The Manifesto

‘@sk events’ presents: lonely Hearts
The internet is a huge resource for information, a platform for performance and has a plethora of entertainment. However it can also be a dangerous place, a place where identities can be faked and unsafe friendships forged. As a company we want to alert users of the dangers that the internet can cause and our piece Lonely Hearts targeted at these users and in particular children and teenagers audience is teenagers.
These days having computers in the home and having the internet on these computers is the norm. Adults and children alike can access the web with ease and most are computer literate. Overall “90% of children aged 5-16 have a computer at home” and “1 in 5 children go online in their own bedrooms” (www.bbc.co.uk, 2007) We believe that this is over exposure for many children and that when using the internet children should be supervised or at least given some boundaries.
Pedophiles use the internet as a way to prey on young victims, they often pose as younger then they are, creating fake identities to lull their victims into a false sense of security. Pedophiles also use the internet as a means of swapping information and ‘tipping each other off’. Protectkids.com (2001) states that; “The most common means by which sexual predators contact children over the Internet is through chat rooms, instant messages and email. In fact, 89% of sexual solicitations were made in either chat rooms or instant messages and 1 in 5 youth (ages 10-17 years) has been sexually solicited online (JAMA, 2001).” The anonymity pedophiles can achieve online provides them the opportunity of interacting with children and teenagers who have no idea who they are really chatting to.
Often friendships online can develop and online predators can request to meet up with their conquests. Meeting with friends for the internet is extremely dangerous. Children often won’t tell parents of what they are planning for fear that they might be stopped, and children will often be alone and at their most vulnerable when they come into contact with these so called ‘friends’.
Lonely Hearts is a piece about two teenage girls, Rachel and Steph making blog videos and posting them on Youtube. In a series of videos the girls ask to make new friends, complain about being bullied, dance around, sing songs, and make personal videos. After the first few videos have been posted on Youtube, the character of Chris, will begin posting comments that are attached to the videos. Chris’s character is aged 40, however on his profile we stated his age as 27. It will become clear that Chris has an interest in the character of Rachel. They begin to have a relationship on the internet consisting of Rachel creating personal videos in response to Chris’s comments, and suggested communication through e-mail and/or chat rooms. The relationship becomes the focus of many of the videos and the final video post is Rachel explaining that she is going to Birmingham to meet up with Chris. The videos are designed to be an insight into these girls lives and look authentic. We want the videos to receive a lot of attention, both of average internet users, and of our target audience, teens.
The comments made by Chris and the relationship building up between Chris and Rachel is designed to make people question what is happening, worry about Rachel and what might happen if and when she meets Chris. We want people to think about their own safety, are the people they chat to and have made friends with really who they think they are? Can you really trust anyone on the internet when there is no proof of their real identity?
Identity is a massive part of the piece, Steph and Rachel played by the two of us (Olivia and Lucy) are characters aged at sixteen when we are both twenty years of age. We are making something that appears to be genuine and is designed to trick viewers into thinking these are real live girls in real life situations. We have forged identities with complete ease for this project. The internet is the perfect platform to create false characters as there is no call for proof and information, personalities and even image can be warped to portray the desired characters. Chris is also a completely fabricated character that was very easy to create. Even in just giving this character a Youtube account and a Hotmail account is testimony to how easy it is for anybody to pretend to be someone else online. These characters can mislead children, teenagers and even adults into creating friendships and eventually choose to meet with these strangers.
The making of these videos, furthermore, stresses how simple it is for a modern generation to not only use the required technology but often have unlimited access to devices such as a computer and video camera. With computers in bedrooms and broadband internet access, parents have a lot less control over what their children are doing. Web cams, which are now even built into some laptops, provide cheap and easy access to putting any material on the internet that can be seen by anybody.
The use of the internet and the widely available content, we believe, takes away some innocence from children and teens and gives them too much control. Rachel and Steph put their own videos on Youtube without a parents concent, a great deal of the content was in order to impress the viewers. Would the girls that tried smoking had there not been a camera there?
Lonely Hearts is designed to raise awareness amongst any internet user and encourage them to think twice when they next befriend a stranger.