Back when I was learning to use Flash I used to make little cartoons for the kids. I used their Neopets as the characters, that way, no matter how awful it was, the kids loved them.
Here is one I made with my son and daughter.
A parable, straight from Hell,
As a lesson to you, friend.
We can coast along, doing very well,
Right up ’til the end.
Randy typed slowly, staring at his computer monitor. He would watch the screen change, type a few lines, then watch the screen change again. Lather, rinse and repeat.
Cindy came running into the room.
“Whatcha doin?” She ran over and looked up at the computer screen.
“Get out of here,” snapped Randy. He put his hand on her face and pushed her away. Hard. She fell onto the ground beside his chair.
“Don’t! You’re such a big jerk. Why can’t I look at your stupid computer? You’re so stupid!” she cried and ran out of the room.
“Yeah,” thought Randy. “Stupid enough to break into the Swiss banks and do a little money transfer.” He started to smile. The fantasy about being the world’s greatest hacker / bank robber at twelve crowding out the resentment of his sister’s interruption.
He continued watching the screen and tap, tap, tapping at the keys. Pecking slowly and methodically. Finally, he was rewarded when the screen flicked to black and reported a memory dump. He was presented with a command line.
“Sweet as candy.”
His fingers began flying across the keyboard. He typed furiously for about sixteen seconds before the screen flicked back to the standard menu normally presented by the Swiss banks remote transfer program.
“Uh, oh. I hope that was enough time.”
The cursor blinked on the screen, waiting for him to enter his username. He quickly typed in the name and password of the account he had just created. He paused just before hitting the ‘Enter’ key.
“Oh, please let this work. Please, please, please God.”
He pressed ‘Enter’ and a message flashed across the screen.
“Welcome Montgomery Burns. You have successfully logged in 1 times.”
“Yes!” yelled Randy as he jumped from his chair. Sixteen seconds was all he had been given. Sixteen seconds was all it took to create a new account with admin privileges. Full access to all of the accounts on server ‘B’.
He sat back down and began typing furiously. With fingers flying, he found out which account had the largest amount of available assets, then transferred all of that money to an offshore account and from there shunted to a money laundering, paper route process he had been arranging for months. Then he destroyed the account. It had taken another sixteen seconds.
Randy stared at the screen, hardly able to believe that he had done it. He started to giggle. His giggle got a little louder and became a laugh. Then it ballooned into a full blown cackle. It was ecstasy! Bliss!
The phone rang.
His blood turned to ice and his testicles constricted in his underwear.
“Oh, crap.”
It rang again.
He tried to think if he had missed anything. He hadn’t. It had been perfect. An untraceable transac-
It rang again.
“Are you gonna get that?” yelled his sister. “It’s on your phone line, dork mouth!”
“Shut up! I can come down there and kick your whiny little ass, if that’s what you want.”
Then the impossible happened. The phone rang again. It was supposed to switch to an answering machine after three rings. It wasn’t supposed to ring four times.
It rang again and then again one second later. Then again. Then it just became one long, warbling ring.
He reached out and picked up the phone, just to make it stop. He brought it up to his ear.
“Uh, h-hello?”
“Hello Mr. Johnson? Mr. Randy Johnson? Mr. Randy ‘Montgomery Burns’ Johnson?”
Randy was completely silent.
“Randy, we need to talk. This is Satan.”
“What?”
“This is Satan, Randy. You know me. I’m the guy who’s going to take your soul and subject you to misery and anguish for eternity. I’m going to roast you, Randy. I’m going to cook you long and slow.”
“Uhhh..”
“Now, Randy, it would seem you made a very large mistake just now. You hacked into a bank and stole all of the funds in one of my accounts. Normally, I’m all for stealing and corruption and what not, but I gotta level with you, Randy, this one’s really pissed me off. I can’t stand it when someone steals from me personally and I especially hate that ‘leet hacker’ pretentious bull. I hate it, Randy. I hate it worse than I hate cuddly bunnies and I really hate those damn things. So, being Satan, I’m going to make sure you get done in hard. Hard as anyone ever got it. Does this make sense to you?”
“I’m, uhh, There’s, uhhh”
“Yes. Good. So, then I’m sending up one of my agents to come get you. Not one of my best, but one of my newest. They wanted you too. Sold their soul for it. Have fun, Randy. Good bye.”
The phone clicked and the dial tone came on. Randy didn’t move. He couldn’t think. He just sat there staring at his computer.
He heard the sounds of footsteps on the stairs. They were coming closer. Slowly coming closer.
“Raaaaaaandyyyyyy. Raaaaandyyyyyy,” called a soft voice.
The door to his bedroom swung open to reveal his eight year old sister standing there holding a baseball bat. Her face was twisted with hate and joy.
“You wanna push me on the face again, you son of a bitch? You wanna come over here and kick my little ass? Huh? Is that what you want?”
Your children know how to make meth.
They know the common ingredients needed and where to get them.
They know how to make the counter to it to bring themselves back down.
They understand the immediate and long-term dangers.
They will not believe any lie you tell them about it.
They have access to the truth.
What will your children do?
What will you do?
Gone are the days when we could ‘protect’ our children from information that could be harmful to them. Access to information has been an almost universal goal since the internet was created. It is easy to get information on anything you wish. Do you want to know how to make a bomb? How big do you need? You can find instructions for many different types of bombs for a variety of purposes. Do you want to know how to cook a turkey? How to fix your plumbing? Download a grade twelve english essay? How to perform throat surgery? Do you want to make some napalm? Look it up. It won’t take long.
If you are unable to find the information you are looking for, just ask. Log into any large forum and ask your question. Someone will point you to the answer. They will also offer advice on other aspects of the information you seek and provide moral guidance if the question seems questionable, but you will get your answer.
Your children are better at this than you are.
So, what do we do now that the world has changed for the worse? The world has not changed. Information was always available. You might have gotten it from the library or from fellow classmates or the creepy guy in front of the drugstore, but it was there. When you were a kid, you had access to information that would have scared your parents. The world has not changed. The same solution to this problem that applied back then, applies now. The only real difference is that kids today have access to almost any information they want, but kids have always had access to dangerous information. You must talk to your kids about these things. You must discuss making meth, bombs and turkey. You must discuss performing plumbing tasks and throat surgery.
Schools used to test children on their knowledge. What is the capital of Ontario? What is Pythagoras’ theorem? This type of test is meaningless now. Children have access to all of the knowledge they will ever need. Now we test them on their understanding of that knowledge, their ability to gather it effectively and their ability to evaluate its accuracy.
When you speak to your children, it doesn’t matter what they know. They can know everything. It will take them less than two minutes to find recipes and fun, instructional videos on making meth. Don’t try to protect them from information, because that is just impossible. Instead, just do what we have always done. Try to tech them right from wrong, give them a moral compass and help them make good choices. Then set them loose on the world to do this for their children.
What I hope you’ve learned today is that meth is easy to make and really harmful to use, information is never very far away and there are more sites for lock-picking than there are for health issues.
