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Subject: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/16/08 at 1:54 am

This may have been discussed, but now yesterday the news came of the lawsuit of the neighbor for taunting the girl who killed herself.

What I see of the mother of the girl saying is: definitely!, she should pay the price for the girls death!...I feel someone should throw it to the mother to take some of the responsibilty for allowing the daughter to be online , in a depressed state..probably no open communication of 'mom, there's some guy making me angry here'...

So someone get word to her to do a little remorse instead of pinning it all on someone on a tv monitor!

 

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Marian on 05/16/08 at 12:45 pm


This may have been discussed, but now yesterday the news came of the lawsuit of the neighbor for taunting the girl who killed herself.

What I see of the mother of the girl saying is: definitely!, she should pay the price for the girls death!...I feel someone should throw it to the mother to take some of the responsibilty for allowing the daughter to be online , in a depressed state..probably no open communication of 'mom, there's some guy making me angry here'...

So someone get word to her to do a little remorse instead of pinning it all on someone on a tv monitor!

 
I agree with you.What bothers me,among other things about the case,is the daughter herself was making a fake sexy profile,enhancing her age by more than young,would-be military enlistees in olden times,yet she had no idea someone else could be doing the same thing? ???And i really don't like the implication that depressed people are never at fault.If you know your depression is controlling you,you need to do something about it.I believe the current first lady had a problem with depression since she was young,and had more to actually be depressed about.But she's still here.As far as Tina is comcerned,I don't believe she will ever get off the pedestal she has put herself on long enough to think about what she could have done differently.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Jessica on 05/16/08 at 5:28 pm

So both of you are saying that it is not the fault of an ADULT WHO KNOWS BETTER, but rather the fault of a thirteen year old girl with suicidal tendencies?

Let's state the facts:

Thirteen year old girl is depressed.

Thirteen year old girl writes something about another girl.

Other girl's mom gets pissed and decides to retaliate by playing mind games with an already unstable (and pubescent) thirteen year old.

Mommy dearest tells unstable girl that she should just die already.

Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Midas on 05/16/08 at 5:46 pm


So both of you are saying that it is not the fault of an ADULT WHO KNOWS BETTER, but rather the fault of a thirteen year old girl with suicidal tendencies?

Let's state the facts:

Thirteen year old girl is depressed.

Thirteen year old girl writes something about another girl.

Other girl's mom gets pissed and decides to retaliate by playing mind games with an already unstable (and pubescent) thirteen year old.

Mommy dearest tells unstable girl that she should just die already.

Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.


Amen.  I hope that taunting bitch of a mother goes to hell.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/16/08 at 5:53 pm


So both of you are saying that it is not the fault of an ADULT WHO KNOWS BETTER, but rather the fault of a thirteen year old girl with suicidal tendencies?

Let's state the facts:

Thirteen year old girl is depressed.

Thirteen year old girl writes something about another girl.

Other girl's mom gets pissed and decides to retaliate by playing mind games with an already unstable (and pubescent) thirteen year old.

Mommy dearest tells unstable girl that she should just die already.

Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.


I'm more for saying the MOTHER of the victim shouldn't be so righteous as she has been...(while others ARE saying it may be the girl).

As it has so far been revealed, the girl should NEVER have been allowed on myspace but got on, either with help of her mother, or being of sound(?) mind to put on a fake posting...if a guy runs into a kid tagging a wall and tells him 'why don't you jump off a bridge, you have no future life ahead of you!' And the kid does, is that guy responsible for the kids death? I don't see it.

   

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: VegettoVa90 on 05/16/08 at 6:04 pm


So both of you are saying that it is not the fault of an ADULT WHO KNOWS BETTER, but rather the fault of a thirteen year old girl with suicidal tendencies?

Let's state the facts:

Thirteen year old girl is depressed.

Thirteen year old girl writes something about another girl.

Other girl's mom gets pissed and decides to retaliate by playing mind games with an already unstable (and pubescent) thirteen year old.

Mommy dearest tells unstable girl that she shouldjust die already.

Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.


