• Forbes is over it. Former corporate clients told the magazine last July that Second Life was empty except for undesirable horny cybersexers. A rep for Wells Fargo compared it to Iraq.
• TIME is over it. The mag's August takedown story called Second Life's traffic "disappointing," trashed the world's poor usability, and said the government sees it as a criminal kiddie-porn gambling tax evasion wonderland.
• The Times itself is over it. Except when the Times tech blog deconstructed Second Life, all the corroborating links came from competing newspapers.
• Actually everyone's over it. The spike in media mentions, rising from under 200 to over 1000 mentions per month over the last two years, is finally receding, with under 800 mentions in January.
• The headlines are still cheesy. When did blogging become mainstream? When papers stopped using "virtual" and "diary" in every headline about a weblog. Second Life hasn't made that jump. Times headlines include: "It's My (Virtual World);" "A Virtual World But Real Money;" "Obama Is First In Their Second Life;" and "The Reporter Is Real, but the World He Covers Isn't."
• Every story opens like this: "Joe Blow woke up this morning and flew above his house while playing the ukulele. He then did some other impossible things, quite matter-of-factly." [paragraph break] "He was in the virtual world Second Life." [gasps, applause, cheers]
• To wit: "Mr. Gould showed up in a Superman costume. Next, he invited me to sit down next to him in a chaise longue that overlooked the crashing surf. As we talked about my strengths and weaknesses, crabs skittered along the sand at our feet. At another point, in the middle of responding to a question about overcoming professional challenges, I stood up and performed a hula dance."

Thanks to Chris Hansen and his team of pedophile hunters at Dateline, everyone has learned two things: First, that you should only approach underage girls you've met in person, and second, that the Internet is full of dirty men who want to rape your daughter.

Well, engage in consensual sex with your daughter. "To Catch a Predator" involves voluntary meetings, not secret stalkers. Fear of unintended contact with predators is far more often based on urban legend and a few highly publicized stories. In fact, during the growth of the Internet from 1990 to 2000, estimated sexual abuse cases fell 40%. As of 2004, 85% of child abuse and sexual abuse was committed by the victims' family, with only 9% of abuse cases coming from outside a child's immediate circle of normally trusted adults. A kid is statistically ten times as likely to get jumped by Mom, Dad, or Grandpa as by an Internet stranger.

So much for the Internet as a hive of predators. But it could still be a place for bullying. Oh yes! So could school. Over 1 in 10 kids grades 6-10 surveyed in an academic study said they've been bullied (another 13% said they've bullied others, and 6% swung both ways). The nice thing (in this case) about the Internet is you can't punch someone through it. The other nice thing is that you can document everything over it. There will be the occasional high-profile "MySpace suicide" like Megan Meier's (in which the fake profile that allegedly drove Meier to suicide was a hoax by the neighbors), and everyone will focus on the one part of the story that depended on the Internet, but the truth is that online bullying is a lot more detectable and preventable than real-world abuse.

Frontline also points out that, surprise, kids can get loads of porn online. Not going to argue this. But why is it a bad thing? Thanks to the abstinence-only sex education promoted by the Clinton and Bush administrations (and largely uncriticized by presidential hopefuls), parents and peers still bear the full burden of teaching sexuality to youth. But kids, or at least boys, can find porn faster than their parents can figure out how to give "the talk," so they end up seeing quite a lot that they don't understand, but feels really right. As comedian Ze Frank said, learning how to have sex from watching porn is like learning how to drive from watching monster truck rallies, but it at least gets some of the basics down.

And teens are reaching past porn to find real information about sex. Nikol Hasler of the Midwest Teen Sex Show, told me she gets hundreds of e-mails a day about her show, and many are from teens asking sex-ed questions. (Male teens mostly ask if their dicks are normal.) She wants to create a forum to accompany her weekly web show, somewhere between the unmoderated forums where teens already work out sex through awkward flirtation, and the hypermoderated forums that can squelch "stupid questions" as much as a real-world classroom.

Frontline also addresses a particularly tricky area: pro-anorexia web sites. I can't deny that anorexics might find the same Internet benefit as Rubik's Cube solvers: Whereas before, there might be only one anorexic girl in a classroom (or so she thinks), finding thousands of sympathetic anorexics can normalize and encourage her anorexia, creating a "safe haven" that further drives her away from confronting her problem. The only hope here may be to catch the problem in real life. Again, this is only a reflection of a large offline problem and a long-term rise in eating disorders since as early as the 1930s.

So in the real world, kids are being preyed upon by their parents, beaten up at school, and shamed by teachers for wanting to have sex. On the Internet, they're talking more freely with their peers, keeping tabs on each other, and busting a nut without getting each other pregnant. It's not a sanitized world, but neither is the real one. The biggest problem is the lack of understanding that drives parents to shame and control their kids until they break all trust and know nothing about their children's online activity. Thanks, Frontline.

UPDATE: A publicist from Frontline noted that I apparently hadn't watched the documentary and said it's available online. Frontline's segment on predators does focus on the fears of parents and other media coverage, but the show gives generous time to danah boyd and other commentators that support a more balanced view of kids on the Internet. The fearmongering came mostly from the Times' poor representation of the show. My fault for not finding the original footage.

The New York Times covered a lot of ground in writing about the net this weekend, but I noticed a weird trend:

• "Joining the party, eager to make friends" — Times headline for a story on marketing in social networks. Later, writer Saul Hansell says, "Companies from Procter & Gamble to J. P. Morgan Chase, like so many lonely teenagers, are tricking out their online profiles and trying to make friends on the Web." [NY Times]
• "Wallflower at the Web party" — Headline for Gary Rivlin's article on the fall of Friendster and its CEO, Jonathan Abrams, who turned down a $30 million Google buyout that would have made him a billionaire today. [NY Times]
• "Google is very leading edge, very young and very appealing to 20- and 30-year-olds. If you walked around with a Google T-shirt, people would think that's a hip thing to wear." — a professor quoted in a Times piece on how Google fills young people's lives. [NY Times]

Looks like the Times just wants in on the party.

