Because I backtraced it!

Hey! Thanks for reading! Just a reminder that I wrote this some years ago, and may have much more complicated feelings about this topic than I did when I wrote it. Happy to elaborate, feel free to reach out to me! 😄

Here's another story of Internet lore, documented pretty well here at Know Your Meme. I've posted before about remixes), and the internet making a story huge, and this one kind of combines the two.

First we have an incredibly foul-mouthed, unusually sexually knowledgeable 11 year-old girl:

Before we continue, lets learn a few things here:

• This girl did wholly dumb, irresponsible things (there's a lot more than this video). She's 11 so you can only blame her so much, but parents: please be involved in your children's lives.

• While I don't think what follows is at all appropriate, she isn't faultless. Frequently in conflicts both sides are guilty; just that one side might be guilty on the scale of three counts of murder and the other "only" involuntary manslaughter.

So the greater trolls at 4Chan see this, and pounce. They google bombed her, file fake police reports, call her mom pretending to be the police, spam her inbox, &etc. &etc. &etc. She's left to a smoldering pile of ashes, when her dad makes her sadness unintentionally hilarious:

Another thing, parents: don't make threats you can't back up. Saying "I'm her father!" doesn't incite fear in kids the way it used to, and don't invoke "calling the Cyber Police!" unless you've actually spoken to them.

Look at the girl in the first video, and ask if that kid would have been threatened by the father in the second video.

I only mention this story because it led to one of my favorite remixes:

It's not as entertaining, of course, when you know the whole story. Gawker has another write-up.

A few other reactions to this story:

• Another reason why computer science is great to study! It's a hell of an investment, since technical knowledge follows you everywhere (don't forget that it's just amazing as hell, too).

• I look forward to when everyone's lives are more public. In the midst of the Christine O'Donnell brou-haha is that she admitted to once dabbling in Witchcraft. Ignoring the fact that if Obama or Pelosi had 'dabbled in voodoo' or warlockery, her supporters would be having a conniption, to me the greater point is that people can start to forgive poor choices or experiments people have participated in because we all do.

I really hate that employers look on Facebook for incriminating photos to "gotcha" with, even if the photos aren't incriminating. Don't confuse me: if your employer finds you snorting a line of coke on your Facebook, I think they're totally right to deny you the interview, since that's completely stupid. I'm talking about the case where they find a picture of you holding a Corona, then go "oh shit he's out of the race because he should know that I'll look on here, and he has a picture with a beer!"

Lame employers, I'll save you the trouble: beer,beer, beer, party, party. Now a better question, did you go to a party? Is it surprising that in 5 years of undergrad, I did? Denying me an interview from 5 photos over 5 years of the ~600 photos of me on Facebook tells me I'm better off without you, because you don't want to talk to or hire people, but some imaginary, outdated standard of a person.

Tying it all together: as more 11 year-olds rant stupidly into a camera, or misspell on their status updates, or have dumb photos up, we'll be better prepared to be reasonable as well.

Need cheering up? Robot Unicorn Attack! Or my favorite this week, the Haskell alphabet!