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> I sure hope my kids never ask to be able to go out with some guy they met on
> the internet. I might have to put that in the category of safety, like a 3
> yo crossing the street alone.

LOL - I met SANDRA on the internet!! And lots of the rest of you too.

Reality check - unschooling teens do often meet each other on the internet -
often introduced to each other (on the internet) by other unschooling teens.
Sometimes they meet - if they go to Not-Back-to-School-Camp or another
unschoolish get-together. LOTS of them travel around and stop and stay at
homes of people they met on the internet. We have had a batch of them coming
and going from here over the past few weeks - there was a big New Years
get-together in Santa Barbara (a couple of hours north of us) and many of
them ended up coming down here, too. A few of them we'd met at the
Sacramento, California conference last year or my daughter met at NBTSC. But
at least a couple of the boys were internet-only friends.

--pam


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In a message dated 2/1/02 9:19:17 AM, PSoroosh@... writes:

<< LOL - I met SANDRA on the internet!! And lots of the rest of you too.

<<Reality check - unschooling teens do often meet each other on the internet
-
often introduced to each other (on the internet) by other unschooling teens.
>>


I think that hiding your name and fearing people on the internet has to do
with chatrooms where people are trolling for cybersex, or spinning yarns
about the size of their penis whether they have one or not (although
undoubtedly it's mostly men lying about who they are, not women, because
women frequently have better things to do, online or off, than lie about
their real or fantasy sex life).

I have invited people home I met in real life. Often. But where did I meet
them?

In a class, at a music session, at La Leche League, at a homeschooling
conference (when we used to have them; I wish we still did), at another
friend's house.

I don't go to bars to find new friends. I don't cruise alleys to find new
friends.

So some people (lots of people's grandmothers who read Time magazine and
watch daytime talk shows but have never seen a piece of e-mail) are sure that
the internet is an international bar and alley.

And for some people it is. Some people do NOTHING with their internet access
as far as I can tell but go into chatrooms. So for them, it's writing
practice. And they probably should not be encouraged to go to a bus station
to lend one of those other people $100, it's true. Same as you shouldn't
walk a drunk guy from the bar to his busstop (or anywhere) unless you can
take him down and you have pepper spray and a cell phone.

That has absolutely nothing to do with people whose online activity is the
equivalent of La Leche League meetings and homeschooling conventions.

Sandra

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<<Reality check - unschooling teens do often meet each other on the internet
-
often introduced to each other (on the internet) by other unschooling teens.
>>

I should say that my boys have screennames that aren't their own names.
Kirby started off as "KirbyDodd" but now he's "ZoloHexx" and
"Skyrider"-something--characters in online games. Marty has three
screennames. On he's just made for a "wild west" game. I helped him make a
list of first and last names that might be cool, and he picked "Dirk
Trimble." Trimble is my granny's maiden name, so I know for sure there were
Trimbles in Oklahoma and Texas in the 19th century. And we talked about the
artsiness of having a one syllable name with a two-syllable, or vice versa.
So "Dirk" has that hard "k" that suggests toughness and danger, and "Trimble"
makes a pun with "tremble," and... That's a fair amount of learning for the
creation of a gaming persona and a screenname.

I just asked the only awake teen (of four) in the house about those games. I
asked if the guys were really hiding their identities. He said no, they just
had screennames they liked, but if anyone asked who they were they'd tell
them, their first names, anyway.

Sandra

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> Trimble is my granny's maiden name, so I know for sure there were
> Trimbles in Oklahoma and Texas in the 19th century.

Sandra,
Trimble is my grandfather's name. He grew up in Seguin, Texas...home of the
world's largest pecan :)

Jennifer


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In a message dated 2/1/02 12:24:18 PM, otbhartman@... writes:

<<
> Trimble is my granny's maiden name, so I know for sure there were
> Trimbles in Oklahoma and Texas in the 19th century. >>

I was writing too late. It was my great grandmother, Sallie Ophelia Trimble.
Married James Walker Yates.

Sandra