By Barbara Hollands
“Mxit addicts are like other addicts they start meeting a legitimate need for love or caring in an illegitimate way.” He wants to know who my contacts are, but I know he talks to other women and that he gets naked pictures of them. The trendy new cellphone chat system, Mxit, is luring teens and adults into a sordid underworld of sex, treachery, pornography and infidelity. Eastern Cape users this week told how their addiction to the cheap messaging system, which until now has been seen as just another fashionable plaything for teens had become so strong it destroyed their marriages and jobs.
One middle-aged woman told how she had left her husband for a man she met in a chatroom on Mxit. She gave up her job and marriage to move to Pretoria, only to find he was a much younger man who still lived with his mother. In another case, a self-confessed Mxit addict told his friends how he accessed the Port Elizabeth chatroom to meet women to have sex with. Despite having a steady girlfriend, he has set himself a target to sleep with 100 women and is already on number 23.
Regular users say Mxit chatrooms are inundated with men making lewd suggestions. Another user admitted to sending naked photographs of herself to a man she met in a chatroom and became infatuated with.
“That was a crazy thing to do because they could be circulating on the internet now,” she said. Mxit is an instant messaging programme that lets users chat to others who are logged on via the mobile internet rather than using a standard SMS. Addiction counsellor Steve Buys said obsessive use of Mxit could be termed an addiction because it affected normal relationships, work and family.
“Mxit addicts are like other addicts, they start meeting a legitimate need for love or caring in an illegitimate way,” said Buys.
“They replace face-to-face connections with electronic relationships and these will always be superficial and involve people lying and deceiving each other. “Also, when it comes to real relationships these people might later have trouble forming real connections.” Port Elizabeth book-keeper Debbie Hardy (not her real name) told Weekend Post she came close to ending her marriage after meeting a Pretoria man on one of the Mxit chatrooms and falling in love with him.
After conducting a passionate cellphone relationship with the man, which included the two exchanging full-frontal photographs of their naked bodies, Hardy resigned from her job, left her husband and went to Pretoria to meet her cellphone lover.
Hardy said she was “definitely addicted to Mxit” and would text her lover at all times of the day and night. Her bubble burst when she met the Pretoria man after she resigned from her job and left her husband in December. “He wasn’t what I expected at all. He was younger than me and very immature and he was still living with his mother, so I came back to my husband and he forgave me.”
Hardy says she also introduced her 20-year-old sister to Mxit and was horrified when she fell for the same Pretoria man.
“She went for the same guy and when I found out I blew a gasket. She also sent him nude photographs of herself. She left her boyfriend and their two-year-old daughter, caught a bus to Pretoria and stayed with him for a week and slept with him. When it didn’t work out she came back and her boyfriend gave her another chance, but then she fell for another guy on Mxit and again left and went to Pietermaritzburg and had sex with him.
“But when she came back her boyfriend didn’t want her back and he is now fighting for the custody of their child. That really opened my eyes about Mxit and I feel so guilty because I introduced her to it.” Hardy says she has a male friend who has decided to become a Casanova”. She said he accessed the Port Elizabeth chatroom on Mxit to meet women to have sex with.
“He told my husband he has set a target to sleep with 100 women and he is already on number 23, even though he has a girlfriend. He works for a bank and is intelligent with a nice car and a good salary, but women should be careful of him because he just wants to use them.” Post Elizabeth debtors and creditors clerk Tanya Elliott (not her real name), 24, said she first hooked up to Mxit when she heard about it from a colleague and says she is now addicted to it and that it has ruined her relationship with her boyfriend with whom she has a two- year-old child.
“At first I wasn’t interested, but then seven months ago I put it on my cellphone because it is a cheaper way to stay in touch with friends and it also has chatrooms where I made a few good friends.”
