quote:
Originally posted by Richard:
Well my post below was an attempt at a joke.
However some folks are just this way, especially about things they don't understand. More than likely her son has run into someone else who is nefarious, and now she has taken it upon herself to email everyone he contacts via email with a threat to leave her son alone.
Actually, there's a good chance that nothing ever really happened. With all the sensationalism surrounding the Internet in the media ("Is it safe to use your credit card Online?!?", "Can identification theft happen to you?!?", "Who exactly is your child talking to in Internet chat rooms?!?"... all this and more on the 11 o'clock news) it's small wonder that anyone who has never really used the Internet thinks of it as some vast virtual den of thieves and child molesters.
It's all a part of what I call "Wal-Mart Syndrome". Ma & Pa Middle-America like things simple. Anything that's not simple is to be discarded from their thought processes as useless or (in the case of the Internet) dangerous, even if they have no real experience with said item.
Everyone's favorite department store empire gets the dubious distinction of having this syndrome named after it, because it's emblematic of such thought processes. Ma & Pa can visit the store, and take care of all their shopping needs in one fell swoop. To them, it's great. They only require simple things (which is all that Wal-Mart carries... the blandest of all items) and the purchasing process itself is made simple (no need to visit multiple stores).
Meanwhile, smaller stores which can't compete with the giant, get run out of business, even though they might carry specialty items, or things which aren't mass-produced.
Regards,
Corporate Dog
Re: Paranoid People
I sometimes do that. I get the joke now. 
Hybrid Mode
