ask.fm - Am I missing something?

mckenzie84

I don't understand why anyone would go on it when they know they'll get abuse. A bit of common sense wouldn't go astray.

lukesmom

Signed up to see what it's all about. Load of crap. My kids are NEVER getting on ask.fm

Defiler Of The Coffin

I'm sure Tim Berners-Lee did not have this sort of thing in mind.

Technology sure has made the traditional methods of bullying and stalking people redundant. Just like practically everything else.

EoghanIRL

lukesmom wrote: »

Signed up to see what it's all about. Load of crap. My kids are NEVER getting on ask.fm

The abuse is terrible and the questions aren't even questions

SuperInfinity

I think people should relax, nothing bad is really going to happen from it. Have teenage girl suicides increased over the past few years? My guess is they've dropped. One subject doesn't make for a good experiment, even though people are trying to use emotional blackmail over this ("how dare you point to statistics, she was a young girl you bastard!!!!" - yeah and what about all the other young girls that committed suicide over being too pushed around by their parents?).

You can't stop a person from saying a nasty thing to someone else, that's their right. Shur if you stopped that then nobody could ever know their true feelings about one another, it would all be censored. I would rather people be honest with me and I would try to do better if I could or maybe I would figure I am happy with myself as it is. :cool:

I don't believe in bad people, except if they use extreme force to control others. That's a bit of a stickler...

Stavro Mueller

It's the sheep mentality teenagers have, I think. In general, youngsters in that age bracket hate to stand out in any way. So I guess ask.fm is the "in" place just now. I've not seen enough of the site to comment but there really should be moderators on there. All you have to do is look at somewhere like politics.ie to see what happens when the lunatic fringe start rocking in the aisles.

pabloh999

SuperInfinity wrote: »

I think people should relax, nothing bad is really going to happen from it. Have teenage girl suicides increased over the past few years? My guess is they've dropped. One subject ...

Great question, any stats on this?

lukesmom

pabloh999 wrote: »

Great question, any stats on this?

Suicide rates 2011 as per Central statistics office Ireland. Suicides Rose by 7% last year.

439 men
86 women

No figures given out on teenage female suicide rates for last year. For males the age 19-24 bracket seems to be the most prevalent for dying of suicide.

gobnaitolunacy

Hopefully, there's won't be a spate of copycatting after a highly public case.

I'm all for free speech and all, but this pointless and seemingly unregulated site should be shut down.

movingsucks

If I had to guess, I'd say the reasons people keep going back on it are a) an act of defiance. Like if some one is bullied because they wear a yellow hat then the "obvious" thing is to stop wearing the yellow hat. But why should they change their behaviour when the bullies should change theirs? And b) paranoia. It's all well and good to not get involved in a particular site but that doesnt stop some person setting up an account in your name or "asking" everyone "Do you think *movingsucks*is an ugly you know what?(insert worse insults here)" And then you go into school the next day and there's a lot of sniggering and then someone comes up and gleefully tells you about it. So then you take to the site to defend yourself thinking everyone in school, the town, the country, the WORLD has seen this.

I don't believe this stuff is truly anonymous either surely the IPs could be traced?

Grayson

westendgirlie wrote: »

Can your internet service provider block access to certain sites if you request it?

If so, perhaps the time has come for the government or eircom, upc, vodafone et al to run an awareness campaign on TV and in the papers advising parents of measures they could take.

Another site would spring up to take it's place. Technology isn't the problem, societies are. And in this case the technology can't be controlled, so we're better off creating awareness about it.
Well that and making it possible for schools to punish cyber bullying the same way they can punish normal bullying.

gobnaitolunacy

Q: Where/how do the makers of Ask.fm get their money from the site? Advertising?

adocholiday

It's a medium for poisonous little gits to make life horrible for some of their weaker peers. The biggest problem for kids with bullying today is that there is no escape from it. Bullying no longer ends at the home time bell now; mobile phones, facebook, ask.fm, etc mean that it becomes a persistent thing.

To those that ask why kids constantly return to this site. Those kids, especially impressionable self conscious young girls, want to be told that they are great, they are pretty etc. The questions that they put up on ask.fm and facebook clearly show that have confidence and self esteem issues. "What do you think of me?" or "Like if you think I'm pretty", "Rate me from 1-10" .... the list goes on. These anonymous little ****es then use this weakness to completely destroy the op. The vicious circle begins then, the op thinks 'is that really what they think?' and goes back to get more responses.

These kids want to be accepted and they will take 100 horrible disgusting comments to see 5 good ones. It goes on and on. The reasons for this can be attributed to social pressure, mass media blah blah blah but one thing for sure is that blocking that site would be fruitless.

It's about parents needing to monitor what's going on and trying to intervene in these things before it becomes another tragedy

ash23

I spoke to my 15 year old niece about this. I can't understand her going on it and opening herself up to abuse like that and I asked her to close her account. I've been asking her for months as have the rest of the family but she just blocked us all from her FB page

Anyway, her reasoning is that the the anonymity means she will get the truth. So she can take the good comments as being genuine as opposed to it just being her mates backing her up. And she thinks she can "learn" from the negative comments. That if everyone is saying she is fat and ugly, then she is and she can change herself to be "better".

I tried explaining that some people are just plain lousy and want to hurt other people so will say stuff just to be horrible. And that for every 100 nice comments she gets, that one lousy comment will stick with her more and destroy her self esteem.

I might as well have been talking to the wall though.