Slashdot Mirror
Classroom Bullies On The Internet
peter303 writes "Oldtimers are familiar with sociopaths in usenet newsgroups and chat rooms. The NY Times has an article about grade school kids who bully on the Internet. These include message bombing and slanderous web pages. The web allows one to extend bad manners from real life."
The journalists drag up this dreck every year or whenever there is a school "incident". dave
A lot of this story was about moronic kids taking pornographic pictures of themselves or friends and it quickly circulating. No fucking way, porn, spreading fast on the Internet? Who would have thought!
But a growing number of teenagers are learning the hard way that words sent into cyberspace can have more severe consequences than a telephone conversation or a whispered confidence. As ephemeral as they seem, instant messages (better known as I.M.'s) form a written record often wielded as a potent weapon for adolescent betrayal and torment.
NOTHING is worse than the fucking "telephone game". Story starts innocuous enough about Timmy getting reprimanded by the Gym teacher and ends up into some outlandish bullshit about Timmy getting his cock sucked by the male Gym teacher for missing a basket during an important shot in a worthless game during class.
Yeah I suppose the written record could be changed to make people more and more guilty looking but it's most likely getting circulated in tact (I know how stuff is copy/pasted between AIM windows). If the girl said some racial epitaph and it got spread over AIM and her school suggested she leave so be it. She probably lucked out better than if it had been said verbally and stretched...
Kids should be taught the same things we preach... Do not allow anyone to contact you on AIM unless they are on your buddy list or at the very least have it prompt you if you don't have them on your list. At least they can't won't get to fill up your SMS inbox with messages about your stupid behavior.
Have some common sense and don't post pictures of yourself masturbating, don't send messages about how you think of someone else, and don't allow yourself to be video taped by other kids doing sexual things with others.
In fact, I would say that Katie is a sociopath, as well.
I assume the Slashdot crowd doesn't need to be reminded that this is the same "Parry Aftab" and WiredSaftey.org program as pushed by the trampy little "Katie" of "Katie.com" domain theft fame from a couple weeks ago. The same girl that was stupid enough to get herself involved with a 40 year old man alone in his hotel room and then tried to extort an innocent woman out of her legitimately held domain name all under the guise of "I'm a stupid twit and made a bad choice when I was a teenager and now I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to milk it for every dime I possibly can".
Parry Aftab, Katie and the whole lot are a bunch of fucking twits. They see problems where none exist and blame everyone else in the world for their own personal failures of choice and behavior. God I can't fucking STAND these idiots and I can't believe Slashdot is now "promoting" news for the same twat that we were flaming the hell out of a short time ago.
But it did not end there. As soon as Amanda got home, the instant messages started popping up on her computer screen. She was a tattletale and a liar, they said. Shaken, she typed back, "You stole my stuff!" She was a "stuck-up bitch," came the instant response in the box on the screen, followed by a series of increasingly ugly epithets.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. Don't give people you don't like your instant messaging name, then. Or rather than engaging in petty arguing, sign off. Or block them. What does it take to warn or block someone on AIM? Two or three button clicks? For fuck's sake, it's a few mean words on a computer - it's not like these "bullies" are shoving broomhandles up their "victims" asses.
It's one thing for kids to be whiney little thin-skinned shits, but it's another for the lawyer - Parry Aftab, Wired and that Katie bitch to make big bank going around promoting these social rejects. These retards that can't back down from confrontation by doing the obvious - like blocking people in AIM or simply grow up and deal with the fact that not everyone is going to like you and sometimes your feelings will be hurt.
This story just makes me want to puke, as do those who are clearly exploiting the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" angle of it. Also - just because you're a porky fuck who almost got herself raped in a hotel by a man three times her age (where the fuck were your parents?!) doesn't make you an "expert". That's like saying that junkies are experts on drugs. Just because you inject a bunch of drugs into your veins doesn't make you an expert about them anymore than driving a car makes me a mechanic - and in the same way, being a stupid twat that makes herself a perfect "victim" doesn't make you any more an expert on these things.
