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:
You can make frosting out of avocados. Alton Brown knows how, and its good.
@Lauralot
I’m sorry. Hugs as well if you want.
So I went and looked up the ED post on TAA, and forget the banana incident, there are far better ways to mock him. There’s MRA-meets-emo poetry.
@lauralot, that’s awful. I’m sending you hugs and good wishes.
After reading the Vancouver Sun article, I wish I could give Amanda Todd’s mom a hug, too. I’m heartbroken for her losing her daughter to those monsters. It said the police were never able to track down the guy who stalked her either, because he covered his tracks well. I hope they keep investigating and bring him to justice for the sake of Amanda and for her loved ones.
I can’t even…. My God, that poor young woman. I’m not a person to cry, but this one had me doing so. I hope Amanda Todd (and the many other children who’ve chosen to end their lives due to bullying) rests in peace, and that somehow we find a way to make her death not in vain. I hope that her family has a large and caring support network capable of seeing them through. They will be tilling the sorrows of stone for some time to come.
As for the asshat, he is beneath contempt and consideration. May he reap what he sows, may he be shunned by everyone he meets and find turned backs in his time of greatest need. May the gods and good fortune forget that he exists. May he find nothing but small discontents in everything he touches, such that his life brims with with discomfort. And may he live a VERY long life in misery,alone.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll look into the peanut butter and avocado ideas, they sound nice. Yes, the co-worker has multiple allergies and I hate people being left out of food shouts at work, hence why I’m working with a vegan recipe and trying to work out the frosting issue.
And thanks for the congrats. 🙂
@valarienorth: some people are just such jerks that I can’t wish them onto any co-workers, let alone supervisors, managers, or business owners. In particular, I would hate for him to have younger, impressionable female colleagues. He sounds like the kind of person who would need to have a major epiphany in order to change his views, and I can’t think of anything that would be major enough. He appears to be only qualified for minimum wage jobs, and lots of people working those jobs have enough problems to deal with, without having him as a co-worker.
@valerienorth
Nobody should go cold and hungry, suffering doesn’t fix suffering. I have seen people who have gone hungry in the past judging the hell out of other people because if they went hungry themselves, then everyone else is just being too weak and they shouldn’t complain, which is exactly the world view the Amazing Asshat espouses.
Thanks, guys. My blood pressure is back where it should be now. I think spending time around here with actual decent human beings is helping restore my faith in mankind’s potential for good.
@lauralot89 special kiwi-hugs for you too. 🙂
@Lauralot
Manboobz, come for the mocking, stay for the reaffirmation of the basic goodness of humanity (and the kitties).
This really shows why fighting against creepshots is so important, because this is what happens when people distribute sexual photos/movies of women, particularly young women, without their consent. It isn’t just “oh, there’s an awkward picture out there” like you had a bad hair day or something–no, this is something that leads to harassment and abuse.
And stay for the recipes too!. I found that avocado icing works well for those who are dairy intolerant, but it contains sugar. Not to be defeated, I found this http://vegannz.blogspot.co.nz/2008/10/cream-cheese.html as a vegan substitute for cream cheese, all I need to do is add in some powdered sugar replacement and it should work.
Thanks to everyone for the baking ideas. 🙂
I personally wish he one day realizes the harm he has caused and spends the rest of his life making up for it.
And that he never gets to see another Youtube kitten video again.
It is a terrible thing to wish, I know, but I wish him self awareness and the capacity for introspection.
This is just… beyond depressing. I’m a mom of two young girls, and I have to admit some of my first thoughts were of their futures. Sometimes I get the impulse to deny them access to the internet so I will feel safer, but I know that wouldn’t work or be a good idea. I like to think that I could do something to prevent them from becoming victims this way but there needs to be a huge shift in society for our kids to be safe from bullying.
I remember when I was in fifth grade a boy in my class told me that he took pictures of me naked from outside my bedroom window and that he would show them to everyone. I was mortified, but I called his bluff and he didn’t actually have pictures. I lived on the 4th floor of an apartment building so it seemed rather unlikely that he could possibly have taken a picture (not close enough for it to be from another building, kids in the early 90s wouldn’t have good enough cameras to make the shot). He did spread rumors around that he had pictures, but thankfully that seemed to backfire on him; everyone thought he was creepy and gross. Maybe only because that is obvious stalker shit, where in this girl’s case it was seen as something she did on purpose.
