MSP Academy Event

There will be another event coming to MSP this year. The exact date hasn't been announced yet, but we can assume it will start some time this week.
     Like always there will be a full guide to all of the steps up on this blog so look out for that! Until then- have fun and save up maybe a thousand or so coins as they usually ask you to buy things :D

part one
part two 

Childs safety on MSP

     I know whenever the topic of children’s safety online comes up; there is a lot of anger in the comment sections. Mostly by children who think they know what’s best. And maybe they do sometimes. Part of keeping children safe online is having an open dialog with them. Making sure they know your rules and expectations and why you have them, but also listen to how those rules and expectations make them feel. But, this is coming from someone who isn’t a parent. So a lot of what you think, I just cannot understand. At the end of this post I will link to a video done by a gamer I watch, who is the mother of a young daughter where she talks about how to keep your children safe on social media. If you have a child- or just want to know how you can protect yourself on social media I highly recommend it. She talks through and explains a lot of the privacy settings on various websites.

     In this blog I will mostly be sticking to things I do to keep my goddaughter and baby sister safe on MovieStarPlant. The first thing you should do if you have a child who has unsupervised access to a computer (meaning their are times where they are on a computer alone-you are not in the room with them) is to get parental controls put on said computer. That way you can black list every type of site you don’t want your child on, and maybe you’ll find MSP isn’t the site you want your child to be on- and PC are a great way to make sure they can’t get on it no matter what.

     Because their parents asked me to help monitor their online activity, I have the passwords to all of their accounts. Their accounts are hooked up to their parents email. Every day I log into their accounts to see who they have been interacting with, what has been said, and I check out the accounts of the people they have been talking to. If I see something that I think is off- I bring it up with them. I ask them about it, and let them tell me their feelings first (they may not have been affected by the person and I don’t want them to be influenced by my emotions) If it’s something serious, like one of them is the victim of bullying or they are bullying another person we have to have a more serious conversation. Especially if they are the bully. I make sure to ask why they were acting that why, was it something the other person said or did, were you following the directions of another person (*) There's a lot we talk about. I like to make sure they feel listened to as well, both of them are reaching the tween stage- and I want to make sure they know they can talk to me without fear of judgement, even if they were in the wrong. If there is something really bad though, I do inform their parents. Thankfully up to this point their has only been one time I had to talk to their parents

     I recommend you to have an account on every site your child plays on. This will matter on social media more then it does on MSP as you cannot have a private account on MSP- but it does make it a lot easier to see everything they are posting.

     MSP does implement  a form of safe chat which I believe they did in order to comply with COPPA, which I do appreciate although it has its flaws.  They aren’t very many people that work for MSP and I’m not sure how many moderators there are- but I assume it’s not many, so things do slip through the cracks. This is why users who have the strictest safe chat get confused when seemingly normal words get blocked. It’s because users used it in a way that breaks the rules. For instance- in the stricter safe chat numbers are blocked because it’s against the rules to tell personal information. That includes your name and age.

     Before your child creates their account make sure you go through the rules with them and they understand them 100%, especially if you buy them VIP as you will not get a refund if your child account gets deleted. They aren’t very many rules and I have posted them all on this blog- but if you just search MovieStarPlanet rules it should be the first thing that pops up in your preferred search engine. Or if you already have an account it’s under the question mark in the top right hand corner.

     I personally am the oldest person I know on MSP. I'm sure their are parents who play, but I haven't met any of them. That being said- like on all sites where the main demographic is young girls- you are going to have people trying to take advantage of them. Again, I've never seen any of them, but a lot of kids ignore the "don't share personal information" rule and post their skype and kik. Once a stranger has that information there's no saying what they are going to say or send to your child. Especially if your child thinks they are talking to another kid. But, if you are monitoring their MSP very closely, i'm sure you monitor their skype and kik as well. On some Parental control programs it logs every message send out from your computer- so even  if your child deletes a message you'll still have it. If your program has this I highly recommend activating it. You don't have to read every message they send out, but I know one of my younger sisters almost got kicked out of school because a girl was bullying her- then my sister was mean right back trying to defend herself,  but the girl deleted all the messages she send and acted like my sister was attacking her unprovoked. Because she was scared, my sister had also deleted the messages as well, this was before the girl told the school. The girl put up so much of a fuss her mom got the police involved.  In the end, my sister just got a ton of inschool suspension and the other girl walked free. If we had had a way to track the messages, it wouldn't have gotten so out of hand.

