Some people really do have serious glandular problems or diseases causing obesity. The minority.
And did your cousin drink lots of diet soda? Aspartame in high quantities causes lupus-like symptoms.
While the global demand for food would likely drop, you'd have a significant jump in energy and oil prices. All of the formerly obese Americans, spending hundreds less on food every month, would be ready to hit the beaches, ski slopes, etc. with their extra money and less embarrassing bodies. You're arguing with one ridiculous and unfounded claim with another. How about, fat people ride on escalators and elevators and cost more gas, and are more willing to idle around a parking lot, and need more A/C to cool off? I win, thanks.
All pedantry aside, I do think it's important to point out that an obesity epidemic affects everyone. Very few people get to have special rights because they're fat. The rest of them just didn't give a shit until it was too late. And now they don't give enough of a shit to fix it. I used to be fat, and I worked my ass off (haha, literally) for 6 years. Now my metabolism is OK. But don't fucking tell me running (or waddling, or using the eliptical cross-trainer, or rowing) 45 minutes a day and constricting your calories by a quarter doesn't work, except in rare, rare cases.
Do you care to draw the line of what is legally right and wrong for MySpace? In jury trials, it's generally considered what a reasonable person would believe. I think the line is if it's with malicious intent. People make profiles for their cats, and I don't think it's a problem. What I do think is a problem is if I emulate someone with the express intention of defrauding someone emotionally or financially.
Ignorance isn't an excuse. If I'm going to let me kids do something, I'll take an interest in it and learn about it before blindly letting them get into danger. As for the rape scenario, you've crossed from virtual to physical. If you incite a riot verbally via the radio, you're as virtual as anybody on the internet. A parent won't know everything about everything, and there's a certain amount of error that's going to occur, like slamming your child's fingers in a door accidentally. It doesn't make the person a bad parent, it just happens to be one of the things they overlooked.
I'm curious about your intuitions about this case: how important is it to you that the girl was a minor? I think that this is the most damning point of all. The girl is neither an adult nor of the usual statutory age of consent. From a purely legal standpoint, if she didn't have a legal guardian, the government would put her in a child care institution, because they consider her to be unable to fend for herself.
Personally, I think 49-year old vs. 13-year old is usually an unfair match.
That the woman misrepresented her identity? I think that if you go on a message board with no specific intention, and pretend to be a 14-year old boy, then it's not a big deal. However, the fact that she spent months fabricating a person with the intention of using emotional manipulation to extract information from a minor is pretty indefensible.
Counter-question: If a 49-year old pretends to be someone else (say a counsellor, friend of the family) so that a 13-year old will trust him, how would that color your interpretation of ensuing events?
That the woman knew that the girl was emotionally unstable? I think that as a member of the same community with direct knowledge of the girl's condition, having told her to kill herself is highly negligent, if not criminally negligent. Let me counter with another question:
If a 49-year old who has build an emotional bond with an unstable 13-year old tells the 13-year old to kill herself, and the 13-year old does, should the 49-year old be held accountable?
Would you still advocate criminal punishment if any one of these three factors weren't true? I think that all three combine into a gram slam of abuse and criminal negligence, however, I don't think they would all have to be true.
What do you think the proper legal action would be for:
1. An adult telling an isolated and mentally unstable adult to kill himself, resulting in that friend's death?
2. A man telling a child that he is his father's friend from work, so that the child will spend time with him in his home? They proceed to watch disney movies.
3. A man telling another man the car he is selling was his commute vehicle, when really he is an unlicensed car dealer? Dropping of course, the charge of unlicensed car dealer.
it's very difficult to draw the line between this woman's behavior and, say, misrepresenting your waist size in an online dating profile, initiating a flirtation with someone through that site, leading them on a bit and then dumping them. I think that legislating personal relationships is a bad idea. I do, however, think that pretending to be a completely different human than who you are (not just a name change), is different than changing your waist size. This woman created a history for a person who had social interactions with people this girl knew. I know the law can be fuzzy, and probably it's a good idea to restrict this sort of legislation to minors.
However, I think it would be possible to set up a set of criteria based on the person's intentions and actions, and consequences thereof that would provide narrow protection from the most egregious of offenses. Maybe there wouldn't be full liability in all cases.
