15 year old girl kills herself after persistent bullying

[kahyonhowanen]

girl suicides because she was being bullied for posting up videos of herself on the internet which people shared around her... it's her own fault.

Her own fault for killing herself, can't take the heat, get out of the nuclear reactor.

Ike: You'll get no sympathy for me.

And for those thinking: OMG, you're heartless! I went through bullying myself, I rose above it, conquered it.

Please, do tell me about how you went through bullying, because I sincerely doubt that whatever you went through can even compare to what this girl went through. I hope someone rapes/beats/mugs you and when you report it to the police they just say "Well it's your own fault for getting raped/beat/mugged, can't take the heat, go kill yourself!"

Tell me, by your logic, was it the Jews fault for being in Germany during the Holocaust? Was it the fault of the workers who died in 911 for working in the twin towers? Was it the fault of slaves who suffered and died in horrible working conditions for being African? Was it the fault of people who lived in poverty during the industrial age who starved and worked themselves to the bone for not being born rich?

 

[The Material Sheep]

girl suicides because she was being bullied for posting up videos of herself on the internet which people shared around her... it's her own fault.

Her own fault for killing herself, can't take the heat, get out of the nuclear reactor.

Ike: You'll get no sympathy for me.

And for those thinking: OMG, you're heartless! I went through bullying myself, I rose above it, conquered it.

Please, do tell me about how you went through bullying, because I sincerely doubt that whatever you went through can even compare to what this girl went through. I hope someone rapes/beats/mugs you and when you report it to the police they just say "Well it's your own fault for getting raped/beat/mugged, can't take the heat, go kill yourself!"

Tell me, by your logic, was it the Jews fault for being in Germany during the Holocaust? Was it the fault of the workers who died in 911 for working in the twin towers? Was it the fault of slaves who suffered and died in horrible working conditions for being African? Was it the fault of people who lived in poverty during the industrial age who starved and worked themselves to the bone for not being born rich?

I don't agree with either of your posts because you characterize the events as if they are clear cut in favor of your way of thinking, which they aren't. Your both just being intellectually dishonest with how pour your arguments are, and should probably think about what your writing next time before going into knee jerk emotional responses.

 

[theriddlen]

I see mistakes everywhere, from parenting all the way to the way the teachers had reacted to the situation. Everything that happened could and should have been easily avoided, with just a bit of caring, love, and intelligent approach. Hell, I could personally help if I was there...
And yes, that situation in a large part was her own fault, but it's her environment that made her suicidal. No matter how much bad you've done in your life, no matter how much you've fucked up, you still need someone to be with you, to lend you a helping hand, to care about you. Everyone deserves a second, or even a third or fourth chance. After all, we're just human beings, making mistakes is our damned nature.

Fuck you, world. Fuck. You.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I say RIP because of the nice person I am, but I will say this; she posted the pictures and videos of her nude self for her own accord. Though I am not saying it is her fault, and that she send the pictures herself.

Though I keep my peace with that I hope she is at peace herself, but I just wanted to point my side of the arguement. I in no means think it was right for her to kill herself, and it's a tragedy that she did.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

This incident is do sad. I think that parents need to buck up and learn about the online world. This happens party due to parents not knowing how to teach their children about the internet and its danger.

Its not like there are any more bullies on the planet due to the internet existing, bullies just have a bigger reach nowadays. Schools already fail at dealing with bullying in real life, cyberbullying isn't that different of a beast when you think about it. The don't talk to strangers rule should work for the internet as well. The parents need to talk to their kids about what kinds of people there are in the world instead of having them live in a bubble of comfort.

You'd never hear of a 12 year old girl willingly exposing herself to random strangers before the internet was mainstream, why now? There's a lack of education when it comes to the internet. It seems to be do it yourself process, but I can't readily recommend that 12 year olds should have free reign. Parenting controls on the internet don't work either. The internet has to be taught, not blocked in my opinion. But for the most part parents know how to use the internet without knowledge of its culture and its dangers.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I don't want to be "that guy" but according to the article she was posting explicit videos and photos of herself online and got upset when some guy shared them with "everyone". Something tells me alot this could of been avoided if she wasn't an attention whore and kept her clothes on.

So it's her fault that people went out of there way to bully, torment and beat her so much she killed herself?

You have a serious problem with your view point, Jesus.