     At the end of the day, you know you can’t protect them from everything. But even if they get feisty with you remember- their safety is much more important than the benefits they think they will get if left unsupervised.

     If you want more information on MSP I know a lot of parents have written articles on it as there is a lot of bullying that happens on MSP. I may do another post talking about teams, which is something I was super shocked MSP allowed to happen when I first joined as they basically just bully people on other teams.  But that's a topic for another time.  

*something you see a lot on MSP is people saying things like “this person scammed me ” and their guest book will be filled with hundreds of post of people calling them a scammer or “This person was mean to me go post in their guest book” and their guestbook will suddenly be filled with some of the most disgusting things a person can think up. ( The guestbook is a part of their MSP profile where other users can post comments about them. A lot of the time this is filled with hate and negativity. Especially on the higher leveled accounts) this is against the rules though. If you are a member of MSP and you see someone spamming someone’s guestbook I urge you to report them.

Link to: Aureylians video How to keep kids safe on the internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHjB0HFN-gc

If you want to talk this, or any, topic more my email is Enirhtakb@gmail.com

Free Team School Artbook Challenge

I made the free team club a million years ago and I decided its probably time to start doing things with it.
For this first challenge its going to be centered around school since a lot of kids are starting school up again soon.

For this challenge you need to make a artbook telling what you love most about the first day of school or just what you love about school in general. It will be judged mostly on the content of the text. So you don't have a good chance of winning if you only have one sentence- unless everyone else who enters sucks xD

Then when you are done submit it to the Free Team club and wait till August 20th. Now, although I get on MSP a lot, i'm not very active in the actual community outside of Instagram. So I don't expect a lot (if any lol) entrees. But i'm going to do this anyways just to see what happens.

The winner gets a greet, three wishlist items and auto spammed for a week.

How to build an instagram following

     On my MSP related instagram I am at almost 2000 followers. Personally, I am not someone who set out to gain any followers at all on that account. I never tried to grow my following. But, all that being said, I did gain a large following. So I thought I would share some of the things that I think helped build me up to the level I am at, and some of the things that may be preventing you from doing the same. I will apologize in advance if I say anything that comes across as arrogant or douche-y in anyway, that is not my intention :] I also want you to know that these tips are mostly focused around building an MovieStarPlanet related account, but most of the tips can apply to any type of account you run.

1. Be Active

      The number one most important thing to building a following is to be active. When I first joined, and for a few months after I tried to post multiple times a day- but NOT in a row. I was constantly on this account and "dropped" my main account for a while. But that isn't really necessary its just something I found myself doing, I kind of have a one track mind when it comes to creative projects.        Anyways, when I say maybe post multiple times I made sure to emphasize to try avoid posting multiple times in a row. Spamming is not something most people want to see. It may be tempting when you first make your account to try and make yourself look active by posting 20+ pics, but you're actually turning people off from following you. Not very many people want their timeline cluttered by one persons post. Posting that much also puts your at risk of having instagram marking your account as spam and removing it from the site.

2. Quality 

     When making post from MSP try to avoid ever taking photos of your computer. Also avoid zooming into photos as that drastically reduces the quality. Always always always take screenshots. (Google it if you don't know how.) Then post the screenshot in a photo program- you can even use paint. Crop the photo down to what you want. Then email that yourself. Now I recommend having a photo square app that will make all of your photos 600x600 (instagrams photo size) This will save the quality of your photos. 

3. Relatable  

     People love to follow someone they can relate to. This is not something I really do a lot as i'm a lot older then the majority of my followers, but I do share stories I think they can relate to from time to time. People are more likely to stick with you and not unfollow if they feel a connection to you. I'm terribly shy, so I rarely read comments or check if I have DMs, but always responding to people also helps build that connection. 

4. On topic

     This one is pretty simple. You have an MovieStarPlanet account, so try to only post MSP things. At least until you build your following a bit.

5. What do your followers like?

     Pay attention to what photos get the most likes and comments. The types of post that get the most interactions are the types you want to post more of. 

6. Post things you own

     Again, this is pretty simple. If you didn't make the photo- don't post it unless you have permission. This mostly applies to MSP edits. Pretty much all of us have had people steal are stuff and say they made it- even when are watermarks are very visible xD 

7. Shout outs

     This is something I've never done personally- but it is something I see a lot of big accounts (not MSP related) doing. Find someone who owns a similar account- say if you make edits find someone who also post edits- and make a shout out post thats up for 24 hours (or how ever long you both agreed on) make sure to include the persons username and a brief description on why your followers should follow that person. Avoid shouting out people who have nothing to do with your theme.