For the record, I think that if an adult tells you he's going to kill himself, and you say, "Great, go for it," there should be no repercussions.
Putting people in prison for 20 years for non-violent drug offenses is ridiculous and inhumane. You're not doing a good job of supporting your position here. I was just drawing a parallel. There was a couple here in florida who adopted children and tortured them, and they got 15 years. 15 years for conspiracy to torture children. Reducible for good behavior. 20 years irreducible for acid.
I was presenting a fact that either furthered my argument, or helped people realize how crazy drug laws are. I'm glad I've got friends out there.
You sound like quite the ninja. I'll make sure not to get on your bad side. Thanks for noticing. I've got pirate in my blood and ninja in my soul. Don't abuse my children, and we're cool.:)
Injustices abound in the world. People are mean. Sometimes there is a legal remedy for this cruelty; sometimes not. In this case, there is; it just happens not to be a criminal remedy, but a civil one. I think that a civil punishment would at least partially fulfill what I think would be the right amount of punishment for this woman. I do think that going to prison would put her actions in perspective to her daughter in a way that financial ruin would not.
My awesome and totally extreme opinions are why I abhor political power. I always have to ignore myself when arbitrating real-life situations. lol.
Given the dangers inherent in criminalizing various forms of speech (which is all this woman engaged in), I think that's probably for the best. Certain forms of speech aren't protected, such as shouting fire in a theater. Or nowadays, joking about bombs. I agree that the erosion of free speech is a problem, but this is what I think she did:
1. Manufactured a persona with express malicious intent.
2. Stole someone's identity.
3. Emotionally manipulated a minor using said identity for her own pleasure.
4. When things didn't work out, encouraged that emotionally unstable minor to commit suicide.
The girl wasn't even 16, at which point I'd say, OK, what a jackass. I did some really fucked up shit at 14, and I hope I'm mature enough at 49 to not engage in child abuse.
That bitch was 49. If she were a male, people's subconscious reaction to this would be significantly stronger. She did something egregiously wrong, and I think her speech at least borders on criminal, if it's not clearly so.
So then why aren't they bringing the parents in on this action? Parents are the designated child raisers and child abusers. They are allowed to fuck up, because all parents fuck up. What they're guilty of, all parents are guilty of without fail. It just doesn't always end badly.
What about the bullies at school? They're children. Trying children for normal child behavior is weird. Why do you bring this up?
That they are resorting to getting creative with the law in and of itself suggests that their case is flimsy at best. Sure. Rape charges are often flimsy even though there everyone KNOWS it happened. Many things are unprosecutable. How about a lawyer backing me up here with some freaking knowledge?
The woman emotionally abused the girl, which is far outside of normal behavior. She acted like a predator, manipulating a 13-year old girl for her own pleasure. She should be punished for that regardless of whether or not the girl killed herself.
That, and once she gained the girl's trust by creating a false persona whose opinion she respected, she used the respected persona to tell her to kill herself.
Why not just say, "Fuck you. Move on. Make new friends, and stop whining about life, stupid bitch."
That would've at least been good advice, while still not blowing her cover as a mean, vindictive boy.
I didn't come out of that thinking everyone who didn't have it rough was a pussy. I've seen people completely ripped up by stuff that I saw so commonly it wouldn't have even registered. Yeah, I think people who can't have compassion for someone who reacts differently to something "not as bad" as their own childhood probably never actually had their world destroyed.
My childhood certainly wasn't as bad as yours, but I know what it's like to be floating in a void with no help. And being completely unanchored, rudderless, and friendless is what child suicide is made of.:-)
Aha! She had something to hide from the government! A sure sign of a guilty conscience! Burn the witch! No, but it disqualifies any statement she may make that she didn't realize she was doing anything wrong.
People go to prison for 20 years for carrying around a hit of acid, and the rationale is that it could end up in the hands of a child. 20 years for potential child abuse. If it were my daughter, I would kill the woman. No questions asked. And I would not get caught.
Why isn't she being tried for murder then instead of some trumped up computer hacking charges? Because the law is supremely flawed. It is often heavily crippled in rationing out justice. So the people who work hard at bringing people who abuse children to justice are working within this flawed framework to bring this bitch down.
