Brutally Honest Rant - 11/21/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Cyberspace Destroyers
Audio Transcripts
11/21/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Well my friends, today is my birthday. And I WAS hoping to give myself a present and make this a really quick rant… but then again birthdays suck for me… not necessarily when other people have their birthdays, but mine always seem to suck, so I’m just going to get into this rant instead.

Now… one of the reasons why my birthdays always seem to suck is that I really never had that many friends growing up. I had a few… and of those maybe one or two that I would REALLY call friends… and still do.

The rest of the time, though, it wasn’t easy for me. To say that I had issues would be an understatement. I had some SERIOUS issues! I had trust issues. I had abandonment issues. I suffered from depression. And I was a frequent victim of bullying. There were plenty of people, boys AND girls, that seemed to make it their collective mission in life to make mine as miserable as possible. They LOVED tormenting me. And part of it was because they KNEW I wouldn’t fight back! Yes, that was that damned Roman Catholic “turn the other cheek” crap that I was force-fed by my parents.

By the way, if you want to effectively deal with bullying, then the first thing that has to go is that “turn the other cheek” philosophy. Stop trying to develop an “intellectual superiority” or foisting the matter onto some government institution to step in, because guess what? It doesn’t work! I know that FROM EXPERIENCE!

But I will say this much… no matter what these little tyrants did, they didn’t have the resources that today’s kids have. They didn’t have the means to push your buttons remotely, continually, at any time, and without a trace.

I’m talking about cyberspace bullying. Now I’ve been involved with the Internet and with Internet issues for well over a decade now, and one of the biggest pitfalls about the Internet has always been how it can be abused. And when it comes to kids and the Internet, cyberspace bullying is one of those things that people really never take into account when they start passing on these really neat “toys” to them. You know… “toys” like a cellphone with a digital camera, and a laptop computer, and their own Internet account.

But with all cyberspace issues involving kids, I have but one mantra that I continually bring out that NOBODY wants to hear, but they need to hear it anyway:

WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?

Because about 99% of these problems with kids and the “new technology” could have been prevented if parents simply DID THEIR FRIGGING JOBS as parents! What the hell are you doing giving kids uncontrolled and unmonitored access to the Internet in the first place? That is the electronic equivalent to giving them your car keys and telling them to have fun.

But unfortunately, tonight’s tale of woe has a new twist to it.

There’s a 13-year old girl by the name of Megan Meier who had some problems… the biggest being, of course, adolescence itself. But she also suffered from some other problems including depression. She meets this kid online named Josh. Same age, supposedly lived not too far from where she lived, had just moved in from Florida and was being home-schooled. They talk for a while, she gets to know him, he gets to know her. This goes on for about a month.

Then, suddenly, he calls the whole thing off. Josh claims that he had heard all of these mean things about her and that she was cruel and he didn’t want anything to do with her.

Next thing she knows, she’s getting harassing messages from Josh. Messages are being publicly posted accusing her of being fat and of being a slut. Remember, she’s 13! Josh sends one final message to Megan telling her that she was bad and that the world would be better off without her.

Megan Meier killed herself that night.

Now here is the sick twist to this story. “Josh” never really existed. “Josh” was a fictional creation of a woman who simply wanted to befriend Megan and find out what she was saying about her own daughter.

Yes, you heard me… the whole twisted and tragic hoax was created by ANOTHER PARENT! AN ADULT!

And not only that, but there were OTHER parents who were in on this! Other parents and other children that KNEW that this “Josh” character was a hoax. And they said nothing about it! They did nothing about it! They watched that charade play out, and it was only the guilt of one of those parents six months afterwards that led to the truth.

Now let’s get brutally honest here… THIS IS EVIL! This is evil at its core!

I mean it’s one thing if “Josh” was a fictional creation of another teenager. Kids are legendary for their cruelty simply because they don’t know any better. They lack the physical brain development to care about anything greater than themselves. They still believe that the world revolves around them.

But we’re talking about an ADULT here! Someone who KNEW precisely what she was doing. Someone who used the same tactics that child molesters use to gain someone’s trust and then maliciously destroy it.