The trouble started when Elliott could no longer control the amount of time she was spending on Mxit. Elliott says her boyfriend also uses Mxit and this has caused jealous fights between them. “He wants to know who my contacts are, but I know he talks to other women and that he gets naked pictures of them. Our relationship is not the same any more because of Mxit. Once my friend set him up by flirting with him on Mxit under another name and he said he wanted pictures of her and to meet her, so I know he is unfaithful.”
Childline National co-ordinator Joan van Niekerk said addiction to internet chatrooms and Mxit chatrooms was similar and that children could easily access both, but that advances in technology should not be blamed if paedophiles abuse it to access children.
“When we first had phones, there were people who made obscene phone calls, then with the internet, paedophiles learnt how to misuse the technology. There will always be people who exploit innovations in technology and our responsibility as adults and children is to protect ourselves from this.”
Source: Weekend Post
TRIED IT ALL, THE INVITES UNDER OTHER NAMES, GETING MY FRIENDS TO SET MY HUSBAND UP AS FAR AS MEETING THEM. HE WOULD THEN LOOK FOR AN ARGUMENT JUST SO HE COULD GET OUT TO MEET THEM. NEVERTHELESS I WAS IN CONTACT WITH THEM FROM ANOTHER PHONE WHERE HE COULD NOT SEE ME BUT I HIM WHEN HE WAS ONLINE. THIS HAS CAUSED MAJOR TROUBLE IN OUR 25 YEAR MARRIAGE EVEN THOUGH I KNOW IT WAS MY FRIENDS WHO WERE DOING THIS NEVERTHELESS THE MANNER IN WHICH HE RESPONDED TO THEM AND TO ME (UNDER ANOTHER NAME) CAN WELL BE IMAGINED JUST HOW FAR HE WENT TO SPILL THE BEANS ON OUR RELATIONSHIP. NOT TO METNION THE THOUGHT THAT I FEEL I WONT BE ABLE TO TRUST HIM AGAIN. I, MYSELF HAS BEEN ON MIXT BUT HAS NEVER AND WILL NEVER SEND A PIC OR MEET ANYONE. ONE HAS TO DRAW A LINE SOMEWHERE. THANKS TO MIXT EMAILS… I NOW SEE THE LIGHT!! AND WILL BE SHOWING THIS TO MY HUSBAND WHICH I PRINTED OUT. GOOD LUCK TO ALL!!
If you don’t know why you enter a chatroom, you are in for a big surprise. I sometimes chat to other Flightsimmers about flying, but that’s all. Funny subjects and things don’t interest me. I cannot see what one could possibly need in a chatroom. Isn’t it better and more enjoyable to chat to people face to face? I mean, where is the connection? Are we becoming a disconnected society not able to communicate anymore? Do yourself a favour and join a chat room and sit and read what crap people talk about and suggest to one another. They would never say those things in front of the same persons if they were to meeat face to face. People need to learn to connect with others again. And Psychiatrists have enough to do with the normal nutties out there. This country surely cannot afford to have people going off work to consult Psychiatrists because they screwed up their lives. People are not thinking I gather. The answer is balance. Balance your life and peace and harmony will be your companions.
But people will only learn when they “bump their heads” against the proverbial stonewall.
Life is too short for trivial things like chatrooms. There’s fun out there. Leave your phone and go out there and have some fun. Meet people. Flirt. Chat. Be happy. That should be the ticket.
Is there any way of proving what content has been sent or received via mxit?
Hey Dean
No! There is currently no way to prove what messages has been sent or received. Firstly the company, MXit Lifestyle, does not log the messages. Due to volumes (currently 200 million per day) they do not have the capacity to store each and every message.
And as soon as you log out of MXit or the chat rooms all messages sent or received are erased.
“No! There is currently no way to prove what messages has been sent or received. Firstly the company, MXit Lifestyle, does not log the messages. Due to volumes (currently 200 million per day) they do not have the capacity to store each and every message.
And as soon as you log out of MXit or the chat rooms all messages sent or received are erased.”