This may come off sounding a bit cold, but how exactly are Drew's actions any different than a majority of people online? Don't most people take on a whole different persona when they post, chat, interact, etc... online? There's a difference between telling people the only the good things about yourself (and we do this IRL), and constructing a fake human to string someone along so that you can get information out of them.
It's even different from when I worked at an internet cafe, and we once or twice chatted with people on someone else's MSN account. We didn't say anything that could hurt anyone, and the joke ended after 15 minutes, not several months.
I can post comments to this forum where I would normally stay quiet. I play MMORPG games where I can lead a group of players to fight another group of players and I may even taunt them. Great. IRL, sometimes people have more confidence in different settings. Certain personality traits shine through based on certain sets of circumstances. If I'm playing music in front of people, I'm much more bold an abrasive than usual, but I use MY OPINION, and MY NAME to back that opinion up.
Does the fact that a 40+ year old took on the persona of a teen ager really differ that much from me (38 year old) playing an undead mage in World of Warcraft? The way in which it is different is that WoW is a venue for people to pretend to be other people, and RPG. If you go to a LARP, and pretend to be a monkey that subsists only on shit, people have already been informed that it's fiction. In this case, this woman committed fraud with malicious intent.
At what point do we say "that's too far"? Watch To Catch A Predator. If an adult is manipulating a child intentionally for their own sick purposes, that's wrong.
My kids are around the same age as Megan and have only recently setup a MySpace account...Did they explain that she should use caution in revealing any personal information? Have you considered that maybe parents that don't spend a bunch of time playing WoW might not really consider the computer in their daily lives? It's a failing as a parent, but if a kid trusts a stranger and gets raped, you don't point the fucking finger at the parent.
I'm truly sorry that her parents lost a daughter, but I feel that Drew (while certainly in bad taste) is not that unusual of an online persona. Except that she was lying and using the personas of other people IRL to meet an IRL objective at the IRL expense of this IRL girl. She is a predator, and just because she didn't have sex with the child doesn't mean she didn't abuse her.
I think that we don't disagree too much. I never thought this conversation was only about school. I think that good parenting and discipline trickle into all other areas of life.
And while I'm not for violence, I don't think it's all that bad as long as it's part of a sane set of responses, and used as a last resort. You sort of need a system of escalation to deal with the escalation of misbehavior. If the child does something that might kill him or someone else, controlled violence may be the quickest and most efficient way of communicating the gravity of the situation.
But again, it's important that there be a solid foundation for peaceful resolution of trivial misbehavior, and the child has to be informed of your escalation policy, so that it doesn't come as a surprise.
And in any case, I think it's much easier to hold a moral position than to stick to it for the 18 years you're directly responsible for a child.
I suppose it depends on what the child does. I think that the severity of the punishment can vary within a reasonable range, as long as the parent provides a clear and consistent gradient for the child to be aware of. If he lights his house on fire maliciously, I would advise referring to the more severe section of your gradient.
I was expounding, not explaining. Expound and explain are synonyms. I thought "expounding upon, not explaining" lacked symmetry. Sorry you were unable to infer any meaning from that despite being deprived of small parts of the puzzle. I'll endeavor to be more verbose in the future.
And I didn't ask you for a reply. Back to your hole. No one asked you to reply either, and yet here you are. Yes, but you're the asshole who seems to think that unless the response you specifically requested is given, someone misunderstood you, remember?
I completely agree with you there. The problem is when parents start applying discipline to compensate for a universe that doesn't adequately punish people, especially when the parents feel that the universe should be punishing people for things that aren't intrinsically harmful. It's important for a parent to punish a child so that the child learns that there are negative repercussions for not disciplining themselves in cases where another being has authority and power over them. It also teaches them the value of not getting caught, and lets them practice. As my father said when I was 16, as long as I don't cuss in front of him, he can assume I have it under control.
Replace "parents" with "government" til your heart's content. How about no. The (nuclear, at least) family is a communist/tribal structure. The government usually is not. Tribal structures work very well for small groups of people, so having very personal responsibilities and repercussions for not fulfilling them is completely appropriate inside the family.
