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Nov. 12th, 2007 08:24 amSome stupid sinus thing, probably. I bought $14 worth of juice this morning, though the Odwalla stuff tastes terrible. I'm going to lay on the sofa in the dark and pray my head stops pounding.
Nov. 12th, 2007
Suburban evil, as seen on Myspace
Nov. 12th, 2007 07:06 pmSuburban Evil: How to Use Myspace to Drive a Child to Suicide - http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/11/news/sj2tn20071110-1111stc_pokin_1.ii1.txt
A girl ends an on-again, off-again friendship with another child. This girl has ADD, and is very overweight. She's struggled with depression and her self esteem.
The girl is friended by a nice, cute boy on Myspace who is really nice to her.
The girl is turned on by the boy, who posts hateful messages about the girl on Myspace.
The girl hangs herself. She is thirteen.
The boy's Myspace account is deleted.
The boy never existed. The boy was created by the parents of the other child specifically to befriend the girl. One of those parents stated she didn't feel "as guilty" at the funeral because she thought the girl had tried to commit suicide before. (This is not true.)
----
I've been trying to think of what to say about this for thirty some minutes. It's sort of unreal, nightmarish. I spent ten minutes poking around trying to figure out if that link was real. This story would be somewhat less horrifying if it was just the other child who created this to fuck with her ex-friend. That is pretty awful. But it is the cruel, stupid shit one sort of expects. At least you do if you grew up on the receiving end of nasty whispers, pranks and bullies. My house was egged when I was in fifth grade, and I was called a Satanist by my classmates, amongst other less friendly names. I remember at one point, my mother asking me what I had done to start this.
But the fact that adults were involved, and involved at least one other unrelated child, really tips this over into something horrific for me. It's one thing to raise your kid to be an elitist snob, to be a jerk, or a bully. That's reprehensible. But to actively participate and encourage your child to participate in something set up to be cruel, and ends up causing the death of another child? Then to act as if you hadn't done anything wrong? That's where it stops just being bad judgment and stupidity. It becomes evil, in my eyes. People willing to torture children, for any reason, deserve to be shot and left for vultures.
It's not Myspace to blame. Yes, Myspace is ugly and full of thousands of horrible pages with busy backgrounds, annoying music and atrocious grammar. But it is just a construct, an inanimate thing used by millions of people for different reasons. Myspace is no more or less evil than a video camera. No one runs around demanding that we restrict the sale of video cameras or make laws about their use because people have used video cameras to record themselves breaking into people's homes or to make child pornography. The internet is pretty much the same thing. It's a tool. It's a different tool, more complicated and harder to understand. But the internet, and Myspace, didn't torture a thirteen year old girl into hanging herself in her bedroom closet. People did that. People who should be ashamed of their role in this, people who ostensibly should have known better as adults and as parents.
One of my former coworkers and I used to joke about tshirts we would make for ourselves and our coworkers. One of them said "Shoot the parents, save the children." I think perhaps in this case it might be applicable. Anyone who demonstrates such a lack of sense should face some serious questioning about their abilities to take care of their own children.
A girl ends an on-again, off-again friendship with another child. This girl has ADD, and is very overweight. She's struggled with depression and her self esteem.
The girl is friended by a nice, cute boy on Myspace who is really nice to her.
The girl is turned on by the boy, who posts hateful messages about the girl on Myspace.
The girl hangs herself. She is thirteen.
The boy's Myspace account is deleted.
The boy never existed. The boy was created by the parents of the other child specifically to befriend the girl. One of those parents stated she didn't feel "as guilty" at the funeral because she thought the girl had tried to commit suicide before. (This is not true.)
----
I've been trying to think of what to say about this for thirty some minutes. It's sort of unreal, nightmarish. I spent ten minutes poking around trying to figure out if that link was real. This story would be somewhat less horrifying if it was just the other child who created this to fuck with her ex-friend. That is pretty awful. But it is the cruel, stupid shit one sort of expects. At least you do if you grew up on the receiving end of nasty whispers, pranks and bullies. My house was egged when I was in fifth grade, and I was called a Satanist by my classmates, amongst other less friendly names. I remember at one point, my mother asking me what I had done to start this.
But the fact that adults were involved, and involved at least one other unrelated child, really tips this over into something horrific for me. It's one thing to raise your kid to be an elitist snob, to be a jerk, or a bully. That's reprehensible. But to actively participate and encourage your child to participate in something set up to be cruel, and ends up causing the death of another child? Then to act as if you hadn't done anything wrong? That's where it stops just being bad judgment and stupidity. It becomes evil, in my eyes. People willing to torture children, for any reason, deserve to be shot and left for vultures.
It's not Myspace to blame. Yes, Myspace is ugly and full of thousands of horrible pages with busy backgrounds, annoying music and atrocious grammar. But it is just a construct, an inanimate thing used by millions of people for different reasons. Myspace is no more or less evil than a video camera. No one runs around demanding that we restrict the sale of video cameras or make laws about their use because people have used video cameras to record themselves breaking into people's homes or to make child pornography. The internet is pretty much the same thing. It's a tool. It's a different tool, more complicated and harder to understand. But the internet, and Myspace, didn't torture a thirteen year old girl into hanging herself in her bedroom closet. People did that. People who should be ashamed of their role in this, people who ostensibly should have known better as adults and as parents.
One of my former coworkers and I used to joke about tshirts we would make for ourselves and our coworkers. One of them said "Shoot the parents, save the children." I think perhaps in this case it might be applicable. Anyone who demonstrates such a lack of sense should face some serious questioning about their abilities to take care of their own children.