Last night, instead of interacting with other humans in a meaningful way, I watched 2 hours of Dateline. And, really, I learned a lot.
In that two hours, I found out that some people (like around 5) have a compulsion to eat all night long, and that ice–the very thing we use to cool our drinks in this hot summer weather!–can give you a really bad tummy ache. But the big story of the night was one of Dateline's patented "Dangers of the 'Net" stories, about a pregnant woman who conned four different families out of money by letting them believe they could adopt her unborn child.
(You could tell it was a "Dangers Of The 'Net" story by the way the reporter put only 50% of the blame on the con artist herself, and the other 50% on the Internet, you know, for letting the con artist use it.)
Even though saying this story a "danger of the 'Net" is akin saying those
Lonely Hearts Schemes from the 40s were a "danger of the Postal Service," this episode of Dateline made one point very clear: The Internet will promise you its baby, then leave you with an empty crib that you can then pose mournfully in front of on national television. Also, however tempting it is, do not adopt a baby online.
Thankfully, though, according to the Dateline website, there are many other things you can do online:
—You can read about why you shouldn't adopt a baby online.
—You can watch a surprisingly long instructional video about how to wash your hands (soap, evidently, is needed).
—And you can take a quiz to find out if you have Night Eating Syndrome (surprisingly, this quiz does not include the question "Do you eat all night long?" which is pretty much the only question you need to find out if you have NES).
Other than that, there aren't many safe ways to use the Internet, unless it's reading this self-penned bio of Stone Phillips, that includes an entire paragraph on his high school years.
Sample: "I have often described Parkway West High School as Camelot in St. Louis County…"