The government is different. It's a public service organization. I'll say that again, with tags:
If you're not writing fiction, cut the bitch loose. Take it easy, buddy. You're not dead.
My dad tells me that by the time you've ruined your life 6 or 7 times, you begin to realize it's not such a big deal.:-)
Cut her loose. Kids or no. My parents separated, and it was the best thing we ever could have done. As for alimony, I don't know what to do. There are some male advocacy groups out there for those who have unfairly been denied privileges to their children or are paying alimony when they're worse off than their ex.
Hang in there. Let me know if you need anything. I'll be glad to help.
I agree on everything in your post except the part about letting them be screw-ups.
GP just said it's one of three options. Saying it's not an option is naive, because it's what happens in most countries in the world.
I do think that having video surveillance systems to track and discipline children who are already resentful of the power structure is not a winning tactic.
You see, in earlier days, it used to be that people could drop out of school. It used to be that if you didn't pass tests, you wouldn't be advanced in school. By the time my mother got out of college and worked briefly as a substitute teacher, she had high school students that couldn't read.
Enforcing attendance of classes with video surveillance isn't any option, either, because:
a) it will not work, long-term. it will help a few kids, but roughly equally as many as letting them learn from hurting themselves would.
b) it's going to cost money not helping these children.
There are a couple things I'm wondering, but this may be far better than it sounds:
1. Will the ISP look at what you're downloading on a p2p network? Because a significant portion of filesharing is legal. If they don't infringe upon my privacy any more than they already are, I'm fine with it.
2. Is all p2p traffic banned? Because that's just wrong.
3. Are you turned over to the authorities for violations? Because if you weren't, it would be nice to have a buffer between you and the record companies. The ISPs can say, thanks RIAA, but no thanks, we're already taking action.
It sounds like there is an implementation of this that could be extremely sane.
Slashdot Mirror
And did your cousin drink lots of diet soda? Aspartame in high quantities causes lupus-like symptoms. While the global demand for food would likely drop, you'd have a significant jump in energy and oil prices. All of the formerly obese Americans, spending hundreds less on food every month, would be ready to hit the beaches, ski slopes, etc. with their extra money and less embarrassing bodies. You're arguing with one ridiculous and unfounded claim with another. How about, fat people ride on escalators and elevators and cost more gas, and are more willing to idle around a parking lot, and need more A/C to cool off? I win, thanks.
All pedantry aside, I do think it's important to point out that an obesity epidemic affects everyone. Very few people get to have special rights because they're fat. The rest of them just didn't give a shit until it was too late. And now they don't give enough of a shit to fix it. I used to be fat, and I worked my ass off (haha, literally) for 6 years. Now my metabolism is OK. But don't fucking tell me running (or waddling, or using the eliptical cross-trainer, or rowing) 45 minutes a day and constricting your calories by a quarter doesn't work, except in rare, rare cases.
Personally, I think 49-year old vs. 13-year old is usually an unfair match. That the woman misrepresented her identity? I think that if you go on a message board with no specific intention, and pretend to be a 14-year old boy, then it's not a big deal. However, the fact that she spent months fabricating a person with the intention of using emotional manipulation to extract information from a minor is pretty indefensible.
Counter-question: If a 49-year old pretends to be someone else (say a counsellor, friend of the family) so that a 13-year old will trust him, how would that color your interpretation of ensuing events? That the woman knew that the girl was emotionally unstable? I think that as a member of the same community with direct knowledge of the girl's condition, having told her to kill herself is highly negligent, if not criminally negligent. Let me counter with another question:
If a 49-year old who has build an emotional bond with an unstable 13-year old tells the 13-year old to kill herself, and the 13-year old does, should the 49-year old be held accountable? Would you still advocate criminal punishment if any one of these three factors weren't true? I think that all three combine into a gram slam of abuse and criminal negligence, however, I don't think they would all have to be true.
What do you think the proper legal action would be for:
1. An adult telling an isolated and mentally unstable adult to kill himself, resulting in that friend's death?
2. A man telling a child that he is his father's friend from work, so that the child will spend time with him in his home? They proceed to watch disney movies.
