A lot of people on this forum are in great need of this type of guide for some reason, so, in order of most importance:
- Do not give any personal information to anyone you do not know in real life. This includes but is not limited to:
- Your phone number, people can get your full name and address from a phone number do NOT give it away. Also if a phone number is asked for, it's an almost stereotypical sign of creepiness.
- Your last or first name
- Obviously your address
- A photo of yourself or your surroundings (geoguesser exists, just don't share photos of public places or identifiable photos of private places trust me on this).
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Do not engage in spaces where s*xual topics are casually discussed (including through weird asf memes), this includes private 1-on-1 dms, group chats, and especially any discord, leave immediately if you see behavior like this. Avoid individuals who casually discuss explicit topics as well. References to explicit content, subtle, non-subtle, or straight up cropped images or quotes from explicit content apply as well.
(EXAMPLE: lowkey want to mention someone here but I also don't want to as well ... although I will anyway (without a username obviously) wtf is that one guy's signature "notices buldge, "OwO what is this"" dude why did you put that as your signature that's just straight up a quote pls change it). -
Do not online date under the age of 18 (when you don't know the other person irl). People can easily lie about their age, even if you ask for a face reveals. Face reveals can be faked by using photos of random people or children (they may also source unsearchable photos from others they may be messaging).
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Do not engage in overly toxic spaces such as twitter, random badly moderated discords, etc. People who are overly aggressive, bullying, or attempt to isolate others are HUGE red flags.
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Be cautious around people who try to manipulate you with tactics such as:
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Threatening you with the end of whatever validation, praise, or friendship that they usually force onto you ("whats up bestie!!!!!", or "You are genuinely the best person i've ever met!" when you literally just met them) in order to try to force you to do anything.
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Just threatening you in general tbh
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Validation and praise being utilized as weapons
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Forcing you to do things you explicitly don't want to do
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Pressuring you into doing anything (as an example, look up "force-femming: g*ooming through memes" on youtube it can get really subtly obvious).
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I just realized that the first bullet point lowkey covered all of the manipulation tactics people use, also rule 5 applies in real life as well.
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Memes and jokes can also be manipulative and can easily stop being jokes.
Entire groups of people may also use these tactics to hurt people, as explained in rule 6.
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Try to avoid peer pressure, don't follow trends or join groups to feel validated by randos on the internet. Example: that one weird face reveal trend where people are face revealing for the literal reason of "because everyone else is doing it". Also still especially avoid people who intentionally pressure you into doing things.
Most predatory online groups are joined for only the purpose of receiving their promised social validation, which they then use to pressure their victims into adopting whatever "normal" the group has.
Basically, avoid groups like "femboy paradise," "if you join this group you must become bald or we freaking hate you," "only gay depressed teenagers join this discord please, however, i'm secretly 23 years old," "The Internet Police That Sends Death Threats To Random People or the TIPTSDTTRP," "BrowseDNS (evil variant)," etc.Don't try to make friends with creeps, bullies, or jerks because you "need" friends.
Don't try to join a group with creeps, bullies, or jerks because you "need" a group. -
Even if you trust someone online you don't know irl for any reason, always apply these rules to interactions with them.
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If you did not follow any of these rules and are NOT safe on the internet. Try to take the following steps to end whatever's happening as soon as possible:
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Immediately end any contact with anyone who caused the situation that you are in including anyone who supports the people who caused the situation that you are in.
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If any crimes have been committed, try to contact law enforcement and get them arrested and sent to prison. This is the only way to have any form of real justice delivered, since otherwise the offender can just create another account and continue to harass (or whatever they're doing) you or others if not sent to an actual prison. If contacting law enforcement is not possible or if they did absolutely nothing about it AFTER you contacted them, continue reading.
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Report them to the moderation of the forum, social media or messaging site that you experienced whatever happened on. Do this after contacting law enforcement, since terrible moderation can actively decide to enable bad actors or even be the bad actors themselves. If it's a discord server, report it to discord's moderation and NOT the "mods" of the discord server, they can be just as bad.
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