BF2S Forums It is Official!!. It is against the law to say mean things.

lowing wrote:

Vilham wrote:

lowing wrote:

Wow, looking back and I can't seem to find anywhere where we were talking about constitutional rights! I thought we were talking about some fucked up kid that got emersed in a bullshit teeniebopper fantasy world called MYSPACE and killed herself over some BULLSHIT boyfriend she never even met in real life.........I had no idea we were discussing the constitution here.

Do tell, which ammendment cover the "right" not get your fuckin' feelings hurt??

I believe it is her right to have forms of communication with others without them being open to harassment, hence the law of harassment... all they did was remove the to someones face part of it.

Your allowed to hurt other peoples feelings, your not allow to harass them. Simple as, its been law for a long time, so I dont see what you are so surprised about.

Oh I see so now we are not talking about constitutional rights anymore, merely what you believe to be morally right. Well that is different.

Correct me if I am wrong, because I do not use MYSPACE but can you add and take away from your list of "friends"? Can you not "block" someone from seeing if you are online. Can you not refuse incoming messages from those you do not wish to talk to? Can you not delete those that are not your friends?

As an account holder she was in control of all of here "friends" and their communications..So if you ask me she exercised her "moral right" to communicate. She CHOSE to do so with idiots such as herself.

I agree that she should have removed this person from her friends list to stop the harassment, she could and should have done that, it still doesn't excuse the other person from harassing in the first place.

Vilham wrote:

I agree that she should have removed this person from her friends list to stop the harassment, she could and should have done that, it still doesn't excuse the other person from harassing in the first place.

And the bill clarified that issue because it added "internet stalking" to other kinds of stalking.  I think the lady still had her day in court right?  (not sure...vacation was good)  I don't think she got a free ride.

ZombieVampire! wrote:

Is there always going to be some level of bullying?  Of course.  And everyone now and then a kid walking home from school will be kidnapped, brutally raped, and killed.  Fact of life.  But there should be a reasonable belief that it won't happen.  That is: the risk should (and can) be statistically insignificant.

I don't think it is possible to regulate the behaviour of children to the extent you think is possible.

ZombieVampire! wrote:

Leading someone to suicide generally goes well beyond stupid immaturity, and when it doesn't there's unlikely to be a custodial sentence.

How would some silly kid know that their actions would induce someone to top themselves? You seem to labour under a delusion that everyone is completely self-aware, thoughtful and calculating.

ZombieVampire! wrote:

But they're two sides of the same coin: you can't combat culture without legislating behaviour, nor can you effectively legislate behaviour without combating culture (a trap many authority figures fall into).

School authorities should regulate it - not the legal system of the nation. I can see all sorts of ridiculous claims and counterclaims of bullying arising from all manner of petulent children if you introduced such a thing.

Last edited by CameronPoe (2008-07-02 11:31:26)

CameronPoe wrote:

How would some silly kid know that their actions would induce someone to top themselves? You seem to labour under a delusion that everyone is completely self-aware, thoughtful and calculating.

Her friend's mother was the one who harassed her, not some other kid.

CameronPoe wrote:

Read back a few posts - I'm not addressing the actual incident at hand here - I'm addressing children bullying. It's kind of a derail.

Whoops!  My mistake.

So according to you the girl was trying to anger this woman? Thats possibly the worst analogy ever. If you hit the hornets nest you are angering them by threatening them.

If anything the roles in your analogy should be reversed, the woman is the one attacking the hornets nest and its not surprise she went to court for it.

Two things strike me in relation to this story:

1. Why would you add some stranger who randomly requested to be your friend? It's akin to taking sweets off a stranger.
2. Facebook has pretty rock-hard privacy settings. Use them.

Last edited by CameronPoe (2008-07-02 11:58:26)

For the most part, I side with lowing on this topic.

What the adults did to this girl was very wrong, but also very legal (well, until the passage of this law in Missouri).

The parents of the girl should have been more attentive to the needs of this unstable child.  If she was known to be depressed, then internet access was probably a bad idea.

Again, I don't think you'll find many people willing to condone what these awful neighbors did, but if we go down this slippery slope of making verbal abuse online illegal....   Well, most of us at this forum will end up in jail.

Yeah, my friend recently told me she never liked me.  My online friend, that is.

lowing wrote:

Vilham wrote:

So according to you the girl was trying to anger this woman? Thats possibly the worst analogy ever. If you hit the hornets nest you are angering them by threatening them.

If anything the roles in your analogy should be reversed, the woman is the one attacking the hornets nest and its not surprise she went to court for it.

You are agreeing with me that this girl could have done a million and one things to prevent this, yet you still wanna blame the other party for it...Not sure I get that.