If MXITs owners, shareholders, the mobile operators and advertisers actually cared about the users they would at least try to protect them from these predators.
This is so scary…I once took my bf`s phone and found mxit on it and i went online..the things i saw there made me sick.The photos and clips he had of girls that i would say are about 16 to 19.There was this girl that i called and she was from george.She also sold her house and was moving to pta to cme and stay in my house…not knowing that she had been givin the wrong adress..this is no joke..she would cut herself and send me those trble clips and i had to watch this poor girl bleed and i could hear her crying.i cant forgive my bf for this and ive lost all the respect for him..ive cme to hate him for doing that to that poor girl.
i have been married 2 my wife 4 14 years and the last 3 years have been hell.she became a mxit addict in 2006 and our marriege went downhill from there.i filed 4 diforce and we are seperated 4 the last 4 months.she fell inlove with a indier man from durban whom she met ofer mxit
I know everybody’s hate and frustration towards mxit, i have been in the same position where my wife and i nearly broke up because she met somebody else on mxit. i started spying on her, and got proof of everything she was doing. She became totally infatuated with mxit, and could not eat or sleep. I eventually put her up to a choice, either me, or mxit. She had no place to go, so she was forced to stop mxit’ing. The governments should shut mxit down……..
It’s sad if relationships founder over such a thing. Having run one of the UK’s oldest sites I wonder sometimes, but feel we’re fulfilling a need.
C
Hi, good clause, you carried nonetheless if you don’t mind I’d contribute few points out about approaches girls or men. Peculiarly it can be serious when it occurs to man woman relationships. The important thing is your attitude, which should be fresh and open. If you have an posture like that, any person shouldn’t discover any troubles that you have speechmaking as expressing. When you begin a conversation, you unremarkably desire to demand safe queries that are confident not to cause her any irritation. Once the conversation takes some momentum, you can exact more personal queries. A good magic is to memorise some interrogations she made a point of so whenever the conversation decelerates, you can raise one of these questions.
Hi nice post. I consider these hints might be reusable also. Now the good pick up notes are the ones that flatter the woman. Now several of the lines might just be in all good fun to help break the ice. That is solid and it can in the end lead to ending up in bed with her at the end of the night. Heck what man doesn’t want that, but knowing what to read and how to pull it off can take a bit of apply. A main pick up draw will have you in the door but from there you have to be positive decent to hold the conversation running.
My Boyfriend of 2 years has become addicted to Mxit Chatrooms. He has been connecting with numerous ladies (PE included – seems like a lot of porn & sex-exchange is happening with the PE areas). He has decided that our conversations are boring to him and he has found the chatrooms to be of more interrist, conversations (exchanging photos etc). I found out about the relationships with photos he sent to me and this girl. He does not want to give up on the relationships and is laying about the length of time that he has been conversing with all his new female friends. I feel so betrayed and feel that he is being unfaithful to me. He has even gone so far as to date some of the ladies during our relationship. We have broken up because of numerous fights about mxit chatrooms. But seems like once you are hooked to mxit it is like a drug that you just want more and more of. So many lies and deceit. Even it the price that you are paying is high people will always want to push the boundaries. I have since the break-up removed mxit from my phone which I used to mxit with him. Where I always found him on-line chatting to other ladies lying to me saying that he is looking at mxit-exchange. Everybody has choices. Please make the right choices.
You need to move on and dump his ass. This man you are involved with obviously has issues with his own sexuality and confidence with women. Chat rooms are a safe place to expressed repressed desires.
HI Ramon, Thank you for your response. I have dumped his ass and am moving on. Finding a mother for your kids, a business & life partner seems to be easy in chatrooms. Only until reality knocks on your door.
Wow just reading all your msgs i even got sick with some storys! after wrighting this msg im del Mxit cant belive how sick this world has come to! what a shame!!!! thanks ladys and gents.