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I remember a time, long long ago, in a galaxy not too far from here, the Internet wasn’t just another technical assumption. It wasn’t taken for granted like it is today, where if it’s down for a few days, you’re an instant outcast. You endure sleepless nights, worrying about how many friends you’ll lose on Facebook, how many Tweet followers you’ll lose, or blog fans will forget you ever existed after 16 hours post-free.
I’m talking about a time even pre-dating that special period when the Internet was new and exciting, before you could find out the day’s weather in 2 minutes before leaving the house. You could source any phone number in the world, in 30 seconds. But why bother? Just email, or look up the information on the website anyway! This was the ‘Golden Age’ of the Internet. Who wouldn’t be quivering with juvenile excitement at the speed of their broadband enabled porn download time? In 10 minutes, you could have enough hours of video footage to fill up a Mini Cooper. Previously, you’d beg the webpage to come down low enough (when the pages would load up centimetres of lines at a time) for you to actually get a look at something good, and do your stuff before your mum possibly came home from work early.
I’m talking about a time before social networking. The cretaceous ancestor of the annoying Facebook, Twitter and Bebo grandchildren, is the chat-room. To this day I’ve never been in, or anywhere near one. I’ve never stumbled across anywhere I’d be likely to see a link to a website, affiliated with one, but they were there. I’m assured they were there. Back when the chat-room was king, how much easier would it have been to be an internet paedophile?
I mean, just pretend you’re a paedophile for a minute… and before you cut your own balls off (or mine) I don’t mean a proper ‘physical’ one, who hangs around parks before he cuts wise, goes for the easy money and becomes a P.E. teacher. I’m not even talking about ‘Bedroom Paedophiles’ who don’t directly harm anyone, but do access child pornography, and therefore facilitate the whole industry, becoming just as criminal as the first set. No. I’m specifically talking about the chat-room paedophile, pretend you’re one of them.
You’re in a chat-room, you strike up a conversation about Steps, and hey presto everyone thinks you’re an eleven year old girl (unless you’ve filled the form in wrong, in which case everyone thinks you’re an eleven year old boy, and you’re a bit weird. (I’m not saying gays are weird! Just that anyone showing gay tendencies at that age, would probably have been thought of as weird by his colleagues!!! (and I’m not saying a young boy can’t enjoy classic songs like tragedy and My Best Friend’s Girl without obviously being a massive gay either!!!!))). It’s all very easy to impersonate a girl when all you have to do is read that week’s Mizz to find out which member of NSync had a new haircut, and win a pub quiz on The Backstreet Boys’ favourite things to do on a first date.
Of course, present day, Internet Paedophile is a forgotten career path. There’s just far too much work involved. You need pages and pages of ever increasingly well doctored photos. You practically need a post-graduate degree in Computer Artwork. Not to mention having to keep it all up, dedicating 8 hours a day to a constant mytwace stakeout. Make one mistake, say one thing unlike your alias, and the cover’s blown. These young kids are so subconsciously experienced in the next-gen world, they can smell a rat a mile off, they can certainly smell a dirty old man from much farther away than wherever you are.
Some may say this kind of shared information is a greater form of security (It’s harder to impersonate someone if you need pictures of them). It’s the I.D. card argument issue all over again. Having a be all and end all, one form of I.D. is OK if you need to prove you’re you. It will stop other people easily pretending they’re you when all they have is a poxy credit card right? But what happens when instead of the credit card, they get your I.D. card? You’re fucked that’s what.
“You’re not you. He’s you. How can you be you, when he’s already you?”
“But..”
“Have you got a card that says you’re you?”
“No, but I…”
“He has. He must be you”
“He stole it from me!”
“Don’t raise your voice at me, or I’ll give you a night in the cells, whoever you are!”
Admittedly, this probably isn’t exactly how the proposed I.D. card system would work (as this wouldn’t work for 5 minutes).
Back to the point. With so much information so easily available and so easily fakeable (given the correct software and training), you must consider if indeed it is possible to cross over completely to the digital realm. Like a poor early eighties movie where a teenage computer nerd finds a way to transfer his body (and soul – although it’s not explained how) into a computer program so he can ‘live’ the game, the reality is here. Fact has (in fact) overtaken fiction. Instead of being restricted to the one program, or one game. The boy can transfer across the entire Internet.
You can alter photographs of yourself, make yourself thinner, better looking, more tanned. If you’re so incredibly ugly to start off with, you can create your own avatar and transfer it to every system going. Just use a computer animated version of what you say looks like you. You can attend fake events, or pretend you went to real ones, enjoy boasting about your achievements. See a film, enjoy a virtual meal, you can blog about the expensive dinner you haven’t paid for nor eaten, boast your work with Greenpeace or Unicef whilst sitting in your pants eating a Big Mac and drinking non-fair trade coffee. Who needs to do anything anymore!? You don’t even need to be there in person to have sex anymore. That’s all online too!
Throughout the whole history of humanity, man as a species, has survived solely for only one reason. Every single technical advancement ever made, from the wheel right through to penicillin and landing on the moon. It’s all been to impress some girl. Imagine the levels of pussy Alexander Fleming must have got when he came up with that one! It cured syphilis for fuck’s sake!
Living in a digital world, what is there to force any man to try and do anything anymore? He can impress a girl just by writing a program that remotely covers her page in rose petals.
The world is over.
But… I might as well get some sex out of the end of it. I’ve just posted some photos to facebook from a 3rd world African village, where you can presume I’ve just come back from, helping starving children learn how to play Pong.
Change Your Life With Social Networking – Brought to you by James Wormald -