助けて

I came across this article this morning while doing a search for how to work tumblr savior. (lol)

I was honestly appalled by what I read. Almost as appalled as she was from seeing her daughter’s dashboard.

I’m going to leave my preconceived notions about the author behind. However she chooses to parent, that is between her and her daughter. It’s the author’s standpoint and argument that I have a problem with.

Some background (this is summarized; the full story can be read in the article.):

I’ll never forget the day I sat down with a large cup of coffee and my daughter’s laptop to do some leisurely Internet surfing. I clicked the bookmarked tab for Tumblr, not realizing that my 15-year-old (at the time) was already logged in and was greeted by a shit load of porn. Pictures, moving .gif files of hardcore, violent sexual depictions of the objectification of women, including double penetration, threesomes — I almost choked to death. When she came home from school, I was LIVID! She explained that she had no idea what those pictures and .gif files were doing appearing on her dashboard. She said she had followed the people who posted them when they were not posting those kinds of pictures. She asked, how was she to know that they would post pictures like that?!

Taking a deep breath, fighting back the absolute horror imagining what images my daughter had already seen and contemplating what it had already done to her young, impressionable mind, I tried to think clearly.

I know, her daughter knows, and most everybody else on tumblr knows that you have to go to someone’s page before you follow them. This usually (unless you’re one of those people who immediately follow back everyone who follows them?) entails looking at the person’s blog to see if their interests match up with yours, or if there’s anything that they frequently post that really sets you off.

Maybe it’s just the blogs that I follow, but I know for a fact that her daughter’s ENTIRE DASH wouldn’t be filled with “hardcore porn” unless she was frequently following the typed of active blogs that post those sorts of things. Sometimes it can’t be helped, and those things are unpredictable, but your dash is shaped to your interests. If your entire dashboard consists of “hardcore, violent sexual depictions of the objectification of women, including double penetration, threesomes,” then that is clearly due to the blogs you follow.

Desensitized by programs like Jersey Shore, Real World, the U.K. production of Skins, etc., when I asked my daughter had she seen pornographic pictures and/or .gifs on Tumblr, she laughed. She said she thought it was funny but scrolled past them when they appeared on her dash.

She then goes on to say that she watches Jersey Shore (for example) with her daughter and that she is fine with her seeing things like that as long as she gets to talk to her daughter about them.

Mom, if your daughter is so “desensitized” that she laughs/thinks the hardcore porn posts on her dash are funny, then maybe you need to be taking this up with your daughter instead of the website?

What’s even more irritating about reading this is that this woman seems to be extremely hard on tumblr for not deleting 18+/nsfw pictures. She claims that, because there are a lot of young users, the site should adapt to that and even criticizes one staff member for basically telling her “We allow porn on tumblr.”

If she’d done a little more practical research, she could have easily found ways of filtering tumblr (namely tumblr savior, but I’m sure there are others). They’re not always extremely effective, but they definitely help.

For instance, I have a friend irl who has absolutely no interest in anything sexual. This is perfectly fine. She still has a tumblr and browses around, but she does it intelligently. She doesn’t follow blogs that have things that she dislikes, and she avoid certain tags. (Now that I have tumblr savior, I’ll bring it up to her; she’ll probably think it’s useful.) It’s that simple. She still loves being on tumblr, even if occasionally, some questionable things come up.

But the thing that gets me the most is that she views tumblr as a breeding ground for sexual predators and sexual deviancy, and a common outlet for children and teens, and has linked the two as a sexual threat against minors. (That title… omg.)

I’m going to be perfectly honest: the internet is a dangerous place, but it’s just as dangerous as real life. You’re probably going to see and hear things that you never wanted to, but the fact of the matter is, that just can’t be helped. There are ways of preventing it from happening/keeping it from happening again, and you just have to learn from your mistakes.

But even so, there are honestly sexual predators/nsfw images EVERYWHERE. Deviantart, myspace, twitter, facebook, youtube. These are all super-popular websites that contain adult content and possible sexual predators.

If you don’t feel like your daughter is mature enough or knowledgeable enough (nothing against them) to handle themselves safely on the internet or on certain sites, then it is your duty to keep them off of them as a parent, or at least explain your concerns to them.

The only thing that I think she’s on to is that blogs that are 18+ could probably have a warning screen before entering. I know tumblr has a check-box if your blog is 18+, so that could be put to good use.

What are your opinions?

I agree for the most part, and I only have two things to add:

- The daughter claims, and the mother believes, that many of the followers were posting neutral images before they suddenly spammed with porn pictures/gifs. Well, to check the validity of that claim, why didn’t the mother go to the histories of some of the groups the daughter’s seeing, go back 10 pages or something and see if it truly is fluff or not.

- For some reason, it just really bothers me that when she’s explaining her lividity over porn, it’s because of “violent sexual depictions of the objectification of women”… um yeah that’s horrible, but excuse me? So, what, if it was objectifying MEN, you wouldn’t care as much? What a horrible choice of words. :|