Jen’s Blog

While watching the news these past couples days, I saw an interesting story that was stuck between the buzz about the Super Bowl, and the upcoming Grammy awards. It was a clip about the internet site, ‘Myspace’, a popular online community that is literally growing by the millions. (Being a member myself I know for a fact that just last week the network of people who belong to the site was around 48 million and today is it up to 54 million). MSNBC showed that this site isn’t just a little site anymore to gossip, and meet friends, it’s the classifieds for a sexual predator.

‘Myspace’ is a site that allows the user to basically post anything they want to, from music videos, pictures, blogs, surveys, comments, and the list goes on. Being a free site, and having almost no screening system of what gets posted, this site is open to the imaginations of billions of teenagers around the world, what a scary thought.

Now, the recent buzz in the news, on sites such as Fox23 and MSNBC is how dangerous this site really is. The site is set up so you descibe as much about yourself as possible, asking for the companies you belong to and the schools you have, or are, attending. Its goal is to link people together to create this huge network of friends, but some people may not realize who they are attracting. Young teenagers are posting personal information which is making it very easy for sexual predators to come and find them.

This site is like any other internet site really, people just have to use some common sense on what they post to the world so the perverts in the world can’t just show up at their work or find them on campus.

Regardless of what the media is saying about ‘Myspace’, as a college student this site is still the perfect site to waste endless amounts of hours on when you should be typing a paper or doing some reading. It’s a great way to meet people and catch up on the latest gossip with your friends. You just always have to remember, there are millions of people always looking at you.

On Feburary 1, 2006 there was a news article on AOL titled, “T-Shirts Get Women Kicked Out of State of the Union.” This article immediately caught my eye and made me wonder what absurd piece of clothing did this woman wear to the Presidents speech. As the article opened on my screen, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. This woman wasn’t wearing too low of a shirt or one so short her stomach was hanging out, she was wearing a “support the troops” shirt!
Some people may say the shirt was a protest, but I disagree. If you can’t proudly wear a shirt that says you’re supporting friends, family, neighbors, overseas fighting for your country in front of the man who sent them over in the first place, and who is keeping them there, then what does that say about this war? I bet if that woman was wearing a shirt with the American flag on it she wouldn’t have been kicked out, and yet they both mean supporting the people who fought, and are fighting for this country.
Maybe everyone in that audience should have been wearing a “support the troops” shirt, and the when the President gazed out into the crowd he would see how his lies affected the American people forever.