I cant even bring myself to watch this video. Just like Derek, I was picked on. I was beaten with all sorts of crap, chased in cars, death threats, and even a gun pointed at my face all before I was 13. So when I see people getting bullied, yeah, its REALLY frustrating!
Some people are idiots. It annoys me so much when some ''popular'' kid bullies on someone weaker and then gets supported from everybody, like he did something smart and useful.
Yeah I had my fair share of bullying (mixed in with racism) when I was younger too, probably why I couldn't watch it all the way through either. And although it might have been a bit of a knee jerk reaction by the general public, the woman didn't ask for the money so it'd be wrong to direct any anger at her for how people decide to use their money. Now she could take the high road (yet again) and put it towards some anti-bullying campaign, but if she chooses not to, who are we to judge?
Kids will be kids? Bullfuckingshit. At that age I not only knew better, but I highly doubt my class mates would have done such a thing. Also she deserves all the donations she gets to help her take a nice vacation for the shit she puts up with. Seriously if you think every generation before hand would have behaved in such a manner your clearly delusional. Amen. No time out's for little Timmy and Susie.
I think what you're seeing here is a really sick display of group psychology. What we're seeing here is probably the tail end of all the verbal abuse reaching its climax. I'm tempted to agree with the assessment that our independent, "I can do what I want" culture is at least partly to blame here because we forsook a more rigid and enforced social structure for the kind of society that allows social conventions to arise ad-hoc. Sometimes this happens. You're also dealing with an audience of children who were probably raised by quasi-absentee parents (Even if they were present they probably worked a lot) and consequently spent most of their time being entertained by television, music, and video games without restrictions. It's easy to see where they'd learn this kind of verbiage in today's media market. And let's not even discuss the hormonal changes those kids are enduring right now. It's way easy to be angry at them, and that's probably a just response. But an even more just response is to set aside our anger and let them learn to carry the weight of their own actions. They (and we) live in a world of hyper-visibility and I suspect they're learning that the hard way right now.
I'm against the fact that people are channelling all their money into one direct case of bullying rather than actually spending their money on a cause that will actually help to tackle the problem altogether, or another more justified cause. It's got nothing to do with being edgy or superior. My argument is that it makes fuck all sense to throw money at someone just because a few rowdy kids called her names. What the hell is giving her 600k going to accomplish? It's not going to help stop cases like this from happening again. If anything it encourages the notion that you can solve all your problems by throwing money at them. Yes, it gives her a nice bit of money to retire on, but now she has more money than most people will see in a lifetime - Is that justified? Was what she experienced so bad that it merited her becoming richer than most people? I don't think so. I think sending her on a nice holiday and making sure those kids were reprimanded would have been more than sufficiant, but clearly this became a case of people jumping on the bandwagon yet again. Cheering someone up with 600k? I can't be the only one who thinks that's absolutely fucking absurd. There are millions living on the poverty line at the moment and the children living within those families probably get bullied just as bad or worse because of it. Who's doing their best to cheer them up? On another note, anyone who's saying they should beat their kids into line should check themselves. Corporal punishment is nothing more than barbaric and is the first sign of having fuck all control of your kids. If you teach them respect and actually make an effort to be a good parent, then smacking your children should never even have to enter your thoughts.
What makes this case so interesting to me is we now have a generation of children who no longer get slaps on the wrist for their mistakes BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING INTERNET. C'mon guys, we might have never done anything as bad as these kids, but admit it, if some of the stupid shit we did when we were in the sixth grade got broadcasted on youtube and went viral, we'd look pretty fucking stupid too. I'm so glad youtube wasn't around when I was that young.
Friends do a lot dumber things in a group than they would individually, too. This is why having good friends is so important. Maybe only one of these kids was a rotten tomato and the other ones joined in to try to impress other people on the bus. Or them seeing that one kid gave them the urge to join in. Whereas almost nobody has the nerve to do something so disrespectful on their own. I've done stupid things with friends before when I was young that I would never ever do on my own. It's a shame these kids had to post that video and have everyone judge them and threaten them so harshly. If they had good parents, they would have learned a very good lesson. Now their lives will be a living hell for quite some time now that it's on the web.
I actually disagree with your central premise. We've been donating money to charities that siphon off large percentages of it for no gain for a long fucking time, have we made noticeable progress on most of those fronts? I'd say that's questionable and we'll never know. When our collective spending is ear-marked as a matter of our personal passion for something specific we can feel at least a little more certain that we know where our money went. Frankly if Operation Smile listed 6 children at a time, randomly generated, on their front page and let you ear mark money for that specific one without it going through them first (or with a smaller percentage going through them) I think they'd be more on their way to their goal. In this case, I'm sure the final figure is more about the sheer volume of people moved and not large donations. I'd be willing to bet the donation amounts create a very normal curve and that sheer volume produced such a high figure. Moreover, I think such an overwhelming display sets a kind of standard for how the internet deals in justice.
Exactly. No kid would do this on their own. But, I can't understand that even a group of kids would humiliate someone like that. I mean, I'm only a year older then them, but when me and my friends are passing by the woman who watched us in kindergarten we all say ''Hello!'' and talk to the woman, although she wasn't exactly a ''great teacher'', in fact, she'd take us and beat the crap out of the kid who did something wrong. I just can't understand why would someone do something like this.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/29/us/new-york-bus-monitor-suspensions/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 The kids are officially suspended for a year and have to do 50 hours of community service. I know what they did was disgusting, but Christ Almighty...
If these kids were mine, there would be a lifetime of punishment. This event was totally uncalled for, and when I saw it on tv, I literally said to my daughters that if they to become like those boys, the punishment would not stop with one thing. Totally unacceptable.
Should've been worse. This would've been the perfect moment to send a message to all bullies. They should have gotten prison time. I don't know what you would charge them with. Probably harassment. I mean, this incomprehensible what they did.