I've covered murders, grisly accidents, airplanes falling out of the sky and, occasionally, dirty politics.
But in nearly two decades of journalism, nothing has made my insides churn like seeing what my 13-year-old daughter and her friends are up to on MySpace.com.
Here's a bulletin I recently found posted to her site:
"OMG! Add this hott guy! He will whore the first 20 people added to his friends list.... Add him! You can do it in his van!"
Loosely translated, the teenage girl was "pimping" a teenage boy, shown smooching his guitar, as a potential new friend -- or more -- for my daughter. If Taylor added him to her MySpace "friends" list, the tousled-hair teen would be able to look at her website and send messages to her.
The soliciting girl made the pitch to all 245 of her own "friends" with a simple keystroke.
In the MySpace world, this is called a "whore code." It's a mild -- very mild -- example of the coarse language and often profane messages that are plastered all over the social networking site like graffiti on bathroom walls.
It was this coarseness and an abject lack of manners (not to mention extremely poor grammar) that bothered me the most as I entered the second month of a deal that I had worked out with my often headstrong daughter.
Though MySpace tells users that they must be at least 14 years old to join, all it takes is a casual search to see that the requirement is routinely violated. All of the kids at her junior high had MySpace accounts, Taylor pleaded. Why couldn't she?
After consulting with a circle of friends and relatives, I relented. I'd let Taylor have a MySpace site, I told her, but only if she agreed to follow some rules.
The first was that her site would have to be set to "private." That meant that only those she had preapproved as "friends" could see her page.
Next, she could not add as a friend anyone she did not personally know.
We also agreed that no foul language or inappropriate materials could be used.
And, most important, she had to give me complete access to her site, including a password that let me view hidden e-mails.
Taylor was so excited that she immediately agreed to everything and signed the contract that we had drawn up.
In the high of the moment, I felt good too. I had found a way to allow my daughter an activity that she seemed to love while protecting her from online predators -- my biggest worry.