I agree, but I do think the girls mother is more at fault than as you said. I mean, it's a matter of letting a 13 have a provocative Myspace in the first place more so than it is missing some vital information that could have really made a difference. If I were a parent I would never let my kids have one, just because of the predators and the danger of the site. The other girls mother, though, is an immature and arrogant moron who should have fudgeing known better. Honestly, that woman must have really wanted to go down as the biggest piece of sheesh of the year  >:(.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Jessica on 05/16/08 at 6:08 pm

I'm not sure where everyone is getting that her MySpace was provocative. Has anyone actually seen it to know or is it just a rumor?

I say her mother is doing a better job than a lot of other mothers just by KNOWING about her child's MySpace. It is even better that this mom tried to monitor it the best she could.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Dagwood on 05/16/08 at 6:45 pm


So both of you are saying that it is not the fault of an ADULT WHO KNOWS BETTER, but rather the fault of a thirteen year old girl with suicidal tendencies?

Let's state the facts:

Thirteen year old girl is depressed.

Thirteen year old girl writes something about another girl.

Other girl's mom gets pissed and decides to retaliate by playing mind games with an already unstable (and pubescent) thirteen year old.

Mommy dearest tells unstable girl that she should just die already.

Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.


Exactly.  Adding that the mother knew the girl was on medication and still let this happen. 

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/16/08 at 10:16 pm


Exactly.  Adding that the mother knew the girl was on medication and still let this happen. 


Since the FBI couldn't do something about it, I will watch to see how far a Ca, DA(?) will get.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: ladybug316 on 05/17/08 at 12:01 am

Come on!  A 49 year old playing games with a 13 year old?  She could use some time in the wacky shack herself!

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: annonymouse on 05/17/08 at 12:14 am



I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.


    Ah, yes... the poor, poor victim. really, who is the victim here? The mother of the the girl, who now has to deal with the loss of her daughter? The other young girl who has to cope with the embarrassment and shame that all this media attention brings? or maybe the other mother, the one who has to deal with the guilt of driving the girl to suicide. There is no clear victim in my eyes.

  now lets look into the intelligence of this 13 year old. first of all, she was foolish enough to think of herself as "in love" with someone she'd never met. Then she goes and destroys her own life, an extremely selfish act, and in doing so, ruins the lives of many around her. I'm sorry, but i have trouble feeling bad for someone like that. And don't give me that "she was just 13" crap. I'm young as well, and I know better.
 
  (god gave us common sense? well that's ironic.) 

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/17/08 at 1:42 am


     Ah, yes... the poor, poor victim. really, who is the victim here? The mother of the the girl, who now has to deal with the loss of her daughter? The other young girl who has to cope with the embarrassment and shame that all this media attention brings? or maybe the other mother, the one who has to deal with the guilt of driving the girl to suicide. There is no clear victim in my eyes.

   now lets look into the intelligence of this 13 year old. first of all, she was foolish enough to think of herself as "in love" with someone she'd never met. Then she goes and destroys her own life, an extremely selfish act, and in doing so, ruins the lives of many around her. I'm sorry, but i have trouble feeling bad for someone like that. And don't give me that "she was just 13" crap. I'm young as well, and I know better.
 
   (god gave us common sense? well that's ironic.)   


Thanks 'kid..that's why I am leaning to the girls mother as well...maybe in  the trial it will come out...as with my follow up point of telling a tagger kill themselves for being a lowlife...would THEY really???   Did the mother say- 'isn't that cute she met a boyfriend on line'?  Gee I wonder what they are talking about?? Even if she didn't ask, (my sister has 3 kids with computers and there's a way to view what was said after the kids leave it.

OK too, I want to hear why the other mother said kill herself and what she planned on doing if the girl did..soon we'll know, that can't be excused away, as I may ask a kid to taste something that could be hazardous and they just might..but the girl thought she was dealing with 'a boyfriend of some kind'...

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Marian on 05/17/08 at 3:29 pm


So both of you are saying that it is not the fault of an ADULT WHO KNOWS BETTER, but rather the fault of a thirteen year old girl with suicidal tendencies?

Let's state the facts:

Thirteen year old girl is depressed.

Thirteen year old girl writes something about another girl.

Other girl's mom gets pissed and decides to retaliate by playing mind games with an already unstable (and pubescent) thirteen year old.

Mommy dearest tells unstable girl that she should just die already.

Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault. Yes, her mom should have known more of what was going on (apparently she did check the daughter's MySpace regularly, but missed this crap), but that other bitch should have used the common sense God gave her to realize that this girl was already emotionally fragile (it was well known in the neighborhood that the girl had suicidal tendencies). If she had that much of a problem with what this little thirteen year old had wrote, she should have taken it up with the girl's mother, or rather, let the two girls handle it themselves.

I am appalled that people are, ONCE AGAIN, blaming the victim.
I'm not bagging on the girl who killed herself.But I'm pretty sure both girls were heavily involved with internet trolling--they were about the rigth age to be into it.Kids who are depressed,among other things,like to troll the internet to vent and relieve stress.I think the girl who killed herself probably deleted the more negative things she wrote to prevent her parents from seeing it to avoid getting in trouble(not an uncommon occurrence),so they might not know the full extent of any trolling their daughter did.So such evidence,if it existed,is eliminated,and the girl becomes the "hero' just because she's dead.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Marian on 05/17/08 at 3:35 pm


     Ah, yes... the poor, poor victim. really, who is the victim here? The mother of the the girl, who now has to deal with the loss of her daughter? The other young girl who has to cope with the embarrassment and shame that all this media attention brings? or maybe the other mother, the one who has to deal with the guilt of driving the girl to suicide. There is no clear victim in my eyes.

   now lets look into the intelligence of this 13 year old. first of all, she was foolish enough to think of herself as "in love" with someone she'd never met. Then she goes and destroys her own life, an extremely selfish act, and in doing so, ruins the lives of many around her. I'm sorry, but i have trouble feeling bad for someone like that. And don't give me that "she was just 13" crap. I'm young as well, and I know better.
 
   (god gave us common sense? well that's ironic.)   
I agree with you.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: MaxwellSmart on 05/18/08 at 5:39 pm


Come on!  A 49 year old playing games with a 13 year old?  She could use some time in the wacky shack herself!

Some people never grow up, and the ones who don't grow up tend to create misery for themselves and others.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Foo Bar on 05/19/08 at 10:10 pm


Thirteen year old obliges by hanging herself.

I fail to see where the thirteen year old is at fault.


The fail is strong in both loopy mother and distraught teenybopper, but ultimately the teenybooper is at fault somewhere between where she tied the noose around her neck and kicked/jumped off the chair.

The only way to turn failure that epic into win would have been to set up a camera on 30-second time delay and run a script that:

1) Sleeps for 30 seconds
2) Mounts the camera as a storage device.
3) Copies the highest-numbered file of the form DSCNxxxx, where "xxxx" is a 4-digit number, to the user's home directory.
4) Using some fiddling with curl and/or wget, uploads the pic to an image hosting site.
5) Using similar fiddling, gets the URL for the uploaded pic and hooks up to an image macro generating site.
6) Using similar fiddling, selects in the canonical "Impact" font and captions "I HATE THIS THREAD" onto the pic.
7) Using similar fiddling, saves the resulting captioned picture back to the first image host.
eight) Posts a URL pointing to the final product to her MySpaz/Spacebook page.

Better yet, get the proper movie props and work with a professional to safely fake the whole hanging pic.  Do it the morning you leave with your parents on a one-week vacation to Disneyland, and let your opponent be wracked with anguish for the next week over whether or not it was real or photoshopped.  (But then we'd be arguing over whether to charge a kid clever enough to drive a MILF (Mom I'd Label a FAILure) to suicide, rather than the other way around :)

When I was a kid, it was all about "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me."

Knives and guns can ruin my fun, but ones and zeroes amuse me.

Penny Arcade, however, said it best four years ago, when they offered us the world this little GIFT of wisdom. 

The GIFT is safe for work, but I'm linking to it rather than embedding it because it contains two naughty words in the form of comic-book art, and we're trying to be family-friendly here, but that comic strip is everything anyone from age 8 to 80 needs to know about this case.  If I were a parent, I'd show it to my kids.  If I were a teacher or guidance counsellor, I'd put it on my desk.  If I were the attorney defending the Mom I'd Label a Failure, I'd enter it into evidence.

(I'm not only part of the solution, but as you can guess from my 8-step solution, I'm part of the problem, and I'm damn proud of it!)

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/19/08 at 11:44 pm

Wonder if the hypothetical of this would have done me in:

When I was 7-8 yrs. we lived in a duplex with a spiteful downstairs neighbor.
We shared a common door that led to my family apartment upstairs from the back entrance-on occasion the neighbor may have locked the door so no one would enter the area to access the stairway.
My mother had to have constant talks with them to remind them , we,(the kids), needed to enter that way.