3. A man telling another man the car he is selling was his commute vehicle, when really he is an unlicensed car dealer? Dropping of course, the charge of unlicensed car dealer. it's very difficult to draw the line between this woman's behavior and, say, misrepresenting your waist size in an online dating profile, initiating a flirtation with someone through that site, leading them on a bit and then dumping them. I think that legislating personal relationships is a bad idea. I do, however, think that pretending to be a completely different human than who you are (not just a name change), is different than changing your waist size. This woman created a history for a person who had social interactions with people this girl knew. I know the law can be fuzzy, and probably it's a good idea to restrict this sort of legislation to minors.
However, I think it would be possible to set up a set of criteria based on the person's intentions and actions, and consequences thereof that would provide narrow protection from the most egregious of offenses. Maybe there wouldn't be full liability in all cases.
For the record, I think that if an adult tells you he's going to kill himself, and you say, "Great, go for it," there should be no repercussions.
Bill Gates also invests his humanitarian aid money in companies that are carpeting african villages in ash, thereby increasing cancer.
So he's expressing two opposing forces. But still, OP was pointing out a logical fallacy by presenting an extreme.
I was presenting a fact that either furthered my argument, or helped people realize how crazy drug laws are. I'm glad I've got friends out there. You sound like quite the ninja. I'll make sure not to get on your bad side. Thanks for noticing. I've got pirate in my blood and ninja in my soul. Don't abuse my children, and we're cool.
My awesome and totally extreme opinions are why I abhor political power. I always have to ignore myself when arbitrating real-life situations. lol. Given the dangers inherent in criminalizing various forms of speech (which is all this woman engaged in), I think that's probably for the best. Certain forms of speech aren't protected, such as shouting fire in a theater. Or nowadays, joking about bombs. I agree that the erosion of free speech is a problem, but this is what I think she did:
1. Manufactured a persona with express malicious intent.
2. Stole someone's identity.
3. Emotionally manipulated a minor using said identity for her own pleasure.
4. When things didn't work out, encouraged that emotionally unstable minor to commit suicide.
The girl wasn't even 16, at which point I'd say, OK, what a jackass. I did some really fucked up shit at 14, and I hope I'm mature enough at 49 to not engage in child abuse.
That bitch was 49. If she were a male, people's subconscious reaction to this would be significantly stronger. She did something egregiously wrong, and I think her speech at least borders on criminal, if it's not clearly so.
The woman emotionally abused the girl, which is far outside of normal behavior. She acted like a predator, manipulating a 13-year old girl for her own pleasure. She should be punished for that regardless of whether or not the girl killed herself.
That, and once she gained the girl's trust by creating a false persona whose opinion she respected, she used the respected persona to tell her to kill herself.
Why not just say, "Fuck you. Move on. Make new friends, and stop whining about life, stupid bitch."
That would've at least been good advice, while still not blowing her cover as a mean, vindictive boy.
My childhood certainly wasn't as bad as yours, but I know what it's like to be floating in a void with no help. And being completely unanchored, rudderless, and friendless is what child suicide is made of.
People go to prison for 20 years for carrying around a hit of acid, and the rationale is that it could end up in the hands of a child. 20 years for potential child abuse. If it were my daughter, I would kill the woman. No questions asked. And I would not get caught.
It's even different from when I worked at an internet cafe, and we once or twice chatted with people on someone else's MSN account. We didn't say anything that could hurt anyone, and the joke ended after 15 minutes, not several months. I can post comments to this forum where I would normally stay quiet. I play MMORPG games where I can lead a group of players to fight another group of players and I may even taunt them. Great. IRL, sometimes people have more confidence in different settings. Certain personality traits shine through based on certain sets of circumstances. If I'm playing music in front of people, I'm much more bold an abrasive than usual, but I use MY OPINION, and MY NAME to back that opinion up. Does the fact that a 40+ year old took on the persona of a teen ager really differ that much from me (38 year old) playing an undead mage in World of Warcraft? The way in which it is different is that WoW is a venue for people to pretend to be other people, and RPG. If you go to a LARP, and pretend to be a monkey that subsists only on shit, people have already been informed that it's fiction. In this case, this woman committed fraud with malicious intent. At what point do we say "that's too far"? Watch To Catch A Predator. If an adult is manipulating a child intentionally for their own sick purposes, that's wrong. My kids are around the same age as Megan and have only recently setup a MySpace account...Did they explain that she should use caution in revealing any personal information? Have you considered that maybe parents that don't spend a bunch of time playing WoW might not really consider the computer in their daily lives? It's a failing as a parent, but if a kid trusts a stranger and gets raped, you don't point the fucking finger at the parent. I'm truly sorry that her parents lost a daughter, but I feel that Drew (while certainly in bad taste) is not that unusual of an online persona. Except that she was lying and using the personas of other people IRL to meet an IRL objective at the IRL expense of this IRL girl. She is a predator, and just because she didn't have sex with the child doesn't mean she didn't abuse her.