For instance, last spring, when an eighth-grade girl at Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, sent a digital video of herself masturbating to a male classmate on whom she had a crush, it quickly appeared on a file-sharing network that teenagers use to trade music. Hundreds of New York private school students saw the video, in which the girl's face was clearly visible, and it was available to a worldwide audience of millions.
What the fuck? If a thirteen year old kid is stupid enough to videotape herself masturbating and send it to a classmate, she DESERVES for it to be spread around the school and to be humiliated for it. Sometimes there is a price to pay for being a fucking moron. And the persons with the social and mental problems aren't the people who harass or humiliate her for it - it's the girl who has such a fucking warped brain that she thinks passing around videos of herself with her fingers or a dildo in her pre-pubescent snatch is the way to win over a boyfriend. That kid needs to be sent to a fucking boarding school and undergo major psychotherapy.
This whole fucking article is one tale after another of stupid kids doing stupid things and then running to mommy and getting sympathetic attention when it comes time to pay for their stupid actions. God forbid people learn from mistakes by paying for them.
It's just another communication medium, like any other. Once it hit the mainstream, it was inevitable that it accumulated the same proportion of gossipy girls and malicious bullies. There's nothing special about the Web or IM.
The internet, instant messaging, and webpages are just new methods of delivering content. Why would we expect new media to have different content than previous media? It'd be like creating a new type or method of picture creation and then being surprised when someone uses it to show pr0n.
Bullies bully in real life. Bullies are going to bully on the internet.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Is the knee-jerk response to control iNet content. ("If we stop 'x' from getting anywhere, we send a message to the bullies")
Bullies are a part of society and are everywhere - even to the point of Bully Countries (someday: Bully Planets).
Take the power away. Write a reverse contactor to send bullyx a magnitude reply (you send 1, I send 10). Better yet, trap the messages and post them on a website to show the pure idiocy of the bully.
Scene - a high school girl complaining to her guidance counselor...
...
* Student: I was online last night, and somebody said I was fat.
* Counselor:I see.
* Student:And they wanted to know why I wear the same pair of jeans eve ry day.
* Counselor:How cruel.
* Student:And how I have Wal-Mart clothes.
* Counselor:Well, in that case, I reccomend you study computers. That way when you graduate, you can go online, and it won't matter if you're fat and wear the same Wal-Mart jeans every day for a year, you will still be the hottest chick that any of the other geeks in your university can get, and they will lavish you with attention. And, in a fitting turnaround, THEY will do YOUR homework.
Or she could just steal their identities and ruin their credit
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Just read the comments at /.! About a third would probably qualify and three quarters of the political comments and moderation fit that definition.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
> So is this the reason why people seem to be so much more rude on the Internet?
I think it's mostly that people don't have to deal with real-world consequences. You can say things in text to people that would get your face beaten in if you said them in person.
These kids aren't geeks. They're just idiot twelve year olds who think the internet is another plaything. The extent of their "geekness" is hanging out in AOL chat rooms and posting profiles to Yahoo! personals and flashing their teenage boobies on their webcam to get attention. Real geeks wouldn't be so thin skinned and wussy.
Is just a coward who thinks there can be no retribution for their actions. Then they go and try to demonstrate their power by doing bad things. Oftentimes social outcasts are targetted (like nerds) because they have few friends to draw support on to provoke a response against the bully. That these same victims are then turning around and doing the same thing online saddens me; it reminds me of people who are still steamed over a few childish words or actions from their pre-college days. In either case some bullies have managed to have a large affect on the person's life, and other people's lives through them. Chances are that by the time they're in their twenties, someone who was a bully in high school has either repented his actions or matured to the point where they would no longer even think of pushing someone around. Some of their victims, OTOH, will still have the persecuted mentality. You'll feel a lot better if you simply forgive people who did you wrong as children. The forgiveness isn't for them, it is for you.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
So it would be Libelous webpages.
side note, anyone catch Ali G interviewing Andy Rooney? hahahaha "Does you tink dat da media be well important?"
