Disturbing

Videotaped Florida Teen Beating Prompts Calls To Block Violent Content

My favourite comment, by someone writing as 'Logic' (although I don't agree on the weapons part) was:

The video never made it on YouTube or MySpace but we should ban it because someone said they might do it.

By that logic, Weapons should be banned because kids have said they may want to use them.

Books should be banned because people talk about reading them.

And Love should be banned because people talk about making it.

Last I checked people are guity of the acts they commit not the acts they imagine or talk about. By all means let them post the evidence and get caught.

The Associated Press has a story that incorporates the video. The video itself was not actually uploaded to either site, both of which already have rules in place for reviewing or yanking videos such as this one. I don't think any other body need get involved.

I hope the six girls involved in the beating (and the two guys who stood lookout) get a good dose of justice. They're not going to get it from home, I believe. Apparently one mom went on a morning show defending her daughter, saying only one girl beat the victim at any given time; quotes of the girls at their arrest ('will I get out in time for cheerleading practice') and from MySpace don't show much bloody remorse.

The girl has lost hearing and sight on one side of her head and suffered a concussion. She could just have easily have died, having been slammed into a wall. Bullying has been around for a long time, and has always been disturbing, but beating someone within an inch of their life to make a good video shoot for 15 minutes of fame is even more disturbing.

Let's just say I'm not wishing them a happy time in jail. :)

I finally updated

my MySpace page so that it actually has some small bit of content, mainly because I finally got a friend invitation from someone I know, Bill--who goes by Liam these days--(the same one who sends me messages in Irish). But my main connexion to others online remains this blog. :) Thanks for reading.

So another woman was also involved in the Megan Meier case

Prosecutor won't bring charges in MySpace suicide

That's two adults who acted immaturely when they conversed with the depressed 13-year-old over MySpace, leading to Megan Meier's suicide, saying something to the effect of the world being a better place without her. The second woman hasn't been named. The prosecutor would obviously like to bring some justice into this case, but harassment statutes for the area don't include online harassment and the stalking statute would require repeated negative contact. Apparently the account used purported to be a 16-year-old boy named Josh, being homeschooled in a nearby town, but was used by a former friend's mother and this 18-year-old to determine if Megan had gossiped about the daughter. Megan was confused by the sudden change from flirting, good interaction to 'Josh' turning on her and saying he'd heard she was mean and didn't want to be her friend.

There's no way to prove that the adults involved intended for the girl to kill herself, even if they knew she was severely depressed. Name-calling isn't really illegal, and there's really no way to prosecute it, authorities said. It just wasn't feasible to try to prove to a jury that there was malicious intent to the degree believed by the parents.

I believe that what the women did was wrong. It was terribly petty and immature and they should have been above taunting a 13-year-old girl with mental problems. I mean, what kind of person does that? There should be a small circle in hell for such people. But I agree that there's really no case and so there's no real justice either. On the other hand, I don't think you can blame Megan's suicide squarely on these women. There were a lot of factors, mainly her own brain chemistry and the tendency for teenagers to magnify any slight. She's not at fault for her suicide--she was far too young and too sick to truly be accountable, but she's certainly a victim of her illness, and that's very sad. The women involved, however, triggered it, as did no doubt her mother, who when shown the exchange berated her daughter for using bad language rather than taking her side, at which point Megan stormed off unbelieving and then she was found hanged a little while later. It must have seemed like a betrayal in her mind. That's the sad thing about depression--no matter how much you watch what you say, you know that at any time something might percolate through the depressed person's mind to make them give up entirely. By all accounts the parents were trying to do the best for their daughter. Perhaps given time she could have blossomed. But she didn't have that time.

This whole story underscores the toll mental illness--particularly mental illness in children--can take on people and their families. And vindictive, petty neighbours certainly don't help.

This is making quite a splash in the blogosphere

Updated Obama campaign usurps Myspace website, not a hit diary

I'm not sure of the legal and ethical issues of this matter, but it seems a shitty way to treat a supporter who'd brought in another 160,000 people through social networking. On the other hand, the creator of the website was the one who opened the door to the campaign by giving them the password so that they could edit content. I'm sure he never dreamed of them taking the whole site away from him though, with MySpace's help. Essentially two years of his work went down the drain, and although it was all volunteer, I don't think it would have hurt the campain to recompense him for his efforts as the site grew, rather than yanking it out from under him. They say they feared a 'train wreck' as the number of MySpace friends grew. It seems to me they, along with the site's creator, created one.

Here is the website in question. It has been, from what I understand, totally changed to an 'official' version.