MXiT is like inescapable crack

It is reported that ‘a recent survey conducted on MXiT, found that sex was the biggest topic of discussion on MXiT and that it outweighed by more than 70% chats about sport, hobbies, education, jokes or politics.

So it’s simple. Be freedom of speech and pro-tech like me, but we have to agree that people flirt for sex on that thing.

GenerationX or is it GenerationMXiT Up?
For the youth, especially the 12-17 majority users group quoted by the Sunday Times GenerationX survey, MXiT is the in thing. “MXing it up is all the rage”. Because it’s cheap and these teens can misuse their time effectively with that Stellenbosch developed software. As I've written before here, MXiT culture, unfortunately, breeds a fcuked generation.

The Sunday Times did an extensive coverage of this new technology (they also tend to mention blogs a lot these days in their paper. Kudos for this one) and in fact, in praise of it as the new in thing for the kids. The benefits of it were weighed heavier in their articles than the side effects which are a lot more significant than the incentives - particularly in the survey supplement.


‘4 million’ logons a day, 10 000 new users daily
We just got to face it, even us who love and embrace new technologies and empowering the consumer, something’s just destroy the fabric of society and our cultures. Like I said before, MXiT takes the majority time of the kids (and surprisingly, some grown ups). Especially the ones who don't really understand the potential dangers of something that offers easy-come incentives. Talk of crack cocaine. The paper states that there are around 5 million logons a day, and a blog claiming that there are 10 000 new users daily. The virus is spreading fast, in the name of freedom of speech, consumer empowerment and cheap – and profit of course, for the developer.

Conversations become cybertic
Teens are spending more time on MXiT than really talking, naturally breaking bread with friends and family. The conversation, as we know, is moving to be cybertic in nature. Whether that's a good thing or not, depends on who benefits or is already addicted or is high on 'freedom of speech' as though they sniffed crack for too long than necessary.


The card of freedom of speech must be played when it makes sense and balances things in an equally beneficial manner. Not simply because freedom of speech is an important part of human interaction and communication. As I said in my first MXiT entry, you can't support something for the sake of supporting it or that it’s innovative technology. Some cultural disruptive technologies need not be or have to be regulated (read: regulated, not censored).


As worries of destruction cut into mainstream media parents are seeing smoke. Not that he meant bad when he gave birth to it. He just wanted, probably, too empower the consumer and open up communication platform whilst making money at it through bringing an audience together and selling their souls to the advertisers. But he knows, surely, that the side effects now outweigh the consumer's gain.


He claims that '95% of MXiT four million users employ the software as a replacement to SMS'. That to me, just sounds like bollocks supported by statistics. Why isn't he explaining, not that he is due to, that at the same time, such replacement takes a different form and incentive. With MXiT, the incentive is that you pick cyber girlfriends and boyfriends over the net and do whatever with them. What a perfect hunting field for the paedophile.


Flirting just like cybering on American ‘sex sites’
And most friends I have spoken to use if for flirting online (I know many also use it for replacement of costly SMS). And my little brothers are collecting 'hot' chics on MXiT like cheap sweets. However, Heunis distances himself from the reality that MXiT facilitates real life profile and cellphone number exchange where innocent and incautious teens swap such with paedophiles. See Sunday Times’ ‘MXiT at centre of nude teen photos uproar’ for more digital shock. MXiT version 5.1.1 is even a lot more advanced that picture exchanges will be done instantly on the chat program.


Paedophiles galore, a den of sick hornies let lose
Think of what happened last year. A 33-year old paedophile abducting an innocent 16-year old girl using tactics via MXiT. I'm sure many little girls out there believe to be chatting with peers but in fact it’s sometimes criminal-intent older men who are trying to lure them, if not simply introducing them to what they shouldn’t be at their innocent age


Brother’s confiscated multimedia phone
My sister had to confiscate my little brother’s phone just recently, after he stopped demonstrating his love for magazines and reading in general, and spending less and less time on his school books. He tells me he had 11 girlfriends on MXiT. All with pictures. Some sexy and scantily clad bodies. The girls looked her age, but fact remains, they are half naked. And there was porn too from Mig33 and peperonity.com.


Solutions?
Government can’t do much about it. Parents can’t succeed if they keep buying their kids hi-multimedia capability cellphones and expect flirts and porn not to happen on that hi-tech tool. I think that what Heunis has to think of doing, in the interest of preserving the safety of these girls, is to up the cost of using MXiT. Economic and marketing research has long shown that where anything is free and ‘useful’, it will soar in demand. Where a product is useful and price is up, then the demand will be less. He must not place it at the SMS benchmark, but at least to deter free access, which is the one that leads to abuse.

