Klarinet Archive - Posting 000313.txt from 1999/06

From: Ken Wolman <Ken.Wolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Watch your children ...
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 17:16:56 -0400

At 06:04 PM 6/8/99 +0000, you wrote:
>Just a little warning note for those of you with children:
>
>I receive mail messages from many children (5-17 is my definition)
>asking for advice and whatnot. There's no harm in that, mostly, but ...
>I just received an email from an enthusiastic 15 year old female
>clarinetist, who told me what city she lived in, her height and weight,
>color of her hair & eyes, and wanting to become my pen-pal.
>
>Folks - this is dangerous! Watch what your children are doing on that
>computer.

You've hit one of my hot buttons: internet personae and the damage they can
cause. No, this is not a clarinet issue except as older musicians tend to
teach younger ones. More important, it involves how we interact with
strangers, usually in anonymity and trust, and often with moral and even
legal implications. I'm also the parent of one teen and one recently
ex-teen, both of whom know more about web personae and role-playing than I
can begin to guess.

When someone describes herself to Mark Charette as a 15-year-old clarinet
player, then goes on to talk about her height and weight, hair color, etc.,
an alarm should go off in any male old enough to know how to pronounce the
words "Mann Act," and who is not trolling for jail-bait(TM) in the first
place. I don't know if that 15-year-old girl is reading this, but if she
is...if you are, Miss...then let this 55-year-old gray-but-not-dead male
inform you that one day some guy is gonna take you up on what you're
dangling in front of him, inadvertently or knowingly, and you may not like
what happens next. He could be 20, he could be 60, and you might not know
until you get there. He might tease YOU along, or he might try to do stuff
to you that would interest the law enforcement community, not to mention
your father: you know, the guy with the carry permit for the revolver....
It might, at its worst extreme, interest a Medical Examiner. Does the name
"Lolita" mean anything to you? How about "Amy Fisher"? The newspapers
have a way of turning stories like this, however innocent they may seem to
the protagonists, into Dirty Old Man Meets Teenaged Slut, Story at 11, and
lives get ruined.

NONE of us has any way to know for sure who we are talking to in an online
environment. Unless we've met face-to-face, all we have to go on is the
word of the other person. That picture of me on my website could be
anyone. A few years ago, to comment on the whole persona game on the web,
I found a picture of Fabio, the male model, in a white dinner jacket, tie
open, hair undone, and sniffing a rose. Awww, how sweet. I downloaded it
stuck it on my website with some comment like "Portrait of the poet." Now,
aside from the ponytail, I swear by my children I do not look anything like
Fabio (for one thing, I don't have a silicon chin). But I got email from
people asking if that was really me! Suppose I'd said yes? The kind of
guy who would say Yes to a question like that, and who would arrange to
meet some impressionable SYT (that's Sweet Young Thing), would not be put
off his real purpose just because the girl expected Prince Charming and
Quasimodo swung in on a bell rope.

Then again, the "girl" might be Curtis Sliwa and his Guardian Angels, there
to entrap me. Or the girl might show up with four enormous guys named
Vinny, Moish, Stash, and Juan (I'm an internationalist) packing baseball
bats, there to beat the crap out of the middle aged pervert I'd be if I was
into a scenario like this one.

Absorb this, Miss, if you are out there. I don't look like Fabio. I can't
pass for Brad Pitt even when the lights are out.

For that matter, how can Mark know you are who YOU say you are? You could
be a 50-year-old male housepainter who is getting some kind of thrill from
impersonating a 15-year-old girl. I have heard of people doing things even
more bizarre: like the paraplegic drunk guy in Massachusetts in 1992 who
masqueraded as an abused woman and won the sympathy of lots of women. I
believe he also attracted some men who fell in love with the persona that
was created.

This is not to say we live in our little rooms and never come out. But we
just watch very closely the kinds of games we play.

Ken

Ken Wolman dbtrader Deutsche Bank, N.A.
1251 Sixth Avenue New York, NY 10019 212-469-6494

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