WARNING: May contain PG-13 material. Do not read if underage...
Last year a fifteen year-old, Amanda Todd, sadly decided to end her life due to being a victim of severe bullying. In a Youtube video left behind, she told the story by flash card set to a maudlin song 'Hear To Me' her story is this. A few years ago, she was chatting with someone she met online, a man who flattered her. At his request, she flashed him. The man took a picture of her breasts. He then proceeded to follow Todd around the Internet for years. He asked her to put on another show for him, but she refused. So he’d find her classmates on Facebook and send them the photograph. To cope with the anxiety, Todd descended into drugs and alcohol and ill-advised flirtations and sex. Her classmates ostracized her. She attempted suicide a few times before finally succeeding. Todd’s suicide is easily analogized to Tyler Clementi’s, mostly because the public has diagnosed both cases as the result of “cyber-bullying.” Yet, as a descriptive term, “cyber-bullying” feels deliberately vague. Somewhere in the midst of the “mob” there is usually at least one person whose cruelty exceeds the tossing off of a stray insult. In Clementi’s case, the magazine’s Ian Parker chalked the harasser’s motives up to “shiftiness and bad faith,” the kinds of things that criminal statutes can’t easily be invoked to cover. But with Todd’s harasser, the malice is unquestionable. Anyone who has ever been to high school knows what they are provoking by distributing photographs like that.
Last year a fifteen year-old, Amanda Todd, sadly decided to end her life due to being a victim of severe bullying. In a Youtube video left behind, she told the story by flash card set to a maudlin song 'Hear To Me' her story is this. A few years ago, she was chatting with someone she met online, a man who flattered her. At his request, she flashed him. The man took a picture of her breasts. He then proceeded to follow Todd around the Internet for years. He asked her to put on another show for him, but she refused. So he’d find her classmates on Facebook and send them the photograph. To cope with the anxiety, Todd descended into drugs and alcohol and ill-advised flirtations and sex. Her classmates ostracized her. She attempted suicide a few times before finally succeeding. Todd’s suicide is easily analogized to Tyler Clementi’s, mostly because the public has diagnosed both cases as the result of “cyber-bullying.” Yet, as a descriptive term, “cyber-bullying” feels deliberately vague. Somewhere in the midst of the “mob” there is usually at least one person whose cruelty exceeds the tossing off of a stray insult. In Clementi’s case, the magazine’s Ian Parker chalked the harasser’s motives up to “shiftiness and bad faith,” the kinds of things that criminal statutes can’t easily be invoked to cover. But with Todd’s harasser, the malice is unquestionable. Anyone who has ever been to high school knows what they are provoking by distributing photographs like that.
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