Monthly Archives: July 2006

Study shows fear of MySpace predators is overblown

Prof. Larry Rosen, a psych prof over at Cal State, has just released data on MySpace and predators showing that the fear is completely overblown (duh). The press release is here. A longer report is here. Some of the findings are:

  • Only 7% of those teens interviewed were ever approached by anyone with a sexual intent and nearly all of them simply ignored the person and blocked him from their page.
  • Two-thirds of the parents were sure that there were many sexual predators on MySpace, while only one-third of the teenagers shared this concern.
  • When asked about media coverage, 66% of the parents felt that it was either understated or close to the truth.
  • Conversely, 58% of the teens felt it was vastly overblown.

(Tx David)

visiting a movie set

I’m back in the States now having done my final leg in New Zealand (which i’ve decided looks exactly like LOTR). What a beautiful country! My only complaint is that it’s bloody freezing and no one thinks that central heating is important – brrrr.

I went to NZ to speak at the Karajoz Great Blend Events in Wellington and Auckland, all arranged by the fabulous Russell Brown. In addition to my public babbling on MySpace, Russell interviewed the folks who made Star Lords. God i love mashups! After my talk, there was a panel at each event with some of the fantastic local web folks talking about community. Justin Zhang (of SkyKiwi) spoke at both events and he was soooo hysterically funny – absolute deadpan humor. On top of the talks, i did a bazillion press events – TV, radio, newspaper… i felt like a talking puppet after a while. But it was pretty trippy – the live press folks in NZ talk much faster than i’m used to so it was a bit insane to parse the accents and try to be interesting at the same time.

I didn’t get a whole lot of free time in Wellington, but i did get to see the LOTR exhibit and purchase Uggs (which i realize make a lot of sense when there’s no heating anywhere). I got stuck in Wellington for most of a day (silly fog) but Natasha from TradeMe was such an angel – picking me up, hanging out with me as we waited at the airport. Plus, the night before, she and some folks from Webstock took me out to this really awesome Maori restaurant where i got to meet one of the local Maori activists.

In Auckland, i had a bit more time and Matt Gibbons (one of the Star Lords kids) gave me a full tour – we went club hopping, saw the sun rise over the city, wandered to the beach, went to the museum, hung out at folks’ houses, etc. The best part was that he was a talking history machine. Listening to him reminded me of the time when my best friend and i went to the San Diego Zoo and ran around after the information buses just to learn random facts about animals. I couldn’t get enough of the random stories about New Zealand history and it was so fantastic to have someone who was ecstatic to tell me all sorts of random stories. Even better was that he did it with funny NZ slang. Plus, he could actually dance (like _really_ dance) and he’s an overgrown goofball which meant that we ended up spending most of the time laughing as we ran around the city. We also managed to meet quite a few quirky characters. At the top of Mt. Eden, we ran into a guy doing butane and trying to sell us $1 visions. In the middle of Auckland, we ran into a guy with wings who gave us mops sticks allowing us to stage mock fights in the middle of the city. At 4 in the morning, we found our car parked next to a man getting a blowjob in an alley as the transwoman giving him head showed off her skills to us. ::giggle::

All and all, New Zealand rocked and i’m sooo going back when it’s actually warm out. Thank you so much to Russell, Kate, Cath, Steve and Nat for making it happening and to all of the quirky characters for making it fun!

Now, moving to Los Angeles….