And that’s what we are talking about here. These really ARE the SAME TACTICS that child molesters use when they try to entice children! Never mind that the perpetrator is a woman and that the molestation in this case was purely psychological. The TACTICS are the same.

Maybe that should be something that these other parents… these other ADULTS… that KNEW what was going on should consider. Hey, did you know that you just saw the same thing that CHILD MOLESTERS normally do to children? I wonder how many of them would have stayed silent when it’s seen in THAT light?

You know what makes this even worse? That the whole dammed neighborhood where all of this took place is actually more OFFENDED that Megan’s parents are speaking OUT about this than they are about the actual CRIMINAL ACT that took place! They’re telling Megan’s parents to simply “let it be”.

Let it be?

They LOST their daughter! A 13-year old girl who was intentionally, deliberately, and systematically driven to KILL HERSELF! The police say they can’t do anything about it. The FBI says they can’t do anything about it! The woman responsible for it will essentially get away with this CRIME, and the neighborhood simply wants the dead girl’s parents to simply “let it be”? What the hell kind of “FAMILY VALUES” is being practiced in that neighborhood? We’re not talking about “Wisteria Lane” here, folks. This is not some ABC primetime soap opera. This is for REAL! A REAL live has been lost!

If I were that girl’s father, I sure as hell wouldn’t “let it be!” I’d make it my mission in life to burn every single one of those goddamned houses TO THE GODDAMNED GROUND! And THAT would be just for starters!

Let it be? I sure as hell wouldn’t if I were in their shoes.

And I sure as hell would hope that this isn’t the end of this story, because that unnamed woman – who is supposedly being concealed in the media for the sake of her own daughter – is guilty of causing the death of a young girl! At the very least she should be sued in civil court for everything she ever owned, and anything she ever WILL own! She should be getting regular visits by Child Services investigating how she’s raising a child while driving a neighbor’s child to her death!

And isn’t it CONVENIENT that the prosecutors were ready to wash their hands clean of this case UNTIL Megan’s parents started talking to the media, and THEN suddenly they’re reviewing it all over again? I hope they do more than just talk about it.

By the way, the Internet community is doing more than just taking offense to this. They DID find the woman’s name… and they posted it. And they found her husband’s name, and his workplace, and they posted that too. Now THEY are learning what it’s like to be tormented.

This is what happens when the people in charge of the justice system FAIL to do their jobs! When you have an apparent case of injustice, you are not just INVITING vigilante justice… you are, in fact, making it a NECCESSITY.

Now I’m not saying that Megan’s parents don’t share in some of the blame here, because they certainly do. They supposedly were monitoring the whole thing, and they even supposedly had their suspicions about this “Josh” character. They knew something was wrong. But rather than stepping in and taking away Megan’s computer, even for a brief period of time, they left her to fend for herself. That was wrong. But it still doesn’t excuse or absolve the exchange that happened that led to Megan’s death.

You know, it’s not enough to simply “know” what to look out for when it comes to being a parent. You have to DO the right thing as well. That means stepping in when something happens online. That means not LETTING your child have a MySpace account. It means not GIVING your child a cellphone with text messaging or camera capabilities. This is something that parents don’t just want to comprehend here! Just because a child can text-message doesn’t mean that they SHOULD! That sort of crap was invented by the cellphone companies as an advertising gimmick! PARENTS still need to be parents! No law can EVER take the place of parental responsibility, and that’s the REAL message that needs to be sent out. There wouldn’t ever be a need for justice – vigilante style or otherwise – if parents simply did their damned jobs!

(Computer – something evil)
(Fade Music In – “Who Am I” by Peace Orchestra)

When all is said and done, the Internet is still a TOOL. It’s an instrument. It’s a very effective instrument, but it is still just that! And cyberspace bullying is still just bullying. If our social and legal institutions can’t deal with the bullying in general, how the hell can you expect new laws to deal with the cyberspace variety? The answer to that, of course, is that it can’t… any more than it could deal with the bullying that went on in my time. That’s why parents need to BE parents. They’re the only ones who can do this.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------