I boycott signatures
Seriously, most of the students described in that article were just fscking morons. Sending pornographic material to a hormonal teenager and not expecting it to be distributed? Hell, even if it were analog, it'd probably get around (i.e., photocopier)! If you take nude pictures or whatever of yourself, give it to someone, and expect it to not be distributed... I mean, really, that's just pitiful. As for the cyber-harrasment, that's what the ignore button is for! Use it!
one piece in the article details how an 8th grade girl's masturbation video gets circulated on the internet after she sent it to a boy she had a crush on.
8th graders are what, 14 years old?
guess what -- that's kiddie porn, folks, and the people doing both the circulation and the viewing are committing crimes with pretty harsh punishments. and according to the article, using school computers to do it.
MORTAR COMBAT!
So is this the reason why people seem to be so much more rude on the Internet?
I was going to make the joke about only a moron would ask such a stupid question, but I see people beat me to it.
However, there are a couple reasons why people can be rude on the internet. One is, as others have emtnioned, the anonymity. If you piss people off, you can just go somewhere else. And you can have fun annoying strangers.
That mainly applies to trolls. But another reaosn why flame wars erupts so easilly is that people are usually at a website or a chat room because of the topic more than the people. Therefore, people are generally interested in information and that mutual interest in technology, or whatever, is the reason they are on the same site, rather than friendship.
Finally, there is also the fact that a lot of people have poor communication skills and don't put their message across as well and because text is much more limited than face to face communication, subtlties are often lost.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I think the point of the article, that parents should know how to use the computer and be aware of bullying by way of electronic communication was perfectly fair. Those experiences could be very miserable for children.
I am not talking about the long term consequences such teasing may have or may not have on children when they grow up. I'm talking about the suffering taking place in the present tense.
Parents who know how to use their computers could presumably impose the "ignore" feature against other children who are harassing their own.
I am not sure this is any worse than the traditional gossip mongering and name calling that took place back in the days when only nerds had computers.
However, just because the current bullying isn't worse, it doesn't mean that it isn't bad. I think many slashdotters may know what it was like to be bullied as a child.
But it would seem to me that with computer based communication it should be easier to track down and hold the bullies responsible for their bullying.
I still think back in the old days when bullies would physically beat up their victims, the victims had it worse, and there was often no real proof of what happened. And bully's are often great lyers as well.
The physical evidence this type of bullying leaves, provides of opportunity for intervention by parents and teachers.
Anyway... the article was pretty fair. IMHO
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
And you should probably do (get your ass kicked for the sticker).
;-)
:-(]
And yes - this is the reason why people rant and "get out of their shell" on the internet - because they are the faceless mass that pisses them off on the road, and they can finally shed all the inhibitions and behave like the jerks they want to be (when pushed around), instead of the nice geeks they are.
Simple, but true (and again - the examples for this can be found down on the bottom of this page
get a free ipod![This works! - I signed up for the infone stuff (free), and my friend got the referral, and a week later the ipod! (should have joined earlier...
You see, folks! Clifford Stoll is right! Computers in the classroom are not only an unnecessary and useless distraction, but now they are probably also a serious legal liability.
Please, for the sake of the children, start by unplugging the computers and networks and teach them how to use books again.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
People weren't any smarter back then.
Just less numerous and more technically apt.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...you call it anything but speech. Cyberterrorism, cyberstalking, cyberbullying are all codewords that will be used in arguments to abridge our free speech rights.
I play a little bit of Star Wars: Galaxies, and it's facinating to watch the online bully mentality, and how it develeops. On our server, there's an entire guild who prides themselves on ruining everyone elses fun. They are the self-declared alpha-bullies of the game. Recently, someone (either a disgruntled former "insider" or a victim who had had enough of the harassment... no one knows for sure) got ahold of account logins and passwords of several of their members and started deleting their characters. It's now escalated into full-blown harassment, posting personal information (including SS#s) in live chat, and threats of violence in real life. All over a series of tables and fields in a database somewhere.
Some say that online life is a mask people can wear to be someone else. I'm more inclined to believe it's a magnifying glass which can amplify the worst qualities in someone.
