Social Networks’ Bad PR Week: Girl Gangs and Snotty Teens
by Kara Swisher
Posted on April 14, 2008 at 3:25 AM PT
Ah, nothing like crazy teenagers to ruin a social-networking site’s week!
Of course, a lot of the attention last week was aimed at MySpace, which had only a very peripheral role in the appalling story of a gang of teen harpies from Florida who viciously laid into another and videotaped it.
The unfortunate girl–whom the female wolf pack (to be fair, wolves are a lot more intelligent) was heard accusing incoherently in the video–had apparently posted something on MySpace–owned by News Corp. (NWS), which owns this site–that apparently ignited their rage. Thus, the genius leader of the half-dozen girls planned on posting a video of the beat-down to MySpace and also YouTube (GOOG).
The parents of the beaten girl, who was severely injured in the incident, urged the sites to prevent users from uploading the viral video, even though it was never uploaded by the teens and has been regularly taken off the services when it has been.
(I could not find the video on either service last night, except in snippets as part of news coverage. It is available on Salon here, and can also be embedded, which I decided not to do here.)
Still, the injured girl’s father was quoted in a local newspaper: “As far as I am concerned, MySpace is the anti-Christ for children.”
Actually, the gang of girls get that particular moniker in my estimation. In any case, justice will be meted out, I am sure, and it started with the judge’s order that the defendants not use any social network.
And while it got a lot less attention, don’t miss New York magazine’s riveting story of a Facebook scandal at New York’s tony Horace Mann private school.
In the piece, titled “Testing Horace Mann” by Gabriel Sherman, Facebook is used as a vehicle for disgruntled kids to create obnoxious groups attacking teachers they don’t like in verbally appalling ways and without any apparent recriminations.
Laid out in exquisite detail are how petty school politics, overindulged kids and parents who need their heads examined collided to create the digital equivalent of “Lord of the Flies.”
Here’s the money quote:
These Facebook pages, however, were something different. Kids have always ragged on an unpopular teacher or ridiculed an unfortunate classmate. But sites like Facebook and RateMyTeachers.com are changing the power dynamics of the community in an unpredictable way. It is as if students were standing outside the classroom window, taunting the teacher to her face. Should they be punished? There were, as yet, no rules or codes for how a school should address such issues.”
While it is pretty obvious that it is easy to blame the technology in both these cases, there are bigger societal issues at stake here that nothing MySpace or Facebook can fix with a simple tweak.
Follow Kara on Twitter | Follow AllThingsD on Twitter
Comments
While it would be nice to get a MySpace page and blame it for all my idiocy, there may be a societal woe that somehow the the social networks need to contend with.
There seems to be a growing trend of people thinking they shouldn’t/won’t be judged for their actions even when they’re made public.
You cite things at the extreme, but all over the social networks and on twitter I see otherwise seemingly reasonable people broadcasting/owning up to serious lapses in judgement…and then expecting not to be judged. I don’t get it.
I don’t get Dr. Phil’s staff bailing out one of the teen harpies in Florida either:
http://ap.google.com/article/A.....wD900Q5P00
Posted by Robert Seidman at April 14th, 2008 at 3:48 amThere have always been bullies, and gangs of bullies, and torture and torment and it goes largely unnoticed and unaddressed in the dark corners of locker rooms, lunchrooms, bathrooms and behind the bleachers. If this particular group were … um … unwise … enough to record themselves, and that video brought justice and exposure to a serious issue (the issue being youth violence, not social networking), then I think that’s just grand.
Having said that, and not wanting to buck a trend, I blame Facebook and MySpace for global warming, the C I got in science in Grade 4, and recurrent yeast infections.
Posted by Bernardine Wood-Smothers at April 14th, 2008 at 9:00 amSafe to say that this is a “Law and Order” episode waiting to happen
Posted by rick loughery at April 14th, 2008 at 1:13 pm