May be I’m digitally shocked with MXiT because I have brought two daughters in this world. And when things like these happen, it’s the girls that get hardest hit and abused and the price they pay is too high. And for the little boys, some paedophiles now prefer them too. And for the ‘freedom of speech’ card waving adults, your culture of natural interaction might slip off your life.

Or better still, and not that it's their problem, but may be Vodacom, MTN and Cell C should make SMS cheaper to cancel out MXiT's culturally distasteful advantage. They could make their SMS a bit lower without going straight flat on the ground as to render them free like MXiT (and I'm aware you pay for data transfers).

A psychotic world

Was home on paternity leave (modern day convenience) and...

Spent time with the new babe, Tinyiko and her sis, Talia - who, because of the new crowd around her, she flat out ignored me being her number one person in the whole world. The leave was spent in the village, Pankop, amidst the noise of birds and chickens running around the whole place and me lazying under a Marula tree drinking 2x 2l of fresh water a day. For some reason, I felt life was good that way: no worries of the fast city life and the pressures that come with it, the material competition that goes on everyday, the noise of the cars and mad traffic and taxis hooting all day long from am to pm, the rigid schedule that's forced by citylife and more of that crap about the city.

Well, the main reason I felt so good in the village, a place where I was born and lived for 20 years, was because I had just realised something that was just happening naturally: Talia (my first daughter) was playing ... in the streets nogal, with all the other village kids and nobody cared much whether she will be hurt, napped or bothered by psychos that parade the urban streets, in any city. Now that's most cities in the current under-siege South Africa, where crime unto babies, especially girls, is the order of the day.

I don't imagine that when Talia and Tinyiko return back to Pretoria I would just care less if they played in the streets in Pretoria east. I don't think I would even be comfortable with them going about to play unwatched or uncontrolled in a public park here in Pretoria for I fear for their safety. Such is a pity for then their development that should come from their freedom of being kids ands free of unnecessary control (especially when it comes to not interferring with their play-abouts). In short, in the city, they may not enjoy themselves as they do in the village.

It was an interesting observation, which brought back sad memories of a story I covered for the Sunday Times back in 2005 involving two young black girls from Soweto - age ranging 9 - 13 I think. Now the psycho did something beyond human to them - which in South Africa is becoming the norm in the killings of children. He napped them as they were walking to church in the broad day light, probably and allegedly kept them somewhere isolated whilst repeatedly raping them over numerous days. The parents, as I had visited them during the long depressing search for their girls, were reeling with anger to say the least, although very forgiving and hopeful their girls will be found alive - the father relayed to me that he used to walk the streets of Soweto, Pimville, at night hoping to find them as it was quiter but only to be taumented by their voices in his head begging for mercy ("for me to come safe them" - he once relayed to me).

That is painful for a parent, even if they try to look stronger than they may feel. Now the worst was to fall for this father and his wife: the monster-half man, after raping the girls in captivity for several days, killed them by strangling them with ropes from their apostolic-church attire and burried them in a shallow open grave in an open field nearby the neighbourhood. I was gobsmacked another human being could do that - my first hardcore story to report at the Sunday Times - with many mixed emotions.

At the time, the only fury in my heart and mind was that a case of these girls from a modest township background was not fast tracked or given any good detectives (police) to sort out, whereas a kidnap-murder case of a white rich girl (21 year old Leigh-Matthews) was backed by all necessary resources to resolve it soonest, and resolved it was - and the parents could at least put closure and try to move on. But the case of the poor little girls from Soweto was largely ill-managed by police and received the bearest minumum of their attention or resources. And to date, the case remains unsolved and the culprit prowling the streets where my Talia, Tinyiko and many other little innocent girls out there have to live and play.

Now that's my new beef with SA police, the Chief (President) and his commanders (Selebi) for not doing much except for public lip service in sorting out crime. It hit me on Saturdya 17.03.07 (the birth of Tinyiko) that with two daughters, I may have a higher chance of being visited by sorrow in my home than families that bear boy children - as the stats and the reality is that more girls suffer in the hands of paedophiles and maniacs of this society than do boy-children (they do suffer too but the stats or reality are not as steep in comparison). And on that Saturday, I also learnt that when you are a parent, crime stops being a racial or class issue to become more the issue of the future of your children - particularly girl children.