One day, I locked the door,and when I came home, had to knock to get my mother to open it...she had HAD IT!!

She, (thinking the neighbor locked it),pounded on the neighbors door w/window and her hand wen through the glass!

NOW, HYPOTHETICALLY)....if that had severed her artery and she died, aside from a lifetime of guilt, should I have been held responsible-after an investigation turned up -the neighbor NEVER LOCKED the door?

Even if this doesn't relate, let me know....I guess the similarities are I taunted my mother, who had an uncontrollable temper, she (hyp.) gets tragically injured...I caused it to begin with knowing she would FLIP! Am I to be condemned?

Thanks Sherlocks...... :-\\   

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: AL-B Mk. III on 05/20/08 at 2:44 pm


Wonder if the hypothetical of this would have done me in:

When I was 7-8 yrs. we lived in a duplex with a spiteful downstairs neighbor.
We shared a common door that led to my family apartment upstairs from the back entrance-on occasion the neighbor may have locked the door so no one would enter the area to access the stairway.
My mother had to have constant talks with them to remind them , we,(the kids), needed to enter that way.

One day, I locked the door,and when I came home, had to knock to get my mother to open it...she had HAD IT!!

She, (thinking the neighbor locked it),pounded on the neighbors door w/window and her hand wen through the glass!

NOW, HYPOTHETICALLY)....if that had severed her artery and she died, aside from a lifetime of guilt, should I have been held responsible-after an investigation turned up -the neighbor NEVER LOCKED the door?

Even if this doesn't relate, let me know....I guess the similarities are I taunted my mother, who had an uncontrollable temper, she (hyp.) gets tragically injured...I caused it to begin with knowing she would FLIP! Am I to be condemned?

Thanks Sherlocks...... :-\\   
No.

Because you didn't intend to kill your mother.

As far as I'm concerned, that freak who cyberbullied the 13 year-old girl knew what she was doing, she knew that the girl was unstable, and I can't help but wonder if driving the girl to suicide was exactly what she intended. Oh course that freak would never admit it, she's gotta turn on the crocodile tears so people won't think she's Charlie Manson or something but yeah, there's some f*cked up people out there and it wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was deliberate.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Step-chan on 05/20/08 at 3:14 pm

^ It wouldn't surprise me if that's really the case.

There was a punk on an image site who told me he hated me and told me to stop uploading, just because part of what I was uploading wasn't dirty enough for him to (censored) to. I'm guessing that he is underage(which is a 99.99% probability). I responded that I knew he was underage and told him that his parents would eventually catch him. It was my thread anyway, so he ain't no boss of me. ;D

Now in comparison, that little punk is only about 1/10 as bad at the most as the cowardly fail-mom that cyber-bullied a teen that she knew wasn't stable, so it could be that she intended to drive the girl to suicide.


The fail is strong in both loopy mother and distraught teenybopper, but ultimately the teenybooper is at fault somewhere between where she tied the noose around her neck and kicked/jumped off the chair.

The only way to turn failure that epic into win would have been to set up a camera on 30-second time delay and run a script that:

1) Sleeps for 30 seconds
2) Mounts the camera as a storage device.
3) Copies the highest-numbered file of the form DSCNxxxx, where "xxxx" is a 4-digit number, to the user's home directory.
4) Using some fiddling with curl and/or wget, uploads the pic to an image hosting site.
5) Using similar fiddling, gets the URL for the uploaded pic and hooks up to an image macro generating site.
6) Using similar fiddling, selects in the canonical "Impact" font and captions "I HATE THIS THREAD" onto the pic.
7) Using similar fiddling, saves the resulting captioned picture back to the first image host.
eight) Posts a URL pointing to the final product to her MySpaz/Spacebook page.

Better yet, get the proper movie props and work with a professional to safely fake the whole hanging pic.  Do it the morning you leave with your parents on a one-week vacation to Disneyland, and let your opponent be wracked with anguish for the next week over whether or not it was real or photoshopped.  (But then we'd be arguing over whether to charge a kid clever enough to drive a MILF (Mom I'd Label a FAILure) to suicide, rather than the other way around :)

When I was a kid, it was all about "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me."

