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:
Did someone say that it justifies his behavior? My theory is that he’s being petty because people didn’t tell him what a special snowflake he was.
You’re right, you didn’t say that, I apologize.
I do get the feeling from him that he thinks that it justifies his behavior, though.
He has that same kinda attitude when it comes to rape (“I got raped as a child, so I’m allowed to tell you to go get raped”) too.
Yeah, if you can’t distinguish the scope of your misfortune from that of a child who has a stalker after her and all of her peers turning against her and does not have any means of escape and eventually killed herself you are one self-centered prick.
The Amazing Atheist sounds like an Amazing A-Hole.
So I’ve been deleting a lot of comments from new people trying to post here, mostly because they’re defending TAA and his “argument” here, and I don’t want that sort of assholery stinking up this thread. This isn’t the typical misogynist shit we deal with here; a young girl took her life, and it’s disrespectful at the very least.
The weirdest part of the “argument” being made by many of the deleted commenters (and by TAA) is that by paying attention to Amanda Todd we are somehow distracting people from other victims of bullying. Which is beyond ridiculous: Amanda’s story is bringing *more* attention to the issue of bullying. Amanda was incredibly courageous to make the video that brought attention to the issue, and that led to a new wave of attacks on her. She wasn’t trying to bring attention to herself; she was trying to help other victims of bullying and sexual shaming.
Also, let’s cool it with the banana references. The issue here is what TAA is saying, not what he does in his private life. I’m going to go back and delete references to that.
I can’t stand the Agonizing Asswipe, but I can’t support what happened to him either. No one should have to go through being manipulated into doing something against their better judgement and then have it spread out for public ridicule. Two wrongs don’t make a right, even if he makes pond scum look evolved by comparison.
However, I also have trouble mustering much sympathy for the Abrasive Asshole. As an agnostic/borderline atheist, I hate that he goes out of his way to embody and reinforce negative stereotypes about atheists. Non-atheists look at jeks like him and think all atheists are rude, arrogant, mysogonistic attention whoring douchebags.
He’s not an asshole because he’s an atheist, he’s an asshole because he’s an asshole. I imagine mainstream Christians must feel the same way about Fred Phelps.
That’s a bloody good summary, Hesster.
Damn. The scope and magnitude of the bullying that this poor girl had to deal with just breaks my heart. NO child should be subjected to this and I hope she’s found the peace that she never had in her short life. And her parents… there are just no words.
Also, while I think that what happened to TAA is wrong, in regard to his video, I also can’t muster much other than an intellectual “yeah, doing that shit isn’t okay, even if I think the person on the receiving end is a complete waste of human life.” As he’s slut shaming and continuing to bully a dead child, I find it really hard to have much sympathy for the guy. I know, I’m an awful person for saying that, but…
However, I also think that it’s a somewhat different situation than what happened to Amanda Todd. She was very young when her indiscretion happened. Young enough that she likely didn’t have the maturity to think about what may happen or the consequences that it may bring. It was also child pornography, which adds another layer of ick. And a hell of a lot more condemnation for the asshole who did this to her. I hope he’s found, prosecuted and permanently removed from society, so he can’t victimize any more children.
Having dealt with the inevitable slut shaming that happened when I was all but forced to tell my friends and family that I was a nude and fetish model, I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to deal with. I was an adult, with more wisdom and maturity to deal with this kind of thing. Remembering how bad it was for me and the understanding that it was incredibly worse for her makes my heart break even more. Nobody deserves to go through what she had to, especially not a young girl.
And the memory of my own slut shaming is all that’s allowing me to feel any kind of compassion in regard to TAA’s victimization. He’s a douchebaggy asshole, but he still doesn’t deserve to have something like that happen to him, because it’s wrong and it fucking sucks to have something like that happen to you.
FWIW, I actually don’t think TAA is irredeemable. I think he’s an idiot, and weirdly immature in a lot of ways, and then his semi-fame allows him to surround himself with people who reinforce his bullshit. And yes, this is almost certainly related to the somewhat analogous situation that he was in a while back.
“So I’ve been deleting a lot of comments from new people trying to post here, mostly because they’re defending TAA and his “argument” here, and I don’t want that sort of assholery stinking up this thread.”
So in other words “I dont like other opinions that dont agree with my own, so i delete comments so i dont get uncomfortable”
You’re cool LOL
When he’s sneering at, blaming, a child for what was done to her – a child who has since suicided because of that – he’s worse than an idiot. Total empathy fail doesn’t begin to describe it. This bloke is viciously misogynistic. Maybe not irredeemable, but immature idiot just doesn’t cover it.
