Hey, this is Ariel.

Quick heads up for listeners.

This episode is centered around the issue of child predation and sexual abuse.

Every year for the past few years there's been a massive gaming conference, more like a gaming festival, kind of like a music festival but for

video gamers.

And it's called Dream Hack.

This weekend, 35,000 people will come to the Georgia World Congress Center for Dream Hack Atlanta.

You know, you've got players coming in in costumes.

We are at Dream Hack and holy crap there's a lot to do.

You've got just thousands of people playing computer games all at the same time. There's E.D.M. Dance music at night. There's competitions on stage. It's loud and fun and

chaotic and insane. And I went this year because I was following this guy Ben Halpert who runs

savvy cyber kids a nonprofit focused on online safety and he was going to lead a panel discussion around grooming and

child exploitation via video games and what he found as he was trying to get people to sit on the panel and then get people to attend the panel is basically no one wants to talk about child exploitation and grooming in video games.

People went to the festival to have a good time, to have fun.

Kids are there with their parents.

High school teams are there to compete.

What he was trying to do?

You know, it's a bummer.

It sucks.

It's terrifying.

People aren't really interested in knowing that this is going on.

Nellie Bowles is a reporter for the New York Times.

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