Knives and guns can ruin my fun, but ones and zeroes amuse me.

Penny Arcade, however, said it best four years ago, when they offered us the world this little GIFT of wisdom. 

The GIFT is safe for work, but I'm linking to it rather than embedding it because it contains two naughty words in the form of comic-book art, and we're trying to be family-friendly here, but that comic strip is everything anyone from age 8 to 80 needs to know about this case.  If I were a parent, I'd show it to my kids.   If I were a teacher or guidance counsellor, I'd put it on my desk.  If I were the attorney defending the Mom I'd Label a Failure, I'd enter it into evidence.

(I'm not only part of the solution, but as you can guess from my 8-step solution, I'm part of the problem, and I'm damn proud of it!)


Love the Penny Arcade equation. There is some definite truth to it(it reminds me of some of the users on the chan image sites).

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Foo Bar on 05/21/08 at 11:54 pm


Love the Penny Arcade equation.


True on just about every Internet forum.  Trolls are a fact of life; usually best ignored, unless particularly amusing.

Wired had a fantastic article today about  Hiroyuki Nishimura.  The Japanese phrase kuki yomenai (lit., "can't read the air", idiomatic for "doesn't get the joke", or phrased in English idiom, "that was the point, flying over your head") says a lot about these sorts of these issues.

The judges (and many of the self-styled "victims") don't get it -- the Internet's a fundamentally different medium than broadcast (one-to-many communication, typically regulated by libel laws) or monocast (one-to-one communication, regulated by the laws that govern telephone calls or more direct forms of harassment such as assault) media.  By virtue of it being many-to-many, it's a meme-replicator.  I don't know the "victim" or the "perpetrator" in this case, but because both people are outside my monkeysphere (the 150 or so people my primate brain was evolved to keep track of and care about), it strikes me as "funny" rather than "tragic", and now that it's all over and done with, everyone involved is fair game for mockery.

The closest pre-Internet analogy I can come up with is the fuzziness in US libel law for public figures.  I can't say that (the real-life name of the guy in the next cubicle from me) is involved with (something very embarassing), because guy-in-next-cubicle isn't a public figure and someone might actually believe me.  But if I want to graphically describe Paris Hilton's sexual escapades with Hillary Clinton, three midgets and a goat, I can go right ahead, because both of the named people are public figures.  On the Internet, everyone is a public figure.  Whether the courts can ultimately read the air or not remains to be seen.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Marian on 05/22/08 at 2:23 pm


No.

Because you didn't intend to kill your mother.

As far as I'm concerned, that freak who cyberbullied the 13 year-old girl knew what she was doing, she knew that the girl was unstable, and I can't help but wonder if driving the girl to suicide was exactly what she intended. Oh course that freak would never admit it, she's gotta turn on the crocodile tears so people won't think she's Charlie Manson or something but yeah, there's some f*cked up people out there and it wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing was deliberate.
i don't know--if sh e really believed the girl would do herself in,why didn't she get on some forums and say America would be a better place without illegal aliens?the expression "in your dreams "comes to mind here.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Step-chan on 05/22/08 at 2:32 pm


True on just about every Internet forum.  Trolls are a fact of life; usually best ignored, unless particularly amusing.

Wired had a fantastic article today about  Hiroyuki Nishimura.  The Japanese phrase kuki yomenai (lit., "can't read the air", idiomatic for "doesn't get the joke", or phrased in English idiom, "that was the point, flying over your head") says a lot about these sorts of these issues.

The judges (and many of the self-styled "victims") don't get it -- the Internet's a fundamentally different medium than broadcast (one-to-many communication, typically regulated by libel laws) or monocast (one-to-one communication, regulated by the laws that govern telephone calls or more direct forms of harassment such as assault) media.  By virtue of it being many-to-many, it's a meme-replicator.  I don't know the "victim" or the "perpetrator" in this case, but because both people are outside my monkeysphere (the 150 or so people my primate brain was evolved to keep track of and care about), it strikes me as "funny" rather than "tragic", and now that it's all over and done with, everyone involved is fair game for mockery.