Mr. Perkins, who was briefly married to the best-selling author Danielle Steel and recently wrote a racy novel titled "Sex and the Single Zillionaire," did not respond to requests for comment. A representative said Mr. Perkins was in the Mediterranean on his new $100 million 287-foot yacht, the Maltese Falcon, and did not want to be disturbed.

The paragraph isn't anything like the business-minded analysis around it, but who cares, the Times has to put its gossip somewhere.

The story ends with:

The search warrant affidavit [against HP], on file in Marin County in California, where Mr. Perkins lives in an expansive hilltop home with ocean views, also reveals that the attorney general and AT&T are considering civil lawsuits as well.

How are Perkins' ocean views relevant here? Did some hapless editor randomly insert pieces of the Lifestyle section? WE ARE SO CONFUSED.

Leak, Inquiry and Resignation Rock a Boardroom [NY Times]

It's another embarrassing incident for HP, which is getting more buzz for this top-level power struggle than for any actual product or business news. But it makes for juicy reading, with everyone looking like a bad guy — director George Keyworth for leaking privileged information, chairwoman Patricia Dunn for snooping his and Tom Perkins's private phone records, and the company for trying to hide the drama. With boards like this, who needs the Sopranos?

A Board in Need of an Emily Post [NY Times, no reg]

Nearby, a stooped woman wearing a smock swirled in purple and red, who insisted on being called only "Grandmother," bundled her silicon pebbles and headed to a silicon bazaar. There, among vegetable sellers and old men who shuffled along selling tin foil, Chinese middlemen perched over rusty metal scales were doling out money for silicon.

"When this mine is finished I hope we can find another one," she said. "Nobody cares about this region. We can all starve to death and nobody will notice our bodies."

There's Money in Dirt, for Those Who Find Bits of Silicon [NYT]

Still, it's a bit worrisome to surf through a blog on the New York Fucking Times and have no clue what's going on.

Screens [NYT blog]

Now, after every news outlet, advocacy group, and government entity sifted through the records, the Times found the one researcher who didn't peek.

Researchers Yearn to Use AOL Logs, but They Hesitate [NYT]

The Times:

So we're picking sides already?

Earlier: AOL sacks CTO (for doing her job) [Valleywag]

Speaking from China to Wall Street analysts in a conference call after the earnings announcement, Michael S. Dell, the company's founder and chairman, said, "We are not satisfied with our performance, and we will do better."

While the company has told analysts for more than a year that it will do better, it has not been able to follow through.

"Also, Dell has shown poor attitude in class and hands in assignments late. Please call 111-1111 to arrange a parent-teacher conference."

Profit Falls by Half at Dell [NYT]

• On Saturday, the Times taught readers how to hide their identities on the Internet. [NYT]
• The same day, it told everyone their lives were "open books." [NYT]
• Monday brought the threat of camphone-wielding tabloid reader-reporters. [NYT]
• Finally, today, the Times reveals that we can all blame the advertisers. [NYT]

What new angle will they think of next?

David Pogue videos [NYT]

The Times decided to hunt down User Number 4417749, who searched for "numb fingers."

Yes, the Times, whose earlier coverage of the AOL privacy violation focused on AOL removing the data (and not, say, AOL putting the data up in the first place), managed to find Georgian widow Thelma Arnold. And they got a photo with her doggie.

Because deep inside every hard-hitting article about corporate wrongdoing lies the soul of an insipid human interest piece trying to break free.

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 [NYT]
Earlier: Find the scariest AOL user search record [Valleywag]

Honestly, what other company gets a story on the front of the New York Times tech section just for apologizing for a privacy violation?

AOL Removes Search Data on Group of Web Users [NY Times]

Now, maybe it was T-B-Lee's decision to explain the telecom industry in 1887 terms, but it seems more like a pattern, judging by a headline about videos in the Times' tech section: "Publishers Try to Sell Words With Moving Pictures."

At least they didn't call them "talkies."

Entangling the Web [NYT]

New York Times Technology section [NYT]

"The battle is about one thing: getting that search box in front of as many people in as many places as possible," said Jim Lanzone, the chief executive of Ask.com

Getting market share advice from Ask is like getting fashion advice from Peter Jackson. But that's not the only deconstructable quote. A former Yahoo exec speaks about experimentation. Google VP Marissa Mayer pontificates on adding features to new products. Yahoo and Google talk about social networking.

But best of all, Google co-founder Sergey Brin blurted, "It's getting hard to follow all the different products."

Yep, co-presidentin' is hard.

In the Race With Google, It's Consistency vs. 'Wow' [NYT]

The Times doesn't even bother linking the story to the bigger issues. For one, what does public reception of Netscape.com show about AOL's chances as a new bottom-up media company?

And after falling for two years, will Netscape traffic stop bleeding? Does Calacanis have an escape plan to a better department in AOL? (After all, he's said he wants to run the company one day.)

Interactive Netscape Site Gets Some Sour Responses [NYT]

A Dell notebook computer that burst into flames last month in Osaka, Japan, has damaged more than just the conference table where it sat smoldering. The incident, publicized in photos on the Internet, has also hurt Dell's recent attempts to improve its image.

The company said the incident got more publicity than such incidents usually do when they happen to other manufacturers.

Some of us forgot to learn in grade school: When everyone singles you out for mockery, complaining about it can only hurt.

Dell's Exploding Computer and Other Image Problems [NYT]