a screen name - purple1115.  And with this moniker I was thrown into the world of dial up internet.  For most of high school I stuck with instant messaging my friends while simultaneously talking on the phone with them.  I even was able to talk to the computer and somehow it like worked as a phone and my friends could hear me and I could hear them.  This was before ichat and we didn't have any extra technology on my computer so to this day I'm not really sure how the hell that happened.  Hallucination maybe?  All that was pretty tame until I discovered chat rooms.


First off, do chat rooms still exist? I know they have chat roulette but that's like instant messaging with video chat right? I've never used this technology as I have no desire to message a total stranger who will more than likely show me his nether regions. Moving on, as an adult I now know that chat-rooms are basically traps for underage girls.  If pedophiles were fisherman the chat-room would be their net and their fish are 14 year old girls.  I mean they don't even need a fishing rod, they just wait for the fishes to make the mistake and get stuck in some room they think is for *NSYNC and end up talking some weirdo in Omaha.  After running into some bumpy roads with chat-rooms myself I decided I would back away from that whole seedy world of the internet.  I mean I didn't even know people got porn online until I was in college. I'm still not entirely sure how that works and I don't really want to know so I guess in this instance I am naive and hope to remain so.  Again, unwarranted nudity is not really what I'm looking for when I'm reading my gmail.  So afer moving to college  my school finally got Facebook mid sophomore year.


I love me some Facebook even though I don't really understand the news-feed and I don't really like looking at people's baby photos or wedding photos, or pronouncements of love for their cats...so maybe I don't love it.  I do know however that Myspace, while a great place for musicians to get their music heard, is also overwhelmingly a place for weirdos to send you illicit messages with offers of free massages. I'm not going to rag on Myspace though, it was the original Facebook and they already have it hard enough.  I will say that I am not ok with Craigslist though, now that I really know what it is about.

You know those magazines you find on busses that have offerings of Eastern European tranny prositutes and again, massages, and all other manners of things you don't need to see advertised but have come to associate with the bus?....well thats Craigslist.  It's all those terrible things you don't need to know about about but have come to associate with the internet.  And then randomly there will be something of use like, an advertisement for dental hygensit school or in the case of CL,  a well priced, not too worn, futon. I've only been on Craigslist once, a year and a half ago, to sell my pull-out couch.  I knew there was a section for hiring sex workers and the like because of the Craigslist Killer...and from what I know of the 15minutes of the Lifetime movie version I saw and the creepy CNN coverage I can tell you this much....that section is a bad section.  But after some research last week I realized the whole freaking site is one big cesspool.


If the state of Florida mated with Bob Guccione, you would end up with Craigslist.  I mean if you are looking to sell your Ikea bookcase you might find a buyer but even in that section you come across the most bizarre listings ever seen.  I mean I read some of the unsavory ones and I don't even know how some of their requests would be physically possible.  In other cases I was tempted to contact the poster and say, "Seriously, does that work for you? Do many women take you up on your invitation to come to their homes and hit them with deli meat?" No thank you, I like to keep things kosher. I mean we shouldn't have been shocked about the Craigslist killer, instead we should have been shocked that he only killed one poor soul and there hasn't been a whole crew of people like that.  Ugh gives me the creeps.  It's like that show that used to air, Dateline: To Catch A Predator.


Now I want to preface this with, I do not think those creeps or what they did was at all amusing.  However, I was perplexed as to how they hired that actress, "You look realllll young, would you like to be bait for a pedophile sting on television?"  Yipes, I'm not sure I would take that deal.  I will ask though, why, everytime she was about to start the sting she'd either say, "Do you want some lemonade," or "I just got to to switch out the laundry."  I mean if you hear either of those things you know you're in for it, and likely you deserve it. Chris Harrison is going to come out and nail your ass.  I mean he can't anymore because he was just nailed for an illicit affair of his own...I wonder if he met her on Craigslist.