When you get a five million dollar grant to set up an internet cafe for middle/high school students, one of the first things you should do, before you paint and carpet the room, buy the desks and nifty cubicle things to hold the computers is to hire a young person who has a clue about internet culture. (And I use that word “culture” loosely.) Because if you don’t, those middle school students are going to run right over you. Some guy at Fark posted a link to this site – archive link because the real site is now down due to the Farking traffic surge – but screencapped here for your viewing “pleasure.” Click for a larger image:
It’s the very flower of 1995 web design. Note the “hi-tech” repeating background image. Note the fact that it’s been designed for an 800 x 600 screen resolution. Note the scrolling text at the top, which warmly welcomed us to the Cyber Cafe. Most of all, note the little animated graphic of the computer on the right.
The Farkers are having a great time with it. Because that the oh-so-clever reference to the fact that the school district called this program the “Cyber Cafe” is recognizable to millions of middle and high schoolers as an invitation to talk dirty online. (Offensive, crude, vulgar, profane, and otherwise not safe for work definition of cyber can be found here. Parents should bookmark that site and refer to it when their kids say something they don’t understand.)
Since the intarweb first gained widespread home use, it’s been a race for parents to keep a step ahead of kids. I worked at AOL back in the early 90s. We had 1.2 million customers and the big goal then was five million – if we made it, Steve Case promised to buy everyone a leather AOL bomber jacket. AOL charged by the minute back then, over and above your monthly five hours. When I got stuck working the phones (email tickets were a thousands times better to deal with), parents would call in, distraught because little Johnny had taken their checkbook and signed up for twenty or thirty free trials, which then rolled over into paying accounts because Johnny didn’t cancel. Then their mortgage payment would bounce. They’d call back the next month because Johnny opened accounts on each one of their credit cards.
Obviously, the real solution for parents is to have a solid relationship with their kids. But schools and other organizations should make it a point not to be a patsy to kids who are more web savvy than their teachers, and not to solely rely on technology to keep kids safe, because like the v-chip, it is wholly inadequate. Have some idea of the culture they live in, and work to keep up. Because otherwise, when they type CD9 or MIRL? you won’t know that you should be worried.
Recent Comments