I hope you know better.
You would think that, but I normally swoop in and cock-block. I'm all like, "Hey, honey. Me thegnu. I'm a tagalong. Let's do it."
And then I date-rape them.
I think that we don't disagree too much. I never thought this conversation was only about school. I think that good parenting and discipline trickle into all other areas of life.
And while I'm not for violence, I don't think it's all that bad as long as it's part of a sane set of responses, and used as a last resort. You sort of need a system of escalation to deal with the escalation of misbehavior. If the child does something that might kill him or someone else, controlled violence may be the quickest and most efficient way of communicating the gravity of the situation.
But again, it's important that there be a solid foundation for peaceful resolution of trivial misbehavior, and the child has to be informed of your escalation policy, so that it doesn't come as a surprise.
And in any case, I think it's much easier to hold a moral position than to stick to it for the 18 years you're directly responsible for a child.
I suppose it depends on what the child does. I think that the severity of the punishment can vary within a reasonable range, as long as the parent provides a clear and consistent gradient for the child to be aware of. If he lights his house on fire maliciously, I would advise referring to the more severe section of your gradient.
Parents punishing their children is by definition assault, then?
This coming from the guy who needs a citation for the assertion that it's good for your children if you provide boundaries.
I was expounding, not explaining. And I didn't ask you for a reply. Back to your hole.
The government is different. It's a public service organization. I'll say that again, with tags:
THE GOVERNMENT IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ORGANIZATION
it gives them a spanking fetish. And as my girlfriend can attest, it will provide your children with sexual enjoyment for years and years.
in all seriousness, he means: Man up, and punish your own goddamn children, stupid. It's good for them.
If you're not writing fiction, cut the bitch loose. Take it easy, buddy. You're not dead.
:-)
My dad tells me that by the time you've ruined your life 6 or 7 times, you begin to realize it's not such a big deal.
Cut her loose. Kids or no. My parents separated, and it was the best thing we ever could have done. As for alimony, I don't know what to do. There are some male advocacy groups out there for those who have unfairly been denied privileges to their children or are paying alimony when they're worse off than their ex.
Hang in there. Let me know if you need anything. I'll be glad to help.
GP just said it's one of three options. Saying it's not an option is naive, because it's what happens in most countries in the world.
I do think that having video surveillance systems to track and discipline children who are already resentful of the power structure is not a winning tactic.
You see, in earlier days, it used to be that people could drop out of school. It used to be that if you didn't pass tests, you wouldn't be advanced in school. By the time my mother got out of college and worked briefly as a substitute teacher, she had high school students that couldn't read.
Enforcing attendance of classes with video surveillance isn't any option, either, because:
a) it will not work, long-term. it will help a few kids, but roughly equally as many as letting them learn from hurting themselves would.
b) it's going to cost money not helping these children.
There are a couple things I'm wondering, but this may be far better than it sounds:
1. Will the ISP look at what you're downloading on a p2p network? Because a significant portion of filesharing is legal. If they don't infringe upon my privacy any more than they already are, I'm fine with it.
2. Is all p2p traffic banned? Because that's just wrong.
3. Are you turned over to the authorities for violations? Because if you weren't, it would be nice to have a buffer between you and the record companies. The ISPs can say, thanks RIAA, but no thanks, we're already taking action.
It sounds like there is an implementation of this that could be extremely sane.
that, sir, is an upside-down adult actress.
chin up, nose in taint, mandingo gripping the bewbs, what have you.
What if you needed to fuck the asteroid to pieces? I would send [NSFW] Mandingo. [/NSFW]