I have had a few flame wars online, but I can honestly say that it’s never even come remotely close to physical violence. But then again few of my flame wars are with teenage girls on MySpace.
For those who haven’t hear about this, a 16 year old girl named Victoria Lindsay was supposedly lured to a home and beaten by 6 girls, while 2 guys sat outside as a look outs. The video, which takes place after Victoria was already beaten on for a while, was made by the girls to post to YouTube and MySpace. The video has received millions of views, so in a way the girls were successful.
Of course the father is doing what any good father would do, finding the deepest pockets to blame. And since MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch and YouTube by Google, he’s blaming them. “MySpace is the anti-christ for teens” he says. Those sound like the words of someone who has already consulted with a lawyer.
Of course I would like to debunk the theory that MySpace, or any part of the Internet was responsible for this attack. MySpace didn’t beat Victoria, cheerleaders did. They didn’t use MySpace to lure Victoria to the house, they used a cell phone. Hey Mr. Lindsay, AT&T has deep pockets too. I’m kidding of course, these are T-Mobile customers if ever I saw one.
When a girl gets lured by some pervert on MySpace, we blame MySpace for not somehow keeping adults and teens apart, and I guess keeping criminals off MySpace. So they add a firewall between users by age, and they kick out convicted pedophiles. Which works well because no one will ever think about setting up an account under a false name.
Since this is being dubbed as the MySpace beating, what role did MySpace play in this exactly? Well I guess Victoria “talked trash” (which, from the video, appears to be their native language) on MySpace about the girls. Well that sounds like a good reason to blame MySpace. Why stop there? How many gang members get killed for tagging the wrong wall? Why not sue the contractor who put up the wall? Or maybe even the brick manufacturer. Or at least sue the guy who owns the wall that gets vandalized. Why is he not monitoring that wall? Does he not know someone may get angry about what’s written on the wall and kill someone?
Before I let the Internet off the hook completely here, I will say there are a couple disturbing trends. First, I see a lot of people doing stupid things on video just to get popular on YouTube or Break.com. Most of these people seem to have trampolines in their yard (the official backyard accessory of white trash America) and have no fear of getting hurt. Thank god for them it looks like we’ll all have universal health care soon. The fact that the girls were so into posting the video that one shouted out that they only have 17 seconds left, and to “make them count”? is a little disturbing. Although it sounds like she is a better director than Uwe Boll.
I also am a little surprised at how fast information has come out. I know every person in the situations name, and here is a link to a little site called Yahoo that supposedly lists their address and phone numbers. These are juveniles we’re talking about, and their information is clearly on the internet.
Information like this is going to be difficult to stop in the age of MySpace and YouTube. This next generation will be living a good part of their life online, often documenting the types of things that my generation had the luxury of forgetting and not sharing with the world.
So Mr. Patrick Lindsay, I’m sorry about what happened to your daughter, and I hope all the people who beat her go to prison and enjoy their own little beat down. But to blame MySpace is about as crazy as blaming the “tubes“? that cary it. Get well soon Victoria.
Technorati Tags: victoria lindsay, patrick lindsay, myspace, youtube, cheeleaders, beating
Is Mr. Lindsay accepting any of the blame for
1) Not teaching his daughter that slandering and threatening people has ramifications. After all, slander destroys reputations, careers, marriages…so words do matter.
2) kicking her out of the house at the tender age of 16? Where was he when this incident took place?
These girls need to be punished but we also need to see what ms. Lindsay said about her friends that provoked this kind of rage in the first place.
Okay…I think you’re an idiot. Why do we need to know what Victoria Lindsay said on MySpace? Nothing she could have said would warrant being beaten. These are teenage girls, they slander each other constantly. And from their behavior I doubt any of them were trying to defend their good name in the public.
People like you amaze me. Are you from Florida too?
People like you never cease to amaze me; mob mentality.
No I’m not from Florida (a little stereotype there Ed?) but I do know of people who’ve been “bullied and beat up” and people who’ve been “bullied by lies and whisper campaigns”. More often than not words last longer than blows. Haven’t you been paying attention to these stories of teenagers committing suicide because of internet rumors? Even adults sometimes commit suicide when they’re the victim of malicious rumors….doesn’t Joseph McCarthy ring a bell for you?
If you want to engage in mob mentality then go right ahead but I’m going to hold back a bit and think rationally and wait until the rest of the story comes out before I start yelling “crucify them”.
After all it seems awfully strange to me that this girl made damn sure she deleted that myspace page before the cops got to it. And her parents don’t seem to eager to “pile” onto their daughter’s attackers either. And if you really watch the video it was not 6 on 1 it was only 2 girls that hit her and mainly one girl at that. The press keeps talking about the rest of the video but they haven’t shown it to us yet have they? The rest of the kids were on-lookers who were egging the one girl to do the fighting for all of them. My guess is that if this Lindsay girl had fought back (like she’d supposedly been threatening to do online) they’d have all backed off……..just like she backed off when confronted face to face.
There’s more going on here than we’re being told so far. Hopefully some good lessons will come out of this before it’s over. Children need to be taught to think before they speak and how to deal with incredible anger when they feel they’ve been wronged.
Crazy, crazy, crazy. First off, what the hell does a McCarthy have to do with this? What an odd stretch. I don’t think it’s mob mentality to say when 8 people plot out an attack on someone because she talked trash on the Internet that those people are prosecuted.
And what “rest of the story” do you need? They were angry, they called her over and beat her. They planned on taping the event so they could make a popular MySpace video. There is no rest of the story.
Also, you may want to get your facts straight on the video. The video you’re seeing online is only a small part. They did all take turns attacking Victoria Lindsay. This video takes place after she had been knocked unconscious and woke up. So before you “wait for the rest of the story”, catch up to the story so far.
And to say that she should have “fought back” against the girls is to imply that this is somehow her fault. Free speech lets us say whatever we want. If what we say is slanderous, than the victim has the right to file civil action; not get together a group of friends to kidnap and beat you into unconsciousness.
Simply put, there is no reason for this girl to have been attacked. People talk “trash” about me online, and I can honestly say that I have never (seriously) considered any sort of physical retribution. These eight teenagers should get at least 5 - 10 years in prison.
The point of my post was to say that it’s stupid to blame MySpace or any technology for this attack. But it’s even dumber to blame the victim.
Have you seen the entire video? I’m still waiting to see it; if you know where I can view please point me in that direction because I want to see it for myself.
If this girl had filed a civil lawsuit all the reich-wing christian repbulicans would have been whining about “lawsuits” and saying they should have just slugged it out like back in the good-ole-days when they used to “rumble”. Personally I think they should have filed a slander suit but I’m an adult. I’m using this to reinforce to my kids that they should watch their mouths and to let them know that if they’re slandered we will file a lawsuit….no fighting to settle it.
I think it’s dumb to blame myspace and youtube too but the victim may bear some responsibility too; we’d know more about that if the myspace posting was made public (if it can be retreived since she deleted it).
Somebody posted this on another website and I think it’s pretty spot on even though I’m a liberal and don’t care for the nasty comments about liberals by the blogger.
http://jaimieandlisa.strangled.net/cms/