Which is complete shit. Growing up now, where everyone can take video or pictures with their phones and instantly upload it to the internet where it will exist forever, fuck I have no idea how anyone manages it
valerienorth, have you ever lived on unemployment payments? I have, I survived for two years when I could not get work a decade ago. I would have been homeless if I had been alone, because the payments were about $250 a fortnight. That is way below the poverty line. It doesn’t even begin to cover rent, let alone utilities, food, transport to job interviews (should you be so lucky as to get one), emergencies, etc, etc. Please don’t talk as if welfare payments = living on the fat of the land. The unemployed are put through ridiculous hoops and treated as dirt – and that’s in Australia, which isn’t nearly as bad, from all I’ve heard, as the US.
And nothing would make slimeballs like the unamazing atheist behave better. He’d manage to turn it all around and blame society if he thought HE was a victim. It’s the way scumbags like the MRAs do things. Kiwigirl had a good point, though that he’s not fit to be in any workplace. If I was his boss (ie I had a small business) and found out he was doing these things, I’d sack him, all right.
Blitzgirl from what I read there have been attempts made to find out who the man/woman was but he/she made a strong effort to cover his/her tracks. The Canadian police apparently found the person responsible was in the US. I’m not sure if more will be found out.
I’m not often viscerally sickened by the stuff I see from MRAs (yes, TAA is an MRA if that’s not clear (I haven’t read the comments)) and the like online, but this time I am simply filled with disgust. TAA is an enormous pile of manure bricks with a face. Fuck that chucklefuck right in his hatebeard. Apparently his run-in with SRS, wherein he deliberately triggered a rape victim, led him to engage in just about no introspection whatsoever. I would really despair if I were like he is—apparently incapable of growth or basic human empathy.
What a disgrace.
It’s so hard when you’re that age to realize that there is life after all of that misery. I know being almost 30, that many of my own bullies have unfortunately become my friends on facebook, which will always a very strange to me, and I will never get over it. I am hoping that many of these people who found her getting beaten up will, hopefully, realize what terrible people they were in their younger days and feel guilty about it and want to be better people. hI know that I’m very thankful that Facebook not exist when I was a teenager, and I’m sure many people do. I know the best Thing that I have done was get over all that stuff and move on but Being so young, that you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I do know, that when you’re that age and Mistakes are broadcasted, Is the worst thing in the world. That person needs to, at the very least realize what they did to another human being, and for the most be found out, held accountable for actions, and go to trial. Cyber bullying should not be a Multi year problem for someone so young And innocent. I have a young daughter, and I would hate the person who would ever do that to her. There’s no excuse for something so awful.
I’m pretty sure that TAA has mentioned in at least one of his videos that he was molested as a child. Which makes his contempt for rape victims and victims of harassment all the more sickening.
I’m not the only one who noticed that he’s naked in that photo, am I? Because ew.
Ah, I see Shuyin is still around. How does that quote go, from that game? “Only then I realized that this place, this “Life”, is an abomination, a horrible distortion of the natural order. This “Life”, who mothered Pain, and Fear, and Envy – these twisted children who exist only because we are here to feed them, to nourish them.”?
Wait? Not Shuyin, the millennial old phantom of hatred and pain and unresolved emotional frigidity that has no ability to see beyond his own nose and thus blames the entire world for his own problems and assumes it is a a sad, bad and mad place to live? The phantom forever carried on ether wings of mild abuse/possessive issues, emotional manipulation and obsessive control issues? Well, damn. Sorry. They’re just so similar, you all. So what is this, then? The Amazing Atheist being a bit of a shortsighted git?
Yes! That’s it. One of those weird excuses for Bad Stuff based on the idea that Bad Stuff Happens, so it Has To Happen and we’re all puppets of fate and pawns of chance and life sucks and we should die. I prefer Kerghan, from Arcanum, to the Amazing Atheist. I mean, at least the last guy can make you believe that Life (with a capital L) is all a whole load of bother, TAA just seems… less brilliant. More miserable. More self focused. More myopic. God I love the word myopic.
Enough RPG references, I’ve only ever played one Final Fantasy game (I lied! Sorry!) and the one thing I never understood that well about the villains is that their plans tend to boil down to “Life sucks, blow up the planet”. It did have the happy side effect of inoculating me against other people saying the same thing, though, because no matter which way you slice it, it is still utter stupid.
