Young French bloggers find a new and risky way to create buzz

“If you comment on my blog, I’ll send you a photo of my thighs with the name of your blog on them.” That kind of virtual deal, despite the dangers involved, is tempting more and more very young French girls who are looking to gain Internet notoriety

His Internet name is Juju, according to a report in L’Express. He says he’s 13 years old and that he likes Marseille football team and New York. He has a blog, like thousands of other kids his age, but his blog contains some very particular content: photos of very young girls in their underwear or less. All those photos have Juju’s name on them, written in marker pen on the sender’s hands, chest, thighs or backside. The less adventurous amongst them prefer a sheet of paper. These photos are called Dedipix, and the girls send them in exchange for hundreds of comments on their own blogs. Young girls sending semi-nude photos of themselves to other bloggers is a common phenomena in the French adolescent blogosphere, where creating positive buzz is seen as being essential to Internet credibility. The problem is that many of them are very young – as young as fourteen, they say, but there are thought to be many much younger kids, 9 or 10 years old, on the same blog sites. Most of these kinds of photos are on Skyblogs, which is the blog platform of France’s most-listened to young people’s radio station, Skyrock. Skyblogs is home to the majority of French adolescent blogs. So, Juju gets his photos in exchange for comments, and how many comments he sends in return depends on the photo. Juju promises 100 comments - or “Comm’z” as French kids call them - for a picture of thighs with his name on them, and 180 for a photo of breasts. A sheet of paper earns a measly 70. The comments he sends back are very short, text or Twitter style, and they say things like “You look real cool” or “So funny!” but that isn’t important. What’s important is to get known, because Skyblogs rates blogs according to how busy they are and how many comments they get. Some bloggers just send vote-ups for photos, and others have an evaluation system for photos received, the prettiest girls getting the most votes and those judged to be less pretty receiving cruel comment. Boys rarely send photos to girls. Dominique Delorme runs ‘Net écoute famille,’ which is a telephone help line service for the protection of minors on the Internet. She thinks that “These adolescents who strip off don’t seem to realise the sexual nature of the poses they strike. They consider it all as being no more than a way of making friends and expanding their contact list. It’s all about being popular by having hundreds of friends, like they do on MSN.” Delorme thinks that the children don’t see the dangers of this kind of virtual sociability and that it has a potential for more serious exploitation and abuse. “Kids are beginning to use chat and blogs at a much younger age, sometimes 9 or 10,” she says, “and they tend to say they are older, the girls in particular. They often add two or three years to their age.” She compares the virtual world to the real world by saying “When a kid goes to the cinema, parents tell them not to talk to strangers and to be careful when crossing the street. And when the kids get home they ask them if they liked the film and what it was about." "It’s that kind of basic parental reflex which shouldn’t be forgotten just because the kids are at home and using the Internet.” Skyblogs says that they moderate their photos and blogs but that some of them “slip through the net.”