...and they can finally shed all the inhibitions and behave like the jerks they want to be (when pushed around), instead of the nice geeks they are.
I am going to have to disagree here. I believe its more along the lines of behaving like the jerks they are inside instead of the nice geeks they are outside. I think peoples attitudes on the internet are the way they really are, and they restrain theirselves in the real world.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Personally, I see two phenomena at work:
One is that the Internet, with its lack of visual feedback, magnifies badness. It's very easy to be perceived as rude when it's just words, without gestures and facial expressions behind them.
The other is the level of cluelessness that pervades so many forums, and the frustration that arises from such cluelessness. One that came to my attention today was this one. Is this bullying? Is it rude? Or is it just trying to tell people not to be so silly?
...laura
This won't make me popular either, but I think there's -some- truth to your statement. No, I wasn't a bully, hell, if I lived in a larger centre I'd probably have been bullied (moreso than the crap the "bullies" in my high school came up with). Super geek? This guy.
However: Sometimes tech people do go a little too far and REALLY need to just stop what they're doing, take a break, and try to interact with the real world. Lord of the Rings was a great movie, Sure, I went opening night and stood in line for an hour. That's great. But if someone accidentally called Gandalf "Gandar", I sure as hell wouldn't say to them "heh, that's Gandalf." and then make a comment involving not being able to tell an ent from an orc. No, I know a lot of geeks (again, mostly software "engineers") who just go way too far with the whole thing to the point where they can barely relate to anything non-geeky, and even with the geeky things they're often either straight up wrong or off on a completely irrelevant tangent.
Yeah, these people bother the piss out of me, and I'm still a geek (albeit I did learn a thing or two since then, like how to get out and do other things). But if it comes down to it, these people usually don't deserve being bullied. Sure they're asking for something; if anything, they either should just be ignored, or get some former geek to take them aside and explain a few things. They don't need to stop being geeks/nerds, they just need to know when to rein it in a bit.
But beating on somebody just because they're annoyinglgy geeky? Well, geeks aren't the only ones who need to chill.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Size doesn't matter on the internet. Physical bulk is only good for slamming a fist down on the keyboard in frustration.
Yes. If "Internet bullying" (sic) is all a child has to worrry about these days, well, frankly, good.
Physical bullying is hard to ignore; namecalling can be much easier. With the internet and blocking software, it's even easier.
And besides, over the internet, there's often more time and personal safety to compose that perfect, literate, well-crafted retort. Rather than trying to croak out something smug-sounding while crawling miserably out of a garbage bin.
I *so* don't miss high school.
--
AC
Except the most rude people tend to be the "non-geek" users - especially true in chat rooms and forums.
Folks that have an internet connection but wouldn't know a modem from a monitor are usually the ones that get caught in the "hey, it's just the Internet, who cares if I'm an asshole" trap.
Most geeks, even those that "bully" online tend to realize it is a real person on the other end of the line, and the Internet is not some magical fairy land made by magic pixies that don't exist in the real world. The luddites are the ones that are being described in this story, and who I see when I do get bored enough to sit in a "mainstream" chat room.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society - M. Twain
> If someone is "stupid" enough to leave their diary lying around a publisher can steal it, do they deserve to have it published in the daily newspaper?
Not applicable to the situation at hand. She passed the video to the boy herself, which established a desire to distribute. Having your diary stolen doesn't establish this desire.
> The girl's legal rights were violated: specifically, her copyright to her video. Regardless of what he thought of the contents, it was illegal for her "boyfriend" to publish her work without her consent.
Incorrect. If she didn't apply for a copyright, or at the very least include some notice not to distribute in the video or otherwise, she didn't establish any reasonable desire to copyright, so enforcing it would be problematic at best. More importantly, copyright violation is a civil tort, so she would have to demonstrate monetary loss due to his distribution, like for example if she was charging for distribution and he gave it away. No such monetary loss occurred, so there's no case for copyright infringement.
