So I’m cruising through the spam when I catch one from Blizzard, the geniuses behind World of Warcraft, and there is a mail to my son — but sent to me because his WoW account is on my credit card, telling him (and me) he’s been busted for swearing at another player.
“A user of the above account has recently been involved in actions deemed inappropriate for the World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This decision was made after a thorough investigation of the situation as a whole.”
What follows is a direct quote from his instant message tirade to a player who aggrieved him: “YOU MOTHER#$%^ BS IS THE MOST #W#$^%& IMPORTANT ONE IN THIS ^%&$% BG”
Nice. Whatever that meant. It was like a letter home from school, except WoW isn’t teaching him much more than how to wield The Cosmic Axe of Purple LongHammer against some other 12-year old casting Spells of Sticky Asphalt.
Guess who had their account locked down by Dad this morning? Sheesh.
Ain’t modern life a blast? Look at it from the bright side, at least you save yourself a few bucks from WoW subscription… the hard thing about digital parenting is that kids can develop a whole different on-line alter-ego parents might never learn about.
Miss Amnxda as a young teen got some virtual world she belonged to locked out by me after i doscovered she had spenty a bunch o’ money on a character. I went ballistic and locked her down for two months.
be well
jim
Mine are still a little young for that, but they did manage to get some nasty spyware on my machine (the one they are *never* to touch under penalty of death) last Thursday while Mommy was “watching” them. 3 hours of Adaware, Spybot, followed by HijackThis (which often does more damage than the spyware) and I was back to the point where I could use the computer. They’re both offline until Xmas – when they get a new machine that will be upstairs.
The wife has yet to be convinced that they must be 100% supervised. She’ll be getting her lesson shortly…since the new machine is also hers.
For other parents – read this post from David’s archive – it’s a great list of what to do. http://www.churbuck.com/wordpress/?p=692
In a past life, I had some parental oversite for two teenage girls. Their online activities spanned a zillion AOL IM chats, personal blogs, and memberships to numerous fan sites. The youngest often surfed ebay and online stores for clothing. Often, highly inappropriate clothing. The eldest, once 18, posted on various social dating sites. My challenge was how to act upon information uncovered through digital snooping. “Busting” them for lessor concerns meant burning my sources for finding out more troubling matters, and hopefully saving them from more life impacting events in the real world. It was a constant balancing act. The internet is a lot like the apple in the garden of eden.
ROTFL. That’s almost as bad as your mom finding some unspecified adult substance in your dresser–which you lost six months earlier despite repeated efforts to find it.
Having the quotes in here made this even more hilarious that it already was. I remember the days when my parents would hear me swear. I would have to try to explain the meaning of the “words” I was using.