Swhet Productions

Again, as this touches on a controversial topic, like last time, I would like to preface everything I'm about to say with this: Bullying is bad. I do not believe in bullying. It is something we should pay attention to and try to stop. I also do not believe suicide is the correct soluction to anything, and have extreme respect for the dead. That being said, I do have a couple things to say about the recent Amanda Todd incident.

Here's the infamous video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7afkypUsc

I could talk about this for hours, so I will try and keep this short and sweet.

First, I will quickly address the main two reasons why Amanda was bullied:

She would spend her days on chat rooms with random people who said she was "Stunning, beautiful, perfect, ect." She was then coaxed into flashing some guy she didn't know.

She had sex with a girl's boyfriend.

Many will argue that it's a self-esteem issue, as to why she flashed the guy when she was 12 years old. But really, basically at that point, she was being bullied for being too attractive. She willingly went on the internet naked. And besides that, I have seen 2 photos of her: One that looks like a normal photo taken by a family member, and another of her in her underwear taking an LG picture. Where did that come from? Even after the incident of the guy contacting her and saying she had to put a show on for him(which is never directly denied in the video) or he would post the picture of her, she could have told him to go ahead and it would be him who gets in trouble. I think if you own something in that situation, people wouldn't really care and would forget about it quite quickly. She then openly admits to self-inflicted pain, and turning to drugs and alcohol. She must have been abusing those substances with someone. She doesn't define what drugs she was using though. But even still, her situation seemed pretty... Non-important at that point. Don't get me wrong, that man is an asshole and deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, but she managed to get by that before the other thing pushed her over the edge.

She has sex with someone else's boyfriend.

I don't think much else needs to be said here. She "hooked-up" with him. He did not rape her, it was a fully concented act from both parties. If you do that, expect to get some flak. Whether or not the guy got flak for it isn't really clear. But really. I left school one day and there was a guy standing just a bit away from the bus stop whose face look like it exploded because a guy punched him because he made-out with his girlfriend. So, so far, she has only been teased for silly things she has willingly done.

Additionally, she said that she saw on Facebook people were still making fun of her 6 months later. Obviously she never heard of the wonderful "Remove Friend" button.

I have left out many key elements that you would have saw if you watched the video, but I must move on or we'll both be stuck here all day.

Now I want you to watch this, a video made just over a year ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg&feature=related

The boy's name is Jonah, as the name so suggests. He was going into grade 7, and had been bullied since grade 1. So 6 years. Twice as long as Amanda was being tormented. He also had the stones to show his face in the video, but that is a different story. The point is that instead of complaining about his problems, he actually made a pretty inspirational video, that I can see would help many other people suffering from bullying.

What I'm trying to say with all this, is all the publicity and sudden public outcry against bullying that came from Amanda's unfortunate decision is sending the wrong message. A message that committing suicide will get you more attention, might make a change in society. That suicide is the only option. Imagine being someone who gets tormented for their looks, because they are not the textbook defenition of "attractive" (aka "ugly"), is a 23 year old who is in college and is a virgin, and imagine seeing the news story about a "Stunning, beautiful, perfect" girl killing herself because she got laid. How would you read that message? Would you think of it as story of triumph and success? Would it build your self confidence and help you ignore the bullies and tell someone who can help? Or would you read it as "Her situation wasn't all that bad, compared to mine. So there is obviously only one option." This again all leads back to my hatred for society and humanity. People only care about the topics that everyone else is talking about. What is trending on Twitter. What can get them some cred and maybe good karma. Here's an idea, instead of making a post on Facebook about how you feel bad for her, why don't you sit down beside the kid with the lopsided nose at lunch and ask him how he is? Or maybe go talk to the guy with the long hair who looks like a girl? Approach the nerdy kid with big glasses. Actually make a difference.

Finally, I'm gunna do a little more knowledge dropping to drive my point home(These are American Stats):

-Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young poeple, with roughly 4,400 a year. At least half of these are related to bullying. Suicide is the #1 cause of death in teens and children under 14.

-Every 30 minutes, a teen attempts suicide due to bullying.

-There are 282,000 high school students who report being bullied every month.

-160,000 students stay home from school EVERY DAY due to fear of bullying.

- Between 15 and 25 youth commit suicide every year due to bullying.

So with that some of that in mind, ask yourself some questions:

Where is the public outcry for the other 14-24 suicides due to bullying? What are their stories?

What about the hundreds of thousands of other people being bullied? What are their stories? How bad is it? Do they just have better help and closer connections to people around them?

How many of these people are teased for being attractive?

Do we only care about this because an attractive young girl did it?

So that's it. There is my cynical view of the public's decision of what is important.