More to the point, however, is her recourse. If she truly wanted to make him pay for doing what he did, she could have reported him to the local police. A video of a 13-year-old girl masturbating is child pornography anywhere in the U.S., and by putting the video up on a P2P network, he's guilty of distribution, which is a felony offense. While he was sitting in reform school for five years, he'd have time to reflect on how "not nice" his action was. Also, any classmate who taunted her with comments about seeing the video would be subject to arrest for posession, so the story would die quickly.
Virg
... until said idea gets perverted into a tool of abuse rather than the template of liberty it was designed as.
I've had very similar experiences, myself. A big part of the problem, I've noticed, is that people refuse to accept that they're doing it - they have any number of bullshit rationalizations for what they're doing, when really they're just letting the baser parts of their brain dictate behavior. Fundamentally, people are bullies and sycophants because that's what feeds our lower neural wiring - just look at most other primate species if you don't believe me.
And people *DON'T* stop pulling bullshit after age 18, they just learn better and more 'acceptable' ways to do it - things like stealing office supplies and framing you for it, filing spurrious sexual harrassment lawsuits against people they don't like, or claiming date rape against someone who wasn't even at the party.
People are dicks. Congratulations for being able to realize it and say it; you're head and shoulders above the rest of the monkeys.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
As adults I think we tend to get so jaded and so quick to judge. Kids at that age aren't as thick skinned as adults, teasing, name calling, gossiping is very painful at adolescene. Go ahead and saw "awwwww..." all you want, I'd rather show a little kindness that turn the kid in a angry, repressed, beaten down sociopath.
"she DESERVES for it to be spread around the school and to be humiliated for it.... stupid kids doing stupid things and then running to mommy and getting sympathetic attention when it comes time to pay for their stupid actions"
I'm REALLY glad you weren't my parent, and I hope you aren't anyone's parent. I made some mistakes as a kid - but you know what my parents did - made damn sure I learned from it while ALSO being supportive and understanding, like a good parent should; not berating me and ranting b/c they were pissed off, unsympathetic, cynical adults.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
peter303, you must be new here.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Isn't it the same inside a car? It always surprises me how people drive like rude asses, then step out of their car and become normal friendly people again. I'm a nice guy on the road, but it's happened more than once that someone I recognize cuts me off or drives rudely around me - then they recognize me and their face changes. An ashamed smile adorns their face. Strange, I always wanted to see studies on that.
It makes a lot of people a feeling of power.
I remember helping a friend prove that the harrasing emails that his sister was recieving were coming from someone in the area. There was another girl that the school who was suspected of the emails but the fake contact info for the hotmail account was from the other side of the country. Luckly at that time hotmail correctly included the IP of the machine the person was logged in from in the email headers (not sure if they still do) and it was fairly simple to trace back to a general location. When confronted that the emails were coming from somewhere in the town and the ISP would look up the account info for us she confesed.
The idea is the same then as it is now, the kid feels like they can say what they want and get away with it. Fortunatly most don't really know how to be anonymous online so finding the source via your local geek isn't too difficult.
Hey, how about showing a little compassion to the boy who received the video? What would YOU have done at 14 if some girl sent you a video of herself masturbating? You probably would have shown it to your friends too. HE made a dumb mistake, just like SHE did. You can't just show compassion for one side.
See, I am all for showing compassion. One of the best books I have ever read is "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama. Now there is someone who practices what he preaches.
How about showing some compassion to this girl by NOT teaching her to sue when she is wronged. How about teaching HER about compassion. How about teaching the boy about compassion. I am not involved in this stupid fiasco, so my having a compassionate opinion isn't going to do shit.
You have to be held accountable for your own actions. This girl freely distributed a video of herself - hey, that's life. I am not going to blame her parents, because kids will do dumb things. But her parents should step up and refuse to sue other people for something her kid did on her own. Learn from it, move on.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
However, that doesn't make me (or you) better than anyone else.
Yes, it does. Some people's thought patterns are more evolved than others, and they are, in fact, better than others.
