Am I the only one who is tired of hearing about that dead girl?

You know, the one who was stupid enough to share a topless pic of herself when she was twelve (!) with some asshole who then used said pics to intimidate her, blackmail her, etc.  And then she offed herself.

Don’t get me wrong; the guy was a nasty piece of work, and blackmail and extortion should be punished.  Not sure that I think calling it ‘cyber-bullying’ clarifies anything; if anything, it places other forms of ‘cyber-bullying’, like teens in school saying nasty things about each other online or whatever, on the same level as this blackmail and intimidation.

And where were her parents?  Everyone’s wringing their hands about the girl – but where were the people most responsible for her well-being, in all of this?  Why didn’t she get help and the love she needed from them?

Let’s all remember, BTW, that all this happened because she was stupid enough to show the guy her boobs.  If she hadn’t done that, none of the subsequent blackmail and intimidation would have been possible.  But I note that no-one is bringing that up, are they…

BTW, back to the ‘bullying’ she said she was a victim of: some of what she suffered at the hands of others was well-deserved, and not really ‘bullying’ IMO; for instance, from the linked piece above:

After moving to a different city and school,  another instance of bullying  occurred after she started a romantic relationship  with an older man who had a girlfriend.

Once that relationship soured, she was  confronted and beaten up by the man’s girlfriend. She was hit in front of a  crowd of screaming people who encouraged her to be left in a ditch.

Ah, that’s not ‘bullying’; that’s just suffering your just deserts for getting involved with someone who already had someone, and it’s no wonder that other female was angry and even got violent; don’t blame her, one bit.  But I hardly think that constitutes ‘bullying’.  Someone sensibly commented about that term ‘bullying’ being bandied about so freely these days:

The term “bully” need to be redefined.  What this man did was not bullying – it  was harassment, stalking any one of several criminal acts.  What her peers at  school did was not bullying – it was assault.  The word bully seems to apply to  anyone from a mild insult (like four-eyes for someone wearing glasses) to full  blown assault occasioning grievous body harm.

Just so; it is too freely used in both directions; it’s too fuzzy and nebulous; too much of a catch-all phrase – like ‘sexual assault’ and ‘sexual harassment’, for that matter; terms that today are similarly nebulous and ill-defined…

Anyway, shame about this girl who at twelve was stupid enough to show her boobs to some much older guy, and ended up harassed and intimidated as a result that she felt the only way out of her pain was to off herself.  She should never have shown him her boobs; everything else that ensued would never have occurred at all.

THAT’S the lesson which society should take away from all this, as well as that parents should be more aware of what their kids are doing online, and should be there for their children, so they don’t feel alone in whatever struggles they’re going through.

That’s all.

Now shut up, grandstanding media and politicians, the world over, about it.

Parents, keep your girls off of social media, chat rooms, and teach them not to take nekkid self-shots and share them.

And not to steal another girl’s boyfriend.  And to reach out to you for help, if someone is harassing them.

Problem solved.