Feminists

We can shout all day "THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THIS TO HER!" & they shouldn't have.
Nobody is in favor of bullies & stalkers.

But it's the same thing as telling your 6 year old not to talk to strangers.
Same thing as telling your 6 year old not to tell random strangers where you live.
It's because there is danger in this world & everybody is not going to be ethical & respectful.

With the internet once it's out there it's out there.
I could go track the guy down & make him pay legally for posting my girl's pic in his avatar.
But what if he's already copied & reproduced that pic in other places on the net?
You can't track all of that down.

I used to put a picture of my face on my Yahoo profile until I realized how someone could use this pic outside of where I intended it.
I removed my picture so it wouldn't be abused like that.
When I first got on the internet I was working on a project & posted my entire address in some random forum looking to make a contact.
Years later I had some internet stalker post that same address in hopes of scaring me off a discussion group.
They couldn't win the debate so they tried to intimidate me by posting my address.
I learned soon after posting that address that I was not supposed to post addresses online & stopped doing it.
But it didn't matter. They dug it up & threw it back in my face. All those years later.

It's like Whack-A-Mole.
You can stop this one but you can't stop the other one that pops up.

I really don't think kids should be on Facebook & Twitter & stuff like that because of how those services make it so easy to broadcast everything to everybody. Kids just don't have good judgment about stuff like this.
But that's not a realistic answer either.
That's reactionary & my post was looking for a smarter solution.

Yeah boys do the same thing & post sexual pics & vids when they hit puberty too.
I was keeping it on topic since this was a girl.
Didn't say she was stupid. I said she made a mistake & didn't feel she had anyone to talk it through.

What would I have done if it was my girl?
Well, my girl would be well versed into understanding how the internet works.
She would know that once something is posted on here it's FOREVER.
I would run through it with her BEFORE she got into her teens. And DURING.
I would not quarantine her from the internet but teach her how to use it responsibly.
I would also have her mother explain how taking cutesy sexy pics & posting them online invites creepers, stalkers, & pedophiles.
If she still made the mistake of posting a sexy pic online ('cause kids don't always heed caution), I would do my best to track the person down who reposted it & have that person be dealt with legally while petitioning for his pics to be removed from the archives.
I would re-explain my position on the permanence of the internet to her showing her by example that I wasn't blowing smoke out of my ass.
I would comfort her if the embarrassment gets to be too much to deal with.
I would then teach her how to deal with any backlash that may come from her momentary mistake.
I would not permanently remove access to the internet from her but may keep her from using it in my house temporarily as punishment.

But if I'm effective in teaching her what the internet's about I won't have to go through half of those steps.

It was less the vid that killed this girl. It was more the harassment from the schoolkids.
But kids have ALWAYS had to deal with harassment from schoolkids.
I dealt with it & I would teach my girl how to weather those predictable storms.

It's not realistic to get into the Whack-A-Mole game trying to individually go after each kid that posted poison bleach pics & said mean things. There will always be more kids jumping on the bandwagon.
You gotta teach your kids how to not let that talk affect you.

Take the case of Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson's daughter.
When he was alive this girl was not online.
He valued his privacy & didn't want to endanger his children with that fishbowl nonsense he had to deal with all of his life.
Then he died.

Afterwards somehow Paris Jackson starts up a Twitter account & posts pics online.
She willingly walks right into the fishbowl that Michael quarantined her from all her life.
The older she gets, the more cutesy her pics.
Showing off her eyes, making kissy faces, showing off her makeup.
It's mild but she is doing the same thing kids do at that age: evaluating her sexual appeal AKA trying to see how cute she can look.

When the whole thing about the Jacksons blew up this summer, here's Paris online tweeting all kinds of words on Twitter & inviting the media hounds into the family business.
What Michael spent his entire life trying to protect her from, she willingly walks towards.
He was so private & she is so public.
And at 14 years old, you're gonna have a hard time getting her to understand the consequences of her online actions as mild as they may be.
If you try to take it away from her, then she'll rebel & try to do it anyway through someone else.
She may lay low for awhile but in the future she'll learn to be more discreet so her grandmother doesn't find out what she's doing.

Because Michael forbid any contact with online services like these, she couldn't wait to jump into a world she never got to know.
When kids are forbidden something all you do is make it more attractive to them.
And when they get a taste & they're gonna jump right in headlong.
Both of Paris' parents were private. Her mother Debbie Rowe is so private that people barely know who she is.
So naturally Paris the child will be opposite of them.

We live in a internet world now & you better be REALISTIC on how it works.
You better prepare your kids how to deal with this world & its aftereffects.
I'm an adult & I don't like Facebook. I don't like a lot of this Web 2.0 crap.
Too invasive. Too automatically public. Too dismissive of the concept of social circles.
Hell, I don't even own a cellphone! Much less a smartphone.

Now when you watch YouTube videos, Google wants you to input your mobile number—just in case you forget your password—and now wants you to post your real name in place of your username.
They want things even MORE connected than ever before.

Either you live like the Amish & stay away from the internet or you deal with the reality of how it works.
Saying "THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THIS TO HER!!" ain't gonna protect your daughter from crap like this.
Once it's out there it's out there.
John Lucas