The worst thing for me is visualizing the stalker who did it all. He manipulated a 12-year-old child into flashing her child chest, then destroyed her life with it. I’d hope that he’d feel sorrow after knowing that her life was over because of his actions, but I know he’s reveling in it. He’s glad he killed a little girl. This is what stalkers/creeps/rapists/wannabes do.
This hurts in so many ways because this person is sick and will do more harm. He will make the world worse in any way he can.
And there are so many more just like him.
This piece of shit is happy that this little child is dead.
And I feel sick because there’s just no way for me to fight them. Where is the sign-up sheet for Fighting Against Human Turds?
Sorry. I apologize for this. But it makes me sick to know that turds like this get to be happy while children live in misery.
Yeah, I’m going to to go ahead and disagree about TAA being redeemable. I don’t know how you come back from publicly and loudly denigrating a child who killed themselves because of people’s cruelty.
TAA saying sorry isn’t gonna cut it. Maaaaaybe shutting the fuck up forever and ever and leaving the internet would be a good start.
Nothing to apologise for from where I’m reading, Freitag. Cyber hugs if they’d be welcome.
@Frietag: I’d venture to say that it’s worse. I don’t think he cares one way or another that his actions pushed that little girl to suicide. To him, he was nothing more than a piece of meat that he could manipulate for his own sick pleasure. And when he didn’t get his way, he destroyed her, like he was swatting at a mosquito. To him, she was nothing and that’s more disgusting and disturbing. If he were happy about her death, that would require him to A. feel emotion for her and B. regard her as a human being. I don’t think he can do that, if he could systematically destroy another human being, especially a child, the way he did.
People like this terrify me. Because I know that there’s not a shred of human compassion, empathy or feeling and that they’re unable to bond with the rest of the human race, on even a superficial level. They’re capable of some of the worst atrocities known to human kind and knowing that there are people like this out there is incredibly frightening.
Is there an official name for the faulty argument/self justification that goes “There is no point dealing with this bad thing, because there are much worse things happening out there. And since I can’t fix the much worse things I won’t do anything at all except ridicule the people who try”? (Other than just self-justification)
Because that seems to be what his ‘argument’ consists of.
Most of the time I let virtually all comments through. In this thread, I’m deleting comments that are an insult to the memory of a girl who killed herself because of bullying and sexual shaming.
Thank you for keeping this thread free of that sort of bullshit, David.
To any thankfully moderated posters looking to defend TAA: You should be ashamed of yourselves. Even if you believe the idiocy that caring about a girl who was harassed and bullied until she took her own life is somehow detracting from others who are victims of bullying, you do not counter that by mocking the memory of a dead girl. You just don’t.
Oh look, a troll with reading comprehension fail who thinks mocking this poor girl is “opinion”. Colour me surprised.
Well, if the universe is at all just TAA will contract a horrific but not life-threatening case of giardiasis and spend a full two weeks contemplating the core and summation of his self–his asshole.
Given how fond of his supporters are of lapping up the bullshit he spews, we could expect to see a delightful plague.
Giardia is my favorite unicellular parasite for many reasons, but most importantly it looks like a cute, smiley owl face.
Oh un-self-aware atheists. They remind me so much of fundamentalist Christians who claim to hate Muslim extremists but then align themselves with their views 99% of the time (and, occasionally – like Pat Robertson – slip up and admit they wish they could implement some of the laws like they’ve got in Saudi Arabia). This sad sack might as well be protesting a celebrity funeral alongside the Westboro Baptist Church. We get it. You want attention. But please, go get a job and a clue.
If you’re standing on the street having a conversation with your friends, and some asshole wanders up and starts spouting offensive bullshit, no one would blame you for either moving away or telling him to leave. So I don’t get why so many people seem to think that moderating comments on the Internet is some terrible offense. It’s the same damn thing.
I don’t know if you bothered to read upthread, but this post is full of bullying survivors pouring their hearts out. And you’re whining about the fact that they don’t have to hear more of the crap that was upsetting them about this story in the first place? Nice priorities.
@emilygoddess – he’ll be whining about Freedom of Speech blahblahblah next, I’d bet. Which doesn’t apply to blogs anyway. I always like the way the Hoyden About Town writers put it:
“Our blog, our discretion. Your right to free speech is protected by your freedom to set up your own blog, just like us. Playful shenanigans are encouraged, but obnoxious or vexatious shenanigans will be squelched.”
@kim
I don’t know if you’re seriously asking or if it’s just a rhetorical question, but this is pretty much the Perfectionist Fallacy, assuming that if there isn’t a perfect solution to something then there is no point in even trying.
The definition of a perfect solution can be expanded to accommodate any and all problems that this solution would need to fix, so that it remains out of reach no matter what.