Get your pitchforks - The Internet is coming

(Note from the future: Surnames removed from story, this now very much grown up person doesn't need her kids Googling this unsympathetic analysis of the story)

This is what we call a world class passing of the buck. The girl was later found to be safe but her chances of LOL’ing and ROFL’ing again in the near future are slim to none. The internet - IT’S VOODOO I TELL YOU. KEEP YOUR KIDS AWAY FROM IT. Or, like some people just let your kids do whatever they like on it completely unsupervised! 

Chat site ‘brainwashed’ girl 

Well, that's not a good start. 

The distraught parents of a teenage girl missing for three days believe she is with someone she met on an internet chat site. Nathalia ****, 15, of Kew, in Melbourne’s east, went missing on Tuesday after arguing with her parents the night before. David and Ingrid **** have since been shocked to find an email contact list of more than 400 names and copies of emails their daughter had been sending and receiving over a general internet chat site. 

Mr and Mrs **** found their daughter had sent her mobile phone number to people on the list, which includes addresses such as “Iwannahavesex” and “Iluvnat”. They believe she has run away to meet someone she met through the website and are desperate for her to return home safely. Police are investigating a sighting of her this week in the Geelong area. 

So far so much like every other online teenage runaway fiasco, even down to the potential for an online pervert. Here comes the hype:

Mrs **** said Nathalia’s personality had changed since she started using the chat site in the last six months. She said her daughter, who had previously appeared happy, recently became secretive and deceptive. “Ever since she’s had that (chat site) she’s changed her personality,” Mrs **** said. “It’s as if she’s been brainwashed into something.” 

The couple said Nathalia was a very sensitive, vulnerable girl and begged her to come home. 

So how did she manage to stumble onto this CLEARLY EVIL site (whatever it is) under such strict parental supervision and guidance? Oh, you mean there doesn’t appear to be any? But it MUST be the fault of that evil computer. No parent wants to think their kid is going to be enough of a dolt to go on the run with some 45-year-old truck driver from Griffith who was posing as a 18yo superhunk but guess what you clowns IT HAPPENS. ALL THE TIME. 

How many more times do people have to hear it before they get the idea that if your kid is “sensitive” and “vulnerable” then stuffing their computer away and giving them unlimited access to whatever they want on the web may end in tears? I mean really. You come to expect people to view everything through rose-tinted glasses with their heads tilted slightly sideways as if they were under heavy sedation but this is your kids we’re talking about. The least you can do is check what they’re doing online and in the case of teenage boys bust in the door unexpectedly once in a while. 

Sure the internet has made it easier for perverts to operate but who’s fault is that? Thousands of people are having their drinks spiked across the city every week but we’re not going out and picketing Bacardi Breezer for providing the implement to which the pervert can add his gear. Parents, take SOME responsibility at least for what your kids are doing. If you let the computer act as a surrogate parent 90% of the time of course the dumbass impressionable kid is going to start to get a warped sense of what’s right or wrong, and when some idiot starts showing affection to them or listening to their gripes they’re obviously going to get some attachment to this person.

The world is a sick place you fuckers, don’t tell me you didn’t know it already. No doubt the girl has made a mistake, up and we’ll probably never know the true story. But nor should we. Of course if there is a guy involved he's significantly more responsible than anyone and is likely to be on the receiving end of some digital stimulation of his own in the slammer. Let that be a lesson to potential perverts - no matter what you do there’s a 400lb man with tattoos and liberal views on human sexuality who will do it to you ten times harder whether you like it or not. Idiot. 

I'd burn down the Internet’s offices but my copy of the White Pages doesn't list the address. I tried send them an email through internet@internet.com explaining how disgusted I was that they created a program to ENSNARE HELPLESS CHILDREN but I’d already thrown my modem and monitor from my 9th floor window (almost hitting a schoolbus full of nuns and sick children) to make sure it didn’t capture me as well. I was lucky - please shelter your children under the stairs until they are 18 to make sure this does not happen to them as well. 

PS - Another good reason not to breed.
PPS - How about just banning everyone under 17 from the internet full stop? Livejournal would go out of business.