Amanda’s story is sad. Whether other people died “today” (or any day) does not do anything to alter that fact. I mean, I get the contrived message there -“Overfocus on one story to elicit emotional reactions can be very manipulative and we should not forget that other people suffer too” – but I have a fucking empathy issue and even I can phrase it better that a tusch on some cardboard and a pretend snark.
What’s the deal, yo? It’s like he is trying to say that the availability of stories on someone’s suicide has a any influence on how sad the event is, in itself? A million death’s is a statistic but it is also, and this is the important bit, a million deaths.
—
I have composed myself now.
Phew.
Moving on!
I personally feel that “Amanda’s story illustrates what can happen to young girls when sexualized images of them floating around online” is actually a little off. I mean, yes!, this demonstrates one of the possible consequences of what could happen (and god am I ever screwed if someone breaks into my online file storage), but it really seems to me much more to demonstrate how moronic the idea some dichotomy between saint and skank is. I have had rum and I shall elaborate as follows:
Remember that boyfriend that asked you to do that thing, and then you said no, and then he begged and was all smiles and then you did it and then what followed wasn’t: “Yay! Joypleasure” but “Hahaha you skank, I can’t believe I got you to do that! Hah!”.
Yeah, that.
When the person in Amanda’s story first gets a minor to take off her shirt (1), then takes pictures (2), then stalks her (3), then shares those pictures that he talked her into taking with others (4) and finally, those others then start making fun of her for the pictures he took (5), that’s 5 counts of idiocy and at least 3 broken laws. Probably more.
(although, yeah, those sites David mentions need to go. Like, right pronto)
How the hell do you curb the tendency that in any manner of sexual behavior, women get the blame? If you take your clothes off you’re a slut, if you keep them on you’re a prude, if you get taken pictures of yourself you’re an exhibitionist (And so, !logically, also a sex object so a slut so someone who has sex so someone I can touch inappropriately ha ha ha), if someone else takes pictures of you you are still an exhibitionist and probably also either “Dumb and deserve it” or “Secretly into it any way”.
I mean, I don’t think there is anything wrong with pictures of people. I have made enough half obscure references to the point that I have had some taken. But there is something very, very wrong with the idea that the very act of taking a momentary permanent glimpse of someone else somehow fucking scars them for life! It’s like a permanent personality change through penis… Without the actual penis. It is magic. Huzzah!
I blame stupidity. And an inability to appreciate the beautiful things in life. Whether photographed or not.
Yeah, being homeless or suffering won’t cure TAA of his assholishness. We had one regular troll who is now in the dustbin of MBZ history who claimed he’d been homeless, and he was just about the biggest judgmental glibertarian prick on the planet.
To those who wondered… Yes, TAA’s real identity is known – and it can easily be found.
I’d post it here but I’m not sure if that’s allowed – or if anyone else all ready has named him.
I’m pretty sure his name was creditet when he still was a contributos for ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com – though he was removed from the site quite a long time ago.
(Not sure why, but I’ve heard it had something to do with the content of his submissions. I can’t find anything adressing this in detail – apart from a video he made explaining it. All though I’d like to believe the producers decided to remove him because of his controversial stupidi- I mean, opinions.)
The more I read about the guy, the more disgusted I get.
Allthough I must add, reading his rants is probably one of the easiest ways to score a MRA Bingo.
I can’t talk about Amanda Todd any more right now. I especially can’t talk about her case theoretically or abstractly in any way. Done.
Kiwi girl, I was going to suggest vegan cream cheese – it makes terrific icing. Also, you should be able to put your sugar substitute in the blender and make powdered sugar-sub.
If you want an alternative, the icing my mom always made for red velvet cake started with a white sauce. It’s not as sweet as most icing, and it suits the red velvet cake perfectly. Here’s a recipe: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/09/perfect-cupcake-frosting-and-filling/ . You can use vegan margarine instead of butter and non-dairy milk, of course. The only thing about this icing is that it melts in warm temperatures, so refrigerate it most of the time.
More food! I made the best pizza tonight! Homemade whole wheat crust, minced garlic mixed into a little olive oil, spinach, mozzarella cheese, feta cheese, and artichoke hearts. Lately, I’ve been trying to make as many different kinds of pizzas as I can. I think for my next one, I’m going to see if I can make tempeh taste like Italian sausage (I’ve already made it taste like chorizo, so this should be easy) and make a “sausage” and roasted red bell pepper pie.