[Air-l] Christians against MySpace?

[danah boyd]

Pastors are speaking out against MySpace during their services.   
(I've copied an article below to give the sentiments - it seems to  
have been taken offline.)  That said, there are huge Christian  
contingents on MySpace, including many religious teens who share  
Christian rock music and discuss bible studies in their profiles.   
Other social networking sites are popping up and attracting religious  
teens, including YFly.com.


Pastor airs problem with MySpace.com

Valley Bible Fellowship leader warns parents against online forum
popular with kids, teens

By DAVID BURGER, Californian staff writer
e-mail: dburger at bakersfield.com

Posted: Sunday February 12th, 2006, 10:20 PM
Last Updated: Monday February 13th, 2006, 9:19 AM

Is MySpace.com just another front for, say, MySatan.com?

That’s the view of Ron Vietti, senior pastor of Valley Bible  
Fellowship in east Bakersfield. Vietti used Sunday’s three services  
to deliver an hourlong attack against the evils of Internet social  
Web site MySpace.com and how it is “worse than crack, cocaine or  
meth.” The senior pastor said the popular Web site lures young boys  
into pornography and sets up young girls as victims of sexual predators.

“You say I’m mad — you bet I’m mad!” he said to the capacity crowd  
during the 11:30 a.m. service, as congregants in the crowd hollered  
“Amens” and “Yeahs.”

MySpace.com, according to The Associated Press, has two-and-a-half  
times the traffic of Google.com, with over 50 million users according  
to some estimates. The free site — which uses advertising to make  
money — allows people to create personal Web pages to talk to  
friends, write their own blogs or meet new friends.

The “new friends” are what Vietti is worried about. With six large  
binders in his hand, full of salacious pictures he printed off of  
MySpace.com — pictures primarily of young girls — the pastor told  
parents to get more involved in overseeing what Junior is doing in  
his bedroom online.

“Pornography is a growing problem that is sweeping our land,” Vietti  
said.

“(The Internet) is one-stop shopping for sexual predators,” he later  
said.

Vietti spent between 36 and 38 hours on MySpace.com this past week,  
after never hearing of the site until just a month ago. One night, he  
was up from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. documenting the evil he saw displayed.

The Web site allows people to post pictures and messages of whatever  
they’d like, Vietti said. Many times this involves pornographic  
material, the pastor claimed.

Vietti’s remarks contrast with the written MySpace.com photo  
submission policy. According to rules posted on the Web site, MySpace  
users must be at least 14 years old, and submitted photos must not  
contain any sexually explicit imagery, including nudity or pornography.

The policy also tells members that offensive photos can be flagged  
and removed by site administrators.

Vietti told his congregation of his own history: when he was 13, he  
became addicted to pornography and wasn’t unleashed until he entered  
his 20s and “gave my life to God.”

At the beginning of the service, the congregants — there are 8,000  
members of the church, Vietti said — received a card titled  
“Commitment to Higher Values.”

The card implored parents to commit to four things: putting a filter  
on the Internet; putting the family computer in an open area; locking  
out the computer when parents aren’t home; and spending more time  
with their children.

Vietti didn’t stop there. At 6 p.m. on Feb. 20, he wants people  
concerned about stamping out Internet pornography to join a group he  
calls “Special Ops Ministry” at the church building. The group will  
go to places, like bars, where young people hang out to convince them  
to delete MySpace.com from their computers and lives.

Congregants and fellow ministers were motivated by the pastor’s  
impassioned testimony, they said.

Youth pastor Vince Sierra, 24, said that although MySpace.com does  
some good by helping people meet one another, the cons outweigh the  
pros.

“I call it ‘My Waste of Space.com,’” said the pastor, who ministers  
to 200 students in high school and 350 students in junior high. “I  
think it’s a place where kids waste their time and lose that social  
touch.”

“I don’t (use the Internet) at home, because I don’t trust myself,”  
said Vietti’s 25-year-old son Josh. The temptation to look at  
indecent pictures
would be too strong if he used the computer at home, he said.

Teenagers who are members of both the church and MySpace.com said  
they’ve now given up the latter after hearing their pastor.

Richard Fuentez, 16, a junior at Golden Valley High School, said that  
although all of his friends are on MySpace, he is going to stop using  
it.

“I’d be a hypocrite if I kept it,” he said. He said, until Sunday, he  
didn’t know that young girls who posted pictures and personal  
information of themselves on the site were unwillingly luring  
criminal minds.

David Casillas, 13, also a member of MySpace.com and the church, said  
he’d tell his friends Tuesday — Monday is a holiday for him — that  
they should stop using MySpace. But he admitted that they’d “probably  
say no, because it’s like an addiction.”

One parent of two teenagers, Lori Crabb, said parents should take  
advantage of the free filter software the church was handing out Sunday.

“Until today, it was questionably safe,” she said. “But I now know  
fully the danger.”

In contrast to the children who agreed with their pastor’s  
denunciation of MySpace, other young people in Bakersfield supported  
the popular Web site.

MySpace.com users found on Chester Avenue in downtown Bakersfield  
Sunday afternoon had definite opinions about the Web site.

“Where are the parents?” asked Alejandro Nuñez, 24, a local musician  
who has a 2-year-old son. He spends five hours a day on MySpace.com,  
he said, promoting his business and his band, using the site to build  
buzz and revenue.

“Bad” is a subjective term, said Jonathan Pineda, 18, a MySpace.com  
user. Blaming MySpace.com for making pornography more available is  
senseless, he said — it’s everywhere.

“People will find sin as easily as air,” he said.

Valerie Ramirez, 27, has three kids and said she wouldn’t let her  
children use the site until they were 15 or 16. Until then, she said,  
her daughters “should be reading a book.”

MySpace.com is so prevalent in the two years of its existence that  
Bakersfield College has outlawed the usage of MySpace.com on the  
college computers, according to a Feb. 1 story in The Renegade Rip,  
the college newspaper.

But the dangers are becoming increasingly well-documented.

As recently as Jan. 26, KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas, recounted the case  
of a 15-year-old girl who had sex with a 26-year-old man she’d met on  
MySpace.com.

The last example proves that devious use of MySpace.com can have  
serious consequences.

The pastor also blamed MySpace.com for fostering bisexuality and  
called the Internet “the devil’s biggest scheme he has ever inserted  
into our lives.”

But part of Vietti’s message was intended to be shocking, he  
admitted. He expects to get phone calls and e-mails this week from  
some congregants regarding his sermon.

“I think it’s worth saving one kid for all the e-mails and calls I’ll  
get,” Vietti said. “I want to make you moms and dads hopping mad,” he  
added.


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"taken out of context i must seem so strange"

musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts