You may have read about the heartbreaking story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who recently posted a much-watched YouTube video (posted below) detailing the bullying and harassment she’d endured online and in real life. This past Wednesday, she was found dead, the apparent victim of suicide.
Here, from the Vancouver Sun, is the basic outline of Amanda’s story:
Amanda was 12 years old when she made a mistake that would haunt her until her death three years later.
Her ordeal started while she was fooling around online with friends. She probably didn’t think it was risky behaviour when she lifted her top to flash the person who was flattering her at the other end of the webcam.
Amanda’s moment of indiscretion was not unusual for someone her age: Sexting and using webcams to share sexual photos is a growing trend among children, some so young they are still in grade school.
“The Internet stalker she flashed kept stalking her,” said Carol. “Every time she moved schools he would go undercover and become a Facebook friend. What the guy did was he went online to the kids who went to (the new school) and said that he was going to be a new student — that he was starting school the following week and that he wanted some friends and could they friend him on Facebook.”
“He eventually gathered people’s names and sent Amanda’s video to her new school.”
The video and photos went to teachers, to parents, to Facebook friends, which lead to repeated taunts: “Oh, there’s the porn star.” …
Amanda was the victim of unrelenting blackmail. And the cyberspace stalker was aided by people in Amanda’s real-world life — kids who would share the photos on their cellphones, kids who would gang up to hurl first verbal abuse and then fists at her.
Amanda’s story illustrates what can happen to young girls when sexualized images of them floating around online, whether they’ve put these pictures up themselves in a moment of poor judgement or whether someone has stolen them from password-locked private photo albums, or whether someone has surreptitiously taken an “upskirt” or “down-the-blouse” or some other compromising picture of them in public. This is the sort of damage that things like the Jailbait and Creepshots subreddits can do to young girls. This is why it’s so important that things like these subreddits be shut the fuck down.
Sadly, even after her suicide, Amanda remains the target of bullies and assholes online.
One of these assholes? The MRA and atheist videoblogger and all-around terrible person known to the world as The Amazing Atheist, whom we first met when he had a Reddit meltdown and started spewing misogynistic abuse at his detractors. Now he’s spitting on Amanda’s memory.
Mocking the format of Amanda’s video, in which told her story by holding up sheets of paper to the camera describing the abuse she’s endured, The Amazing Atheist posted this picture to his Tumblr blog earlier today:
I simply can’t comprehend the mind of someone whose response to Amanda’s story is this. Beyond awful.
Here’s Amanda’s video:
What’s going to be really annoying is how people will make this an excuse to finger-wag about the evils of sexting, sex, and the internet instead of bullying.
If you’re already upset/disturbed/angry, do NOT make the mistake of reading his followup posts on tumblr. I don’t think a million kitten videos can make that better.
I hope he steps on a LEGO while barefoot every hour of every day for the rest of his life.
All I can say is, fuck the amazing atheist (he isn’t worthy of being capitalized). I’m an atheist, and that fuck is an embarrassment to the rest of us.
@cloudiah
Too late :/
I almost pity him in a way, he clearly views the world as a terrible place. In this followup post he says:
Which is a very sad view of life, but it’s apparent that he sees himself as one of the “strong” and he doesn’t care about people suffering because they’re “weak”, so I can’t really feel bad for him. It kinda reminds me of nwoslave.
A sexual predator manipulated a 12 year old child into flashing him, then stalked her and eventually leaked the video to everyone in her life. And the authorities still don’t know who this guy is. This story on top of the creepshot defenses that I’ve read in the past few days just fill me with rage.
Thank you David for promising to delete any victim blaming trolls in this thread. I just can’t stomach their bile right now.
I do wish the discourse around bullying was better, no one (well, aside from lefty/social justice-y blogs) seems to want to talk about the societal structures that lead to this happening. However, this isn’t a legit criticism of that, this is just assholish.
popcornculturejunkie, I agree. I’m a better person as an atheist, but that doesn’t hold true for all of ’em, alas.
