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Almost Daily Interviews part 4 (Dolls Gone Wild)
In this edition of the Almost Daily Interviews, we speak to Dolls Gone Wild, a vigilante female group of bloggers who expose sexual predators on IRC. When they got Tomorrowed, it triggered a flurry of responses. Nobody knew what to make of it. Some said what they were doing was wrong but others thought they were doing the right thing. Whatever it is that they are doing, it sure took a lot of guts, imagination and a certain sense of righteousness.
I think they are making the intarweb a safer place. And that’s why I asked for and got an interview with these witty and intelligent girls. Click on more to read what they have to say.
Update!:
I’ve just got an email from The Dolls informing me that they will be featured in tomorrow’s (11 Sept 2005) edition of The New Paper. Congrats!!!
Update 2!!!
Lancerlord has kindly scanned the newpaper article on Dolls Gone Wrong. You can view it here.
Update 3!!
Here is the link to the New Paper article, entitled GIRLS PROWL CHATROOMS, OFFER THEMSELVES AS BUAYA BAITS. Title cannot be shorter and more concise meh? Wah lau.
Can you tell us a little about yourselves? Stuff like age, profession, hobbies etc.
We are university students studying in various tertiary institutions in Singapore. Hobbies wise, we too are normal human teenage girls who hang out, shop and catch movies in our free time. Besides the information we have just uncovered, the rest stays under the blanket, we’d rather keep a more blurred identity for safety and protective reasons.
What’s the story behind your blog? How did you get the idea to start such a blog. When did you start? Why did you start?
We have been regular chatters of the IRC, chatting for about 2 to 3 times weekly. We started at the age of 16, and realized the pattern of guys liberally asking for sex after asking for an introduction. It came upon as a culture shock as we were all from an ‘all-girls-school’ environment so we were hardly exposed to guys and their sexually active natures. The idea to start the blog is to bring about awareness that Singapore media fails to bring to the public. The public is aware that these internet chat meeting sessions happen but they are completely oblivious to the fact that such conversations take place before a meeting. Our disgust with a particular guy in march spurred us to create a blog to let all young girls know what is going on. However, we did not act on our plans to create the blog due to our commitments; school, assignments etc. We only started this blog approximately 3 weeks ago. Every concerned parent reminds their child that internet meeting is not safe etc. Despite such reminders, how many times a month do you notice a girl getting taken advantaged of because of internet meetings? This has been an issue since we were teenagers, the government cannot do anything to put a complete stop to such activities and their advise have been turned a deaf ear by a minority of teenagers. By creating this blog, we hope that teenagers will be more aware and be able to relate to our views and note the patterns in the way men ask for sex on the net. Its an educational blog with a dose of humour and entertainment so that these teens will come back and read more and introduce it to their friends rather than simply reading it today and forgetting it tomorrow. The humor part is a bonus dose so that people will introduce this blog to others and not label it as “another one of those boring campaigning” blogs.
After getting Tomorrowed, a lot of attention was lavished on both the positive and negative aspects of what you are doing. Has the negative feedback discouraged you in anyway?
The negative feedback is more on the moral issue of us posting up the pictures and the fact that these girls we have pictured ourselves to be are of legal age, so whats the big “hoohaa” here? What we are doing is entrapment, in Singapore, there are no entrapment laws as we have checked out. It does not matter whether or not the girls are of a legal age or not. We feel that we deserve more respect as girls regardless of age. It’s a complete insult for guys to chat u up and within seconds start asking you if you want to chat dirty and ask for sex a while later. It’s not supposed to be how the IRC operates. The IRC is a place for people to voice opinions, make friends perhaps however, we can tell you that every chat we have come across, we have yet to meet a guy who proposes to chat about interests and hobbies. The negative feedback has cautioned us to look at our methods and we look at such critics as ways to improve. These feed back has not discouraged us in any way at all. We’ve noticed that such negative comments usually come from the males and not the females. We do not blame them for such reactions towards the blog as we are aware there are decent guys out there and the blog defaces the male gender and stereotypes. However, we have mentioned time and again that these men we are exposing are those who have wronged the female species; the men who disgrace their own gender, the men who fall in our definition as “bastards”. We have yet to get negative comments from the females.
Have you personally met up with anybody from IRC? Did this whole thing come about as a result of your own bad personal experience or a close friend’s?