Obviously it's not anyone's fault entirely, but unless she was incredibly naive, she must have known she was posting those videos for some form of attention, either good or bad. It's a failure on the part of her family, herself, the school, and bullying individuals involved - it can't just be attributed to the bullies.

Right, but it doesn't say she was posting them online. The article says she flashed one person on a whim, if that person chose to circulate it (or something else she had sent them in confidence) she can't be held accountable. If you send something to your partner (prospective or otherwise) there's an expectation of privacy, and - y'know; not having it used against you.

Someone chose to circulate the image, maliciously. It existing isn't an excuse for that behaviour, nor a reason for what she did.

Lemme see if I can put what @White Lightning said into better words.

You'd never see a 12 year old girl expose herself to someone willingly in real life. It begs the question, "why did she think it would be ok to do it to someone online?" Again, not saying it was her fault, but there is a lack of education about internet safety that is prevalent these days. She didn't know that her connecting to the internet means that someone can connect to her. Things you do on the internet don't just go away. Someone should have taught her that. Her parents are most likely not tech savvy people and her schools clearly didn't teach their students about internet safety. Bullying causing suicide is unfortunately nothing new, so cyberbullying is by no means any worse. Both result in the death of someone who is loved by their family and friends.

What we should be doing as a society is realize that cyberbullying is not some rampant new trend. It's here to stay. We have to collectively realize that cyberbullying is the new normal bullying so that we can create effective methods of prevention and counselling. A lot of parents and education officials are scared of the internet because they don't understand it. We need to teach people that the internet has its own cultures.

Every time I see news media, whether it be mainstrean like CNN or online news like the Young Turks or RT, the more I realize that they have no idea about the internet at all. Every time they show a story that they label as cyberbullying, 7 times out of its 10, its trolling. Like with Anita Sarkeesian and Jessi Slaughter.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Its not like there are any more bullies on the planet due to the internet existing, bullies just have a bigger reach nowadays. Schools already fail at dealing with bullying in real life, cyberbullying isn't that different of a beast when you think about it.

Yes and no. There are people who feel a lot more comfortable unleashing their inner asshole on the internet because of the haze of anonymity and freedom from consequence it provides. Go read your average set of YouTube comments, and try to remember the last time you heard people talking like that openly. It doesn't happen.

The internet era has also given rise to the "agitator", the individual who provokes upset for "the lulz". I didn't really see that, when I was a kid. Agitating personalities tended to eventually lose their enthusiasm for it after perpetual beatings.

The flip side of "cyber-bullying" is that you can turn it off and walk away from it more easily than you can walk away from someone standing in your face, but in my experience people aren't actually very good at that. If they know someone is smack talking them, they really want to know what's being said. It's like an itch they can't stop scratching.

However...I find the situation is too clear cut.

I actually suspect it's nowhere near as clear cut as it has been presented. We are all of us editorialists when it comes to our own lives, and there's plenty of reason to suspect that her version of events is biased and/or exaggerated. She's a teenage girl, for heavens sake, and obviously an emotional one. These are not usually the best sources of dry, impartial information.

That bullying took place, though, is easily verifiable. That she's dead after two suicide attempts is easily verifiable. That she made a plaintive, desperate grasp for validation/attention with that video is verifiable. That's really all I need to feel sick and sad about it.

Every time I see news media, whether it be mainstrean like CNN or online news like the Young Turks or RT, the more I realize that they have no idea about the internet at all. Every time they show a story that they label as cyberbullying, 7 times out of its 10, its trolling. Like with Anita Sarkeesian and Jessi Slaughter.

Yeah, trolling. Trolling used to be pretty mundane and harmless 10, 15 years ago though. I do think we need a different term. "Cyber Bullying" does sound a little twee.

As interesting or cool as internet mob justice can be on the few occasions when someone truly odious gets their comeuppance via it, more often than not it seems terrifyingly amoral if not outrageously cruel. I'm not sure I want to just shrug and say "trolls being trolls, man!" and accept that nothing can ever possibly be done about it. I don't know what's to be done about it, mind you...the internet is a grey area, and we've become used to certain freedoms of expression there that I'm hesitant to start cutting up to protect people from idiots, but neither am I comfortable with the utter freedom of consequence sociopaths can enjoy in this environment. Because their activities are not always free of consequences.

 

[Legion]

She is kind of hot.
Anyone who commits suicide is stupid. There is never a reason to.

There's never a reason for a lot of things. Posting on an internet forum calling a girl who committed suicide stupid is one of them.

There are plenty of reasons for suicide. I'd imagine the most obvious would be losing the will to live. In most peoples cases they have somebody who can help them if they need it. In hers it seems like she was failed by a lot of people including her teachers and family.

 

[The Great JT]

This is why I say we should send bullies to a work camp. Keep those little shits far away from good kids.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Its not like there are any more bullies on the planet due to the internet existing, bullies just have a bigger reach nowadays. Schools already fail at dealing with bullying in real life, cyberbullying isn't that different of a beast when you think about it.

Yes and no. There are people who feel a lot more comfortable unleashing their inner asshole on the internet because of the haze of anonymity and freedom from consequence it provides. Go read your average set of YouTube comments, and try to remember the last time you heard people talking like that openly. It doesn't happen.

The internet era has also given rise to the "agitator", the individual who provoke upset for "the lulz". I didn't really see that, when I was a kid. Agitating personalities tended to eventually lose their enthusiasm for it after perpetual beatings.

The flip side of "cyber-bullying" is that you can turn it off and walk away from it more easily than you can walk away from someone standing in your face, but in my experience people aren't actually very good at that. If they know someone is smack talking them, they really want to know what's being said. It's like an itch they can't stop scratching.

However...I find the situation is too clear cut.

I actually suspect it's nowhere near as clear cut as it has been presented. We are all of us editorialists when it comes to our own lives, and there's plenty of reason to suspect that her version of events is biased and/or exaggerated. She's a teenage girl, for heavens sake, and obviously an emotional one. These are not usually the best sources of dry, impartial information.

That bullying took place, though, is easily verifiable. That she's dead after two suicide attempts is easily verifiable. That she made a plaintive, desperate grasp for validation/attention with that video is verifiable. That's really all I need to feel sick and sad about it.

Of course. It's all sad in that watching the aftermath of a massive car crash is sad. The outcome is easy to figure out and sympathize with, but the actual blame and machinations that brought it about are usually spread around.

 

[The Material Sheep]

She is kind of hot.
Anyone who commits suicide is stupid. There is never a reason to.

There's never a reason for a lot of things. Posting on an internet forum calling a girl who committed suicide stupid is one of them.

There are plenty of reasons for suicide. I'd imagine the most obvious would be losing the will to live. In most peoples cases they have somebody who can help them if they need it. In hers it seems like she was failed by a lot of people including her teachers and family.

To be fair... yes committing suicide in this situation is "stupid" for lack of a better word. Though she seemingly wasn't in here right mind, so doing stupid things when your not in your right mind is often considered understandable.

Now I feel he was more trying to insult her then anything else which is uncalled for, but at the same time she wasn't being intelligent or rational when she was making her choice. She was being emotional and short sighted.

 

[Darthbawls77]

Ive been bullied alot in my younger years and sadly yes you have to thicken you skin sometimes or just come to the conclusion that these bullies opinions dont matter in the short or long run. Its sad to see a young life cut short but the world is a very testing place and if you cant survive young school bullying then theres no way to survive the real world. Everyone should help to stop and prevent bullying but ultimatly its the individuals responsibility to handle the situation.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Of course. It's all sad in that watching the aftermath of a massive car crash is sad. The outcome is easy to figure out and sympathize with, but the actual blame and machinations that brought it about are usually spread around.

I just don't feel a particular need to pedantically determine what mathematical percentage of blame everyone deserves. Does Amanda deserve blame, for poor decisions and an ultimately terrible decision to take her own life? Certainly, but she's dead now, so there's not a lot of lessons that are going to be learned there. Does the school system deserve blame for demonstrating an ongoing inability to deal with this kind of bullshit constructively? Yep. Do the police deserve blame for being utterly impotent? Yep. Do her parents deserve blame for not getting out in front of this sooner, and recognizing how badly off the rails their daughter's life had gone? Yep. Do the bullies themselves deserve blame for indulging their nasty little impulses and pushing someone until they broke? Yep.

It does seem like the primary reason anyone is concerned with breaking down the blame is to make sure we don't place all of it on the bullies, and I'm just not entirely sure why we're worried about that, since I don't think anyone is seriously calling for them to be jailed or anything. How much blame for someone's death would be happy carry around? 30%? 40%? At 40% would you be like "yeah that's alright, I guess", but at 50% you start to question your decisions? She's dead, they helped. Her brain chemistry provided the clinical depression and anxiety. Her parents, the police, and the school provided the circumstances. Her bullies provided the motive and the catalyst. I hope they're very proud of their contribution.