But he’s not strong at all. He’s so insecure that the fact that the media is paying attention to a young girl who died as a result of bullying rather than him has set him off into a flurry of desperate attempts to prove that he’s more worthy than she was. This is not the way that a person who’s secure in their own strength and place in the world behaves. It’s a sign of weakness and insecurity that goes right down to the bone.
What Cassandra said.
Er… Cassandrasays said?
wow… just
wow
Some people are just something else. I would say that the worst part is how people will say that suicide was the easy way out, or that people will say she deserved it. That’s not true though
the worst thing is that there is a person, decades worth of person who we’ve lost
forever
all because of some loathsome waste of space ruined her life
it’s not a broken phone, you can’t go to the shops and get a new Amanda Todd
we lost something we’re literally never going to have back
ever
there were people who loved her and there were people whose lives she made better
and there were people she’d never met who are crying about her right now because now there’s no chance they ever will
the worst thing is this happened
this actually happened
shit
That man is horrible. To think someone defriended me for pointing what an awful person he is.
Repulsive. It’s very sad to see how basic and fundamental some people’s immaturity is.
TTA is confusing being a callous assbag with strength. I wonder if he’s this much of a knob in person.
@Sgt. Grumbles
That he shoved anything anywhere is completely irrelevant. He is a person and he deserves more respect than that. I really don’t like defending him but I can’t just pick and choose who deserves protection.
Sgt. Grumbles, I don’t really think what TAA does with produce on his own time is germane, but I am trying to work out the logistics as to how he could do that with his already wedged so firmly up his ass.
oh my god, this is just horrible…. awful awful awful, and the police didn’t do anything? they didn’t defend they people who need it most? god, what I would give to hug her and tell her she did nothing wrong and that I love her.
I don’t understand how people can be so cruel for no reason. The poor girl didn’t even get to grow up. Are law enforcement looking for the guy who stalked her?
I’m just utterly amazed by some peoples comments.
I don’t know why I bothered, but I have been reading comments on Google+ & Facebook and am just speechless (even took the time to read some of taa’s responses)
How people can make jokes about this is beyond me.
Did she make mistakes? Sure, but can someone please point out a human who hasn’t? I’d hate to think my past mistakes should stay with me for years to come and be reminded of them daily.
Many are also quite critical of a 12 year old not knowing better when it comes to flashing someone. Not to take away anything from kids that age, but most don’t have an understanding of what can happen.
But what is more troublesome are those on Google+ & Facebook, quite openly with their full names and pictures available for all to see, posting said picture of Amanda. Do these same sickos who say Amanda should have known better, not realize they are distributing child porn?
Someone on Google+ posted a link to a Yahoo Answers question asking where they can find the picture. People were more then willing to provide a link.
I (along with many others I’m sure) reported the page and at least that is down.
Yes there is. It is NOT BEING A FUCKING ASSHOLE.
Especially the “there’s video evidence and it was leaked” part. If you approve of potentially embarrassing sexual material being leaked on the internet as a way to hurt/embarrass people who you don’t like, you are supporting a culture in which it’s OK to leak sexual material onto the internet in order to hurt and embarrass people. That culture is a big part of why Amanda Todd killed herself.
Stop for a moment and think about what you’re doing. When you encourage stuff like this, it isn’t just the people who you dislike who get hurt.
I’m pretty convinced that US culture particularly hates teenage girls. Make the kind of mistakes common to all people but really common with people your age, and one that only hurts yourself? You’re a pariah and deserve everything you get.
I made the mistake of reading his tumblr blog, too. I don’t even have any words for how depressing it was.
I made the mistake of looking at his tumblr, and he’s doubling down on his bullshit and calling her “privileged.”
What a fuckstick.
Anyone got any kitty videos?
I think teenage girls hate themselves, because Big Complex Cultural Reasons, and they take it out on each other.
Like, we were encouraged to be really critical of ourselves and others, and other girls doing well made us look bad. And being sexy but not too sexy is particularly evident in high school.
That is pretty much what children are told by many people just like him.
Not that it gets better, no, that it never will be anything but what it is.
@hellkell
I have slow-motion doggies, does that help?