Personal meet ups have not taken place. However we did think of doing a girl-version of such meet ups, meaning, we’d ask girls on the IRC to meet and if they do turn up, we will warn them against these men and how close they would have been to being taken advantaged. This whole thing came as a personal bad experience encountered by a close friend in secondary school when she was 14. She had a chat with a guy on the IRC for two occasions following up with meeting up. The guy had asked her out for an innocent meeting of coffee at a coffee outlet near his place. However, what took place was not innocent after all. He arranged to meet her at the neighborhood shopping mall near his place and then claimed he forgot to get his wallet so he had to go back to get it. He asked her to accompany her to get his wallet as he cautioned her that there were many perverted Indian workers loitering around his place as there was the construction of new HDB blocks taking place near by. At his place, he stripped her of her clothing while she struggled. Having been 14 and weaker, she could not do much. She was lucky that she managed to stop him from having sex with her. He was 19 and in the army at that time. She did not dare to report it to the police and constantly blamed herself for the incident calling herself “stupid” and “foolish”. None of her parents know of this incident. She was too embarrassed to report to anyone of higher authority and felt that since it was a consensual meeting, this report would not be valid. When she confided in us however, we felt that this incident was consensual to a coffee meeting, not a ticket to sexual activities. We got angry at whatever happened to her. Her relationships with boys have not been working well because most guys need some form of physical attention in a respectable relationship as well and she always flinches from their attempts. This has left an emotional scar etched in her mind. This incident has left the crew thinking that we need to project a message to young girls out there. We are reaching out to the girls who are not aware such things take place. We cannot assume that in an open society, every girl is just an open sex toy.
Why do you think girls meet up with men from IRC if they know it could be dangerous and bad for them?
We actually feel that most girls who are on the IRC seeking friends and meetings with the opposite sex are girls who seek attention and have low self-esteem. They do not feel loved enough or feel pressured that their peers have experienced relationships at school therefore they seek that attention on the IRC. In the IRC, these guys who offer meetings and sex give them a kind of gratification that they can be as good as their friends in school and they too can get a guy. On the danger part, its human nature for people to be ignorant when it comes to warnings. That’s where the phrase “curiosity kills the cat” comes in. People rather experience it than heed advice.
Do you think it’s the men’s fault entirely?
We have been having plans to ask girls out as well to balance out the theory of why guys turn up for meetings with the girls. We feel that if these guys do turn up for the meetings, we’d think that the girls whom they been asking for meetings do turn up as well which explains their appearances at the meetings. It’s the minority of men we are looking at in this blog. We cannot blame the whole gender completely. We believe that their upbringing and environment can influence their behavior now. The media has depicted girls in movies as someone guys can get ‘lucky’ with and that too can influence the drastic change in the openness in society today. In all cases that we have encountered, it’s the guys who initiate sex. Many people will say that we can choose to ignore such requests but what if ever request is about sex? To think the shield of anonymity would embolden so many men to initiate sex immediately to a girl! In this blog, when we do go undercover on the IRC, we do not click on the guys asking for sex or meet ups. We do not initiate. However, actions are always based on the individual himself. No one else can be blamed if anything happens but the individual.
You have posted several photos of the ‘guilty’ men on your blog. Have there been any repercussions so far? What if you took the wrong photos and the men are innocent?
There have not been any repercussions so far, we make very sure that it’s the exact man that we are looking out for before attempting to take any photos. That’s why we ask for the men’s pictures before meeting them as we would not want to simply go on a blind meeting.
What is your goal from doing this? Where is all this leading to? What do you hope to achieve at the end of this?
Our goal is that girls will be more cautious and more knowledgeable in whatever that is going on in the IRC. Even a simple meeting of coffee, as illustrated, can go wrong. Identities can always be twisted while on the IRC. The IRC is not a place to easily trust people and give out personal information; this will be risking oneself. We are also hoping that by doing this we will be better able to gain the respect of men and show them that we are not as naïve and be easily trifled with.
What advice do you have for young girls to prevent being taken advantage of by sexual predators online?
Never give private information about yourself. The men hiding behind that screen may not look like how you deem them to look like. Never trust completely what you see in that chat window no matter how fairy-tale-like it looks.
What plans do you have for the future of your blog? Will you be recruiting more help to patrol IRC? Please share with us your thoughts.
We are a simple bunch of ordinary girls reaching out to our juniors and girls younger than us. We want to be the older ‘sister’s of these girls and teach them through our own experiences rather than them venturing out on their own to meet a guy from the IRC. We hope to gain more public awareness regardless of age. We have considered getting together with the authorities like the police especially in the “underaged” cases. We have had e-mails from parents who appreciate our blog as well. Recriting more help to patrol IRC, we will not be recruiting. However, we have told the readers that they too can send us chat logs via e-mail. These logs, we will read and post them up once it has been approved with credits to them.
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