This idea of 'everyone is equal' is a great way to run a country, but it is a lousy way to pick ones friends and acquaintences.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I'll openly admit that I'm in this "age group". I'm 16.
/., and I would expect that at least most of you have more common sense than that.)
/.'ers linking to people commiting suicide as a result of talking on IM to people, but really, sit down, and think. IM is not any different than real life. If someone can convince someone, push some over the edge, over the instant messenger, I shudder to think what that person would be vulnerable to in real life.
If my parents knew that I had just told you people my age, my mom at least would completly flip out and be scared that someone is coming to abduct me based on this alias and that age. (But that's a different story. This is
I recently had a friend who went point-blank suicidal. I'll refer to him as a he, but note I'm not disclosing that. He threatened that he was both cutting himself and was holding a gun (.45 to be precise, a shotgun) to their head.
This was told to me over, heh, IM. (Once I realized he was serious, I called the police, meh, that's beside the point.) But, let me comment a bit on this story.
"I have kids coming into school upset daily because of what happened on the Internet the night before," Ms. Yuratovac said. " 'We were online last night and somebody said I was fat,' or 'They asked me why I wear the same pair of jeans every day,' or 'They say I have Wal-Mart clothes.' "
*gasp* Let's sit down and think here. Is this really any worse at all than something like this happening in real life? Here's a hint: it's not, it's actually easier to work with than it is in real life. Why is this? It's called the "block" button. Harsh as this may sound, if they sit there and listen to such things, all the while in perfect control and having the ability to change that, then it is in my opinion partially their fault for not clicking the block button and actually dealing with it.
Amanda has her Internet messages automatically forwarded to her cellphone, and by the end of the game she had received 50 - the limit of its capacity.
I'm going to assume ICQ or MSN were used for this, which makes it (sending of IMs to a phone) incredibly easy. MSN, it's a matter of right-clicking and hitting 'Sent to mobile device'. ICQ, just check the SMS button.
The end user is in perfect control of this, should they want this to happen. MSN it's a checkbox in the options to turn it off (which must be turned on in the first place, mind you), and ICQ it's essentially the same thing. There was nothing preventing "Amanda" from not being subjected to this. From this story, everything that happened could have been prevented with about 45 seconds of clicking. (Okay, the exception being things like this, but again, turn the phone off. There are ways of preventing this. Of course, I really, really would like to see something like an whitelist/blacklist for phone text messages in the future.)
Some of you may ask why I'm essentially "assulting the abused." I am 16, I do know what it's like when this happens, and I do know that, at times, it can cause things such as counseling, etc. etc. etc. I am not assuming that life is perfect and everyone enjoys a perfect life with no one harassing them.
It goes back to a point I made earlier: IM is not any different than real life, except in the fact that it's exponentially easier to deal with. It's the internet. If they spam your e-mail, get a new e-mail. Harass you via SMS web-to-phone? Turn it off.
Then deal with the "offenders" in real life, compared to sitting there and listening.
Like, duh? Hello? These kids don't need advice on how to stay safe online, they need a reality check. In every scneario described, it could have been changed. You hear stories like this, other
The instant messenger should be considered just as dangerous as real life, at very very most, because you don't have to be there, you have a choice not
Same happens in a meeting, people can completely pick apart arguements, come up with ways to discredit data, force you into uncomfortable decisions, and be stubbornly antogonistic. But once the meeting is over and you step outside, everybody goes out for beers, talk about your golf game, and play fantasy football
People are able to compartmentalize and adapt their behavior to differing situations. Business is business, fun is fun, driving is insanity on wheels.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Too bad you couln't punch that useless turd of a principal in the face also.
Next time threaten the only thing school admins truly care about, their wallets. It would be worth the cost of retaining a lawyer and suing for lost access to education and civil rights violations.
One of the grievances that the protestors made about the first location that they agreed to was that it would be difficult/expensive to put up a PA system. They said that the city should pay for or help pay for one for them at the original location. Note that it is not impossible, just difficult and costly in the estimation of the protestors.
Another one of the grievances about the original location was the lack of water. They also wanted the city to provide them with free water.