Ive been bullied alot in my younger years and sadly yes you have to thicken you skin sometimes or just come to the conclusion that these bullies opinions dont matter in the short or long run.

I tried to touch on this in the OP, and it's been discussed elsewhere in the thread. Hoping people have a thicker skin, or thinking people should be less depressed because you weren't depressed in similar circumstances, or wanting people with anxiety disorders to calm down because it's silly, or wanting people who have behavioral disorders to stop acting weird...it's all kind of pointless. On a forum where 50% of the people (hilariously) like to self-diagnose with Aspergers in an attempt to explain their generalized personality issues, I'd think this would be more evident.

 

[Moderated]

Anyone who chooses cessation of existence for any reason is stupid.

 

[Legion]

[

To be fair... yes committing suicide in this situation is "stupid" for lack of a better word. Though she seemingly wasn't in here right mind, so doing stupid things when your not in your right mind is often considered understandable.

Now I feel he was more trying to insult her then anything else which is uncalled for, but at the same time she wasn't being intelligent or rational when she was making her choice. She was being emotional and short sighted.

That depends on what you call rational. The desire to survive is an instinctive one, not a rational one by the most part. We are built to want to live, and that is why we are built to reproduce in order to "survive" by other means.

To say that all people who want to end their life are irrational is incredibly naive. A man dying of cancer with no chance of recovering chooses to end their life rather than waste away in agony. They are going to die soon and they know it, they are choosing to bring that time slightly closer in order to spare themselves pain.

I'd say that's rational.


Granted in her case it doesn't seem that she was in a similar situation, not from what we can tell. At the same time though, she seems to have been failed on so many levels by the people around her that it's sickening. We do not know what was going on in her mind, or all of the details.

Anyone who chooses cessation of existence for any reason is stupid.

Thank you Dr House, for your armchair wisdom.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Sure, kids bully because they don't know how much it hurts the other person.

They sure do! Whoever says the "bully doesn't know what their doing" or "how much it hurts" is missing quite a big thing about bullies.

OT: I can't say this affects me at all. I was bullied, but my reaction was to it was to fight them until they left me alone. It worked. Hell, I earned the whole lot's respect by never backing down. Everyone's different though, and it seems I'm a minority. Or something. But, to me, some stranger killing themselves, even if they're 15, means nothing to me. As for "she was 12, any stupid thing she did is excusable because 12 year old are stupid!" I say not really, no. Maybe some people are that stupid at that age, but not all. For example, worst I did was make crude jokes at really bad times.
Also: be glad you aren't a Japanese kid being bullied now. Those kids are the devil.
And the school is on their side.

 

[Edl01]

Sorry to say this but I feel this case should of not gotten media attention...at all, that goes for this and nearly every other teen suicide story. After all if a teen is contemplating suicide and they read this story what are they going to think? Likely that if they commit suicide they will likely not just get lots of attention, but also thousands of people feeling sympathy for them, the people who wronged them being looked down upon and punished and their deaths could even end up being exploited to be used on some kind of "anti-bullying cause", this is basically unintentionally encouraging people to commit suicide!

My sympathies go out to the family for losing their daughter.
My finger goes up to the media for giving so much attention to these stories.

 

[Yopaz]

Sure, kids bully because they don't know how much it hurts the other person.

They sure do! Whoever says the "bully doesn't know what their doing" or "how much it hurts" is missing quite a big thing about bullies.

OT: I can't say this affects me at all. I was bullied, but my reaction was to it was to fight them until they left me alone. It worked. Hell, I earned the whole lot's respect by never backing down. Everyone's different though, and it seems I'm a minority. Or something. But, to me, some stranger killing themselves, even if they're 15, means nothing to me. As for "she was 12, any stupid thing she did is excusable because 12 year old are stupid!" I say not really, no. Maybe some people are that stupid at that age, but not all. For example, worst I did was make crude jokes at really bad times.
Also: be glad you aren't a Japanese kid being bullied now. Those kids are the devil.
And the school is on their side.

Seriously, could you have quoted me any more out of context? Except for that small post pretty much all I have said in this thread has been me expressing my disgust for all of this. When I said they don't know how much it hurts that's simply because no-one knows how much it hurts because it's individual.