Writing Assignment 1

Christina Reagan

Internet Studies

Writing Assignment 1

Behold the glory that is Windows 95. (That was sarcasm if you didn't catch it.)

            My first real experience with the internet was when I was young. We had a dial up computer that the whole family fought over until my parents bought another one. Those times when I would beat both of my sisters to it were the best days. My mindset was similar to Vannevar Bush’s ideas, making it seem magical and amazing, but never really knowing where it would go. In retrospect though, I should have had Hawthorne’s mindset considering the experiences I had on the internet. Either the general populace of the internet was full of strange people, or I just attracted the weirdos.

            It’s definitely not my first experience with the internet, but it is the most prevalent in my mind: Yahoo! Messenger. I was a textbook example of why you teach your children about the terrible people on the internet.  I was obsessed with these chat rooms, for no real reason, but I remember being excited to get home from school and chat with all of these people.

I was very anti-AIM at the time (for some reason).

            A few notable people were all of the guys from Nigeria, that one guy I gave my password to, and those two girls who taught me the valuable lesson of not feeding the troll.

See also:  http://imageshack.us/f/84/troll.jpg/

            Looking back on the conversations I had with all of those people from Nigeria, I now recognize that they were scam artists, and have to laugh a little. I know I got the “prince from Nigeria” spiel at least once, since it was the coolest thing to ever happen to me. I met a real prince! Of course, being a kid in elementary or middle school, I don’t have any money to help him out (or a bank account for him to "put money into"), but I wished him good luck anyway.

            Before “troll” described people trying to get attention by angering every possible person they could, I had my first experience with two of them at the same time. I handled it terribly. All of a sudden they were picking on me. A normal kid probably would have left, cried to their mother about it, and learned their lesson, but I was a weird one. I valiantly fought these trolls, although extremely ineffectually.

For more information, please refer to this website: Trolling - Know Your Meme

            I had never gotten in a real internet fight before (I had barely gotten in a real fight before) and I was outnumbered. It was a losing battle. They picked on my username, which I was quite proud of at the time, because it was unique (“venus_thunder15”; brilliant, isn’t it?). Regardless, they poked and prodded until I turned on caps lock and unleashed my 10 year old fury. (In case you've never engaged in a contest of wits with one, 10 year olds aren't very good at arguing.) Obviously, I lost the argument – meaning I left the chatroom, logged off and didn’t log back in for about a week.

            Another obsession of mine around that time was Neopets, which is a chat site for kids (although, ironically, I didn’t use it for chatting; I just liked the games). Yahoo had a forum specifically for the website, so I decided to check it out. There was one user who said they were closing their account and giving away points and items. All I had to do was private message them with my username and password.

I was young, naive, and poor...Not much has changed.

            Only an idiot would fall for that. Obviously they would hijack my account and clean it out immediately, possibly changing the password in the process, so they could continue to take advantage of it. Well, I was that kind of idiot. I promptly gave him my information and he responded that he would give me all the things he had promised.

            I thought "Why not continue talking to him?"; perhaps find out why he’s giving his things away in the process. He didn’t respond. I asked if he was there. There was still no response. “Hello?” I asked naively. I had been duped and it took me about 30 minutes to realize it. Thankfully, as soon as I realized what was happening, I logged back in, found that my things hadn’t been touched yet, and changed my password.  I was ridiculously lucky and I know that now.

Still not as bad as this guy.

            It wasn’t as if the only type of people I talked to on the internet were scam artists looking to see if they could get something out of this little girl set free on the internet, but those types generally appeared more often. I should have been more wary of the internet. Little girls aren’t supposed to be introduced to those types of people. They’re supposed to be less carefree than I was when it comes to giving out information. Eventually I learned my lesson, and know when to keep my mouth shut on the internet, but it amazes me to look back and realize how much I would just give away on a whim.

Pictured above: Real world equivalent.