A local news item recently reported a sexual predator arrested after enticing an underage girl through a chatroom. (When he arranged to meet her, the “girl” was a policeman)
Are chat rooms with anonymous, text-only chatting still a thing? Especially porno chat rooms? It just seems so primitive with today’s video technology.
Twenty years ago when the internet was brand new, there were lots of jokes and cartoons with the theme “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. (showing a dog typing at the computer. Ha,Ha, Ha…)
Chat rooms were a new idea; They were the first social media. It was exciting new stuff, for both kids and adults, though I never used them. But what about today?
Yes, I realize that I use the Dope as my chatroom. But sharing information on a forum, (whether it’s the Dope, or a hobby forum , or a professional,technical forum )isn’t the same as chatting…
Besides, there are no pics.*.
(I assume that sex offenders want graphic pics.)
*except for kitty pics. We always need more of those
Apparently they still are used. Nobody said these were the brightest people in the world. Plus police could use young-looking female officers as decoys…
I’ve always wondered what the ratio of actual 14 year old girls to law enforcement agents is in those chat rooms. Kids/tweens/early teens don’t really hang out in chat rooms and haven’t for a really long time. Actually, does anyone hang out in chat rooms anymore (other than pedos and cops)?
Isn’t he entitled to say “But I knew she was an adult, it was just a subjective feeling I picked up right at the start”.
Can’t he say “I knew it was a police officer, I’d like to make it with a police officer who pretends to be 14 years old” ???
Meanwhile the police go to court and say “there’s no objective information on the dialogue that says that the person is an adult, and the bait identifies as a child of 14 years of age”.
No need for a porno chat room. Predators are happy to troll chat rooms with innocuous themes.
It’s not current, but several years ago at the height of the Dateline To Catch Predator stings my niece was of that age that she wanted to start connecting via social media. To help my sister set some limits for the niece I created a profile and entered a chat room as a supposed 13 year old girl. I never initiated a single chat. Within 30 minutes my test profile was approached by a man who later pled guilty to real-life child sex abuse based transcripts of our chat.
The chat room topic was “Homework Help”. The predator was a real-life school teacher who confessed to abusing a student.
They are a thing, but they are pretty much always supposed to be adult-only. I would not expect a child predator to use them. I would expect them to use a fake account on some social media, instant messaging service, or similar. Or perhaps even use a teen dating site or something.
I mean, sure kids might use the adult chat stuff, but they would have to lie about their age, which would make them harder to discover. Why do that when you can just find someone on tumblr who adds anyone?
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