Posted on 12/14/2016 8:56:57 PM PST by BenLurkin
By Friday, someone had opened a social media page in her memory, but it was quickly filled with disturbing posts about her. Her father is fighting back.
“The continued harassment reported by Mr. Vela is being investigated,” Texas City police Capt. Joe Stanton said. “We currently do not have any suspects or persons of interest identified.”
“Two days after her funeral, somebody opened up a social media page in her name,” Vela said, “and people thought the family did it, so it started with people putting sincere condolences. After a few minutes, either four people or the same person posting four times said some things harassing Brandy about being a big fat cow, writing ‘you finally did it’ with a picture of a gun, writing ‘you’re a coward,’ ‘you should have done this a long time ago,’ some really horrific things.”
Vela can’t change what happened to his daughter, so he’s trying to persuade state lawmakers to increase restrictions on social media, making it harder for cyberbullies to stay anonymous.
He met with local legislators and community representatives and says they came up with good ideas, such as providing specialized counseling and mental health support at schools for victims like his daughter.
...
He said he wants every police department in the nation to have at least one officer trained to pursue cyberbullying crimes. He called Brandy’s death a murder, saying she was pushed to the breaking point.
“I feel like these people are cowards, these people hiding behind the texts and fake pages. They’re the ones who pushed her to this point. She lost all her self-esteem, lost all her self-worth,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
You should kill yourself” line
I do a lot of online gaming and people say it constantly. I don’t think kids take it seriously. It’s a throw away line. You see things like this all the time: “Dude, you get kiled 10 time. You 100% real gay. You should kill yourself.”
Eastern Europeans and Asians are obsessed with the gay thing.
Good question.
The best approach for this man and his family wold be to TURN OFF THE DAMN COMPUTER !!!
Social media is not a life requirement. They allowed their daughter to be subjected to her torment.
I am too. Now that I'm on a computer and have the ability to jump from website to website and page to page with click, it's much harder to sit and read a book for any length of time. It's not satisfying anymore.
So tell me this. If someone is harassing someone else in a public square - is the person being harassed suppose to leave the public square? Social Media is an extension of the public square. Yes it’s privately owned, but so are stores and shops frequented by the public. Is the harrasee supposed to ostracize themselves from public life?
I propose a different solution. Where harassment is occurring on social media, the site should put in their user agreements the right and duty to identify publicly from their records said harasser. (something with a combination of severity, number of complaints, etc) THAT will put a stop to it. Problem is most sites don’t care and/or don’t want to put in the work of moderating a public space.
Jim and team do a great job here and take it seriously - and gets a lot of grief for some decisions, most sites aren’t like that. Little doubt some other site operators think it’s funny.
I’ve seen a change as well in the last couple years, and I’m a huge bibliophile. Still not sure if it’s the constant back and forth on the computer or just getting older.
I have to sit at the computer and stay connected traveling a lot for work so don’t have a ton of ability to get away. I used to ‘catch up’ on email during my lunch, but made the change to stop that and instead get out of my office with a book someplace quiet. Next step is doing it in the ‘cafeteria’. Problem is everyone wants a piece of time when you do that - so your food gets cold and no reading gets done.
If the terms were violated and the site failed to police - should the family have the right to sue? If not then the agreement is worthless.
The world could be dissing me on social media and I do not care. The things that people I dont care about have to say about me is of no consequence and have absolutely no bearing on my existence.
It is my choice to ostracize myself from public life as much as it takes to keep away from the stupidness and the idiots that choose to manipulate my life with their actions.
I guess, in short, my solution is.... Dont place me into the public square and force me to defend myself. My plan is to be the only one left standing.
“Why not just track down and prosecute the perps instead of making more laws?”
How the heck are you going to do that if what they did wasn’t against the law?
Yup. Sometimes you just gotta walk away.
the infowarrior
I can’t argue with that.
Everyone knows you don’t mess with old men, or old men’s families.
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