The closest pre-Internet analogy I can come up with is the fuzziness in US libel law for public figures.  I can't say that (the real-life name of the guy in the next cubicle from me) is involved with (something very embarassing), because guy-in-next-cubicle isn't a public figure and someone might actually believe me.  But if I want to graphically describe Paris Hilton's sexual escapades with Hillary Clinton, three midgets and a goat, I can go right ahead, because both of the named people are public figures.  On the Internet, everyone is a public figure.  Whether the courts can ultimately read the air or not remains to be seen.


Yeah.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: AL-B Mk. III on 05/22/08 at 2:38 pm


i don't know--if sh e really believed the girl would do herself in,why didn't she get on some forums and say America would be a better place without illegal aliens?the expression "in your dreams "comes to mind here.


All I can say is that there's some really sick individuals out there and the neighbor lady who taunted the girl online is one of them.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: MaxwellSmart on 05/22/08 at 8:18 pm

If I ever shoot my mom, can I get Saver on retainer?
:D

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/22/08 at 9:27 pm


If I ever shoot my mom, can I get Saver on retainer?
:D






As long as it's not for rape, cuz I would fight for every chance for my client to get a minimal sentence of 19 years but talk it down for early release after 6 years, in order to have him come out twice as big with tattoos and rent him an apartment right above the victims apartment where he can break in whenever he wants because the in/out-prison rehab just didn't quite click,
and life will be sweet for him at least, while the victim has to spend the rest of their life living in fear of all men ...that is if that was the crime....but if it were just for shooting ones mom,hmmm,....it might be the first time a defense lawyer would ASK for the death penalty.... 

How about the case for the 'lawyers' who knew a guy was not guilty, he was behind bars around 20 years and their client told the lawyers he didn't do it  but they waited until AFTER their client died to reveal the news claiming their job was to never incriminate the client!

There oughtta be a law to.... :-X....! 

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Marian on 05/23/08 at 12:55 pm




As long as it's not for rape, cuz I would fight for every chance for my client to get a minimal sentence of 19 years but talk it down for early release after 6 years, in order to have him come out twice as big with tattoos and rent him an apartment right above the victims apartment where he can break in whenever he wants because the in/out-prison rehab just didn't quite click,
and life will be sweet for him at least, while the victim has to spend the rest of their life living in fear of all men ...that is if that was the crime....but if it were just for shooting ones mom,hmmm,....it might be the first time a defense lawyer would ASK for the death penalty.... 

How about the case for the 'lawyers' who knew a guy was not guilty, he was behind bars around 20 years and their client told the lawyers he didn't do it  but they waited until AFTER their client died to reveal the news claiming their job was to never incriminate the client!

There oughtta be a law to.... :-X....! 
:o :oWow.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: saver on 05/23/08 at 5:00 pm


:o :oWow.


No hard feelings against posters here, it's just been an ongoing 'death penalty issue thing' by now, I've made my point. ;)


Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: SpaceHog on 05/28/08 at 12:08 am

I thought you had to be 14+ for myspace. She didn't need to be on there.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Marian on 05/28/08 at 2:16 pm


I thought you had to be 14+ for myspace. She didn't need to be on there.
She lied about her age,like many internet trolls do.BTW,is it just me,or does Tina meier remind you of Heather Mills?

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: Tia on 05/28/08 at 4:12 pm

   now lets look into the intelligence of this 13 year old. first of all, she was foolish enough to think of herself as "in love" with someone she'd never met.

you don't think this is possible until it happens, and then you know it's possible.

  Then she goes and destroys her own life, an extremely selfish act, and in doing so, ruins the lives of many around her. I'm sorry, but i have trouble feeling bad for someone like that. And don't give me that "she was just 13" crap. I'm young as well, and I know better.
 
   (god gave us common sense? well that's ironic.)   
you may be the same age as this girl, but that doesn't mean you're in her shoes. she may have had a chemical imbalance, she may have had chemical depression, she may have been feeling a whole array of emotions you'll never feel. i gotta be honest, i thought we were mostly past blaming people for their own suicides -- anyone led to such a desperate act has plainly been driven to such extremity that most people have no idea what it's like to experience what they're experiencing.

Subject: Re: Part of the online teen suicide accusation bothers me...

Written By: danootaandme on 05/28/08 at 4:26 pm


   

  I'm young as well, and I know better.
 



Yes, but it is one thing to know and another thing to understand which you hopefully will, when you are older.

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