Another thing was shade. They wanted a place that was shaded from the sun.
Note also that I have never read about a constitutionally guaranteed right to a PA system, free water, and shade. If there is I want mine right now. And I want all of my water bills refunded to me with interest.
United for Peace and Justice is a mockery of its namesake. People in the past have had to endure bullets, attack dogs, firehoses, nooses, nightskicks, spit, and curses to be able to speak out about what they believe in. These jackasses think that the government owes it to them to give them a speaker system, free water, and a friggin tent or the city should be forced to allow them to destroy, by their presence, the environmental glory that is Central Park.
I cannot express how arrogant and self centered this sounds to me. Pay for your own damned protest. I don't care if I agree 100% with your position, it is your responsibility to provide for yourself. New York (and any other city for that matter) dosen't owe you a damned thing other than to allow you a place to speak your mind.
On the other hand the protestors, as guests and citizens, owe New York quite a bit. The least of which is peaceful, controlled, LEGAL protesting. New York has paid enough in what they have endured, they don't need people leeching off of them, intentionally disrupting the transportation infrastructure of the city, and causing post tramautic stress disorder in the emergency personnel by engineering false alarms related to explosives. In addition, no matter where the "free speech zone" is I am sure that the city will have to clean up after this protest and it will cost them quite a bit of cash just for that. These people should be grateful, instead they whine about how they can't have their cake, and the cake of the people of New York city as well, and eat both too. Disgusting!
With the violent and disruptive past record of protest groups with similar ideology to United for Peace and Justice, and with certain agitators telling people to shut down the subways and confuse the police and bomb dogs with gunpowder laced clothing it is a wonder that New York is not placing 50 cal machine gun turrets around the "free speech zone" and moving it to Jersey.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
> News Flash: Some middle school kid gets made fun of and harassed by other middle school kids.
Future Flash: The same kid continues to be harassed relentlessly by others because their parents teach them that being better than everyone else is the most important thing. Then, when he guns down the assholes who were making his life hell, the school says they never saw it coming and magically, these total fucking assholes who continually pushed and pushed become heroes for getting shot at "for no reason."
I never said it was okay, or that we should simply ignore children who send out naked pictures of themselves. But don't you think it's absolutely insane to charge her with a crime? She clearly has some issues which need dealing with, but charging her with a sexual offense against herself?
Even in the situation you mention (an adult coercing a child into filming themselves), don't you think we should be going after the adult, not the child?
Actually, I'm no longer sure it's such a great way to run a country.
--- Ban humanity.
And he, or a rape victim for that matter, needs to acquire the skills necessary to deal with the past injury. Very few people (some would say none) can do this all by themselves. Therapy can help.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Or it trains you to have a thick skin. Thankfully, I am a girl, so escaped most of the physical abuse in middle school, but as a unashamed nerd, I had plenty harassment. I found that nothing offends me now. You can tell me I'm ugly, people hate me, I'm weak.. and I don't care. A "self"-esteem if you will. I had a supportive family, and a big sis who stepped in the only time the abuse got physical. It hurts, but if you support your kids, they are tougher than you give them credit for, so help them with their coping skills before suggesting violence.
You know what I found to be really effective? Ignoring the bullies. Agree with them. It'll throw them off-balance.
"You scrawny little dweeb!"
"Yup. Not much I can do about it, though."
Usually leaves them baffled enough that you can just walk away.
That said, I HAVE been in one fight. Some guys caught me beside the school, wanted to play "beat the nerd." As soon as they realized that I would hit them (after doing so), they backed off. I didn't want to pursue an altercation, but if they forced my hand, I would respond in kind.
The main trick is to be secure with who you are, and never take other people's opinion's to heart. Listen to them, don't depend on them being a certain way. Much harder to do than it is to say I realize, but still a good way to get through life as someone who's different than the rest of the sheep.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Ok. And you pay for your own damned convention, instead of passing the bill for police and civil infrastructure off to the taxpayers. While you're at it, pay for and serve in your own damned wars.
Laissez faire in name only, eh?