From the NY Post: the excellent columnist Rikki Schlott writes on how social media has contributed to the social ills of America.
I was probably about 9 or 10 years old when, on a summer night in a friend’s basement, a pal suggested we log onto a website called Omegle.
You can guess where this is going.
[W]e were . . . served up images of people cutting, adult men in dimly lit rooms telling us we were “cute” (we quickly hung up on them), and — a first for all of us — a guy masturbating.
Yuck. A marvel of our age, the Internet, concomitantly gives sexual perverts a convenient avenue on which to spread their filth.
Of course there are digital filters and the like available to block those god-awful souls, but they’re not foolproof and worse, more often than not block websites that are a far cry from being pornographic.
Ms Schlott continues:
That’s because, no matter how many parental controls and blockers you apply, filters are always porous enough to let the dark underbelly of the internet in through a laptop or cellphone screen.
Exactly. Read her entire column, it’s disturbing, but it illustrates and reminds us of our fallen nature. Matters might improve somewhat at least if laws against these gross-outs were toughened, so when busted and convicted of doing their thing publicly (including on the Internet), received long sentences. Counseling of course should be administered, but it doesn’t seem likely many of these lost souls will be cured of the perversions deep down inside of them. At least they will least be off the streets.
And to end on a lighter note, the late Tom Lehrer offered his take on this dreary subject some time ago.
The Taos Tatler 