Literally why I have the username I have today was to be as discrete as possible (also laziness). IDK if it's taught anymore but when I was a Freshman in High School (2007/08), me and my classmates were required to attend social media awareness classes so we wouldn't give out personal info online or interact with random strangers. We were shown plenty of clips of "To Catch a Predator."
Granted part of it was fear of a new wave of technology but as the years go by I feel what I learned has become more and more valuable. It also helps that I thought Smashboards at the time was kind of boring compared to actually playing Melee/Brawl vs. talking/complaining about it. lol
Part of me feels like we've become desensitized to the internet & social media. Am not saying by any stretch that parents are the villains in most stories or that one should over-parent but do pay attention to what your child is doing and where they're going both online & IRL.
I don't think I've ever heard of required "social media awareness" classes, but I think that's a good idea for a variety of reasons, not just safety ones. Simple etiquette and manners would be good to teach as well. But safety is a big part of it, because unless kids are aware of the dangers, they might not understand the nuances of these things. A lot of kids go on the internet and talk to older people and just think it's cool. And most adults are cool, normal, and kind. But the few predators out there will take advantage of the situation if given the chance.
I'd argue that the internet isn't any safer now than it was back then. Discord and Twitter, among other things, are so easily accessible and discreet that they can be pretty dangerous for kids. The founder of a huge Discord server was just banned from Discord after a bunch of minors came forward with evidence that he had harassed them in private messages. No idea how serious it got, but it was enough for Discord to ban him, but Discord doesn't have the power to do much else.
Education is important here. Kids need to be educated about how to keep themselves safe and how to avoid bad situations. It's when kids are unaware or ignorant of what's going on that they can be taken advantage of. But even then, they also need to be at least a little supervised. Like you said, no one should over-parent, but you should at least be aware of what your child is up to, especially in regards to online communication.
It'd be foolish to think otherwise. Of course there's going to be issues in the community, there always will be.
However, with all of this **** coming to light thanks in no small part to the brave individuals stepping forward, we have a chance to reexamine what went wrong and take steps to ensure that people are protected. I have faith that we can learn from this and be better; not necessarily perfect, but certainly a sight more than what came before. There are already a ton of things that have been set in motion by other notable figures of the Smash community due to these events. Steps are being taken here on this very website.
Smooth Criminal
There's definitely going to be some big changes in the future. In addition to sanitary procedures due to all the COVID stuff, tournaments and events are probably going to have much tighter security policies regarding children. Things are not going to be the same, but hopefully, they should be better. They'll never be perfect, but we can always work towards improvement.
The way I look at it, a lot of the people who were involved or complicit with the nasty things that happened are now never going to be part of the scene again. That clears the weeds and gives the opportunity to rebuild the scene with a much better and safer culture. Again, it will never be perfect, but if an environment can be created where everyone--not just children--can be safe, then that will be worth the trouble of right now. It shouldn't have had to require this kind of circumstance for these things to be addressed, people should not have had to go through these awful experience and come out with them in public for basic safety and respect concerns to be considered, but foresight isn't always there when we need it.
Now, we can at least try and make things better for future Smash players and fans. Hopefully, the community will experience a bit of a rebirth once normal tournaments start back up, and we can return our focus to the new exciting characters and players that will take the stage, while also making it a safer place for everyone involved.