The internet is not a captive audiance, you can come and go as you please, this girl continue to go to a place where she knew she was going to be ridiculed )a hornets nest)

but you don't like my hornets analogy, then how about this one: Would you expect that a gay guy that dressed the stereotype , could walk into a country bar and NOT get harrassed? What would you tell the gay guy the second or third time he went back to the same bar and got harrassed? Personally, I would tell him to try a different bar more suitable to his life style....but I am sure that doesn't make any sense does it?

how was the girl supposed to know she was being set up, I ask you ? Sure, on the web, that's always a possibility, but with that mindset, you're not going to find many friends anywhere, regardless of the medium. Of course she could have done something to prevent this, but then you might just as well lock yourself into a dark room with no windows, cut all communication lines, and never talk to anybody else ever again.

When you're a teenager, sometimes your feelings will get hurt. That's just part of growing up, and not the issue here. Everyone has to deal with that. What you should not have to deal with, however, is other adults, their daugthers, and employees setting up a conspiracy to cause you emotional distress, intentionally.

And as it looks like, that's also the opinion of the Grand Jury, hence why they issued the idictment. Wether that will stand, or even go to trial, is a different issue, of course.

Today, social networks and IM's are legitimate tools of communication for teenagers, and I think it is only fitting that the already existing law against harassment was updated to inlcude those modern technologies.

Wether these tools are proper means to meet new people, and make friends in general, is a different issue. But they are out there, with millions of people using them, and I think they should enjoy the same protection from all sorts of harassment as the rest of us.

As I said before, I believe the difference between the so-called "virtual" reality and the "real" reality is mostly a constructed one anyway.
Those are real poeple sitting in front of their computers, with real feelings, and real emotions. Why anyone would apply different standards with regard to proper conduct is beyond me.

If I set up the same conspiracy, but instead of Myspace, I used regular written letters, or phone calls, wouldn't you say that's despicable, cruel and mean ? Would you not demand that I face some consequences for my actions ?

B.Schuss wrote:

lowing wrote:

Vilham wrote:

So according to you the girl was trying to anger this woman? Thats possibly the worst analogy ever. If you hit the hornets nest you are angering them by threatening them.

If anything the roles in your analogy should be reversed, the woman is the one attacking the hornets nest and its not surprise she went to court for it.

You are agreeing with me that this girl could have done a million and one things to prevent this, yet you still wanna blame the other party for it...Not sure I get that.

The internet is not a captive audiance, you can come and go as you please, this girl continue to go to a place where she knew she was going to be ridiculed )a hornets nest)

but you don't like my hornets analogy, then how about this one: Would you expect that a gay guy that dressed the stereotype , could walk into a country bar and NOT get harrassed? What would you tell the gay guy the second or third time he went back to the same bar and got harrassed? Personally, I would tell him to try a different bar more suitable to his life style....but I am sure that doesn't make any sense does it?

how was the girl supposed to know she was being set up, I ask you ? Sure, on the web, that's always a possibility, but with that mindset, you're not going to find many friends anywhere, regardless of the medium. Of course she could have done something to prevent this, but then you might just as well lock yourself into a dark room with no windows, cut all communication lines, and never talk to anybody else ever again.

When you're a teenager, sometimes your feelings will get hurt. That's just part of growing up, and not the issue here. Everyone has to deal with that. What you should not have to deal with, however, is other adults, their daugthers, and employees setting up a conspiracy to cause you emotional distress, intentionally.

And as it looks like, that's also the opinion of the Grand Jury, hence why they issued the idictment. Wether that will stand, or even go to trial, is a different issue, of course.

Today, social networks and IM's are legitimate tools of communication for teenagers, and I think it is only fitting that the already existing law against harassment was updated to inlcude those modern technologies.

Wether these tools are proper means to meet new people, and make friends in general, is a different issue. But they are out there, with millions of people using them, and I think they should enjoy the same protection from all sorts of harassment as the rest of us.

As I said before, I believe the difference between the so-called "virtual" reality and the "real" reality is mostly a constructed one anyway.
Those are real poeple sitting in front of their computers, with real feelings, and real emotions. Why anyone would apply different standards with regard to proper conduct is beyond me.

If I set up the same conspiracy, but instead of Myspace, I used regular written letters, or phone calls, wouldn't you say that's despicable, cruel and mean ? Would you not demand that I face some consequences for my actions ?

I think all of this internet fantasy socializing is destructive for teenagers, for a coupla reasons

1. No one wants to be who they really are, so on line they do not have to be. This leads to problems when the REAL you is interacting in REAL life, a teenager has no experience at it. Because they rarley need to be themselves.

2. It is a fantasy, nothing on the internet is real, it is an illusion. Something impressionable teenagers do not need when going through REAL life adolescence. It is hard enough in real life without adding the confusion of your fantasy world into the mix.

3. Teenagers need to LEARN REAL social interaction. My niece gets home from school and will spend HOURS on MYSPace and shit. Oh sure, she can type like a mother fucker, but real life eludes her.


I can promise you this, my sons will not be on MySpace or anything like it.

I was about to write out a large response to your last post lowing but read B.Schuss post and that's pretty much exactly what im trying to say.

Lowing I don't no where you get this idea that people generally use social networking sites to meet random people they don't even know. Most people use them to keep in contact with their friends, I for one don't have anyone on my facebook friends list that I haven't met in real life.

Last edited by Vilham (2008-07-03 09:22:29)