Reasons Why I Hate

Desirable Mantra

Society loves a bandwagon. Nothing like getting in a furore of moral indignation for a cause that cuts to the core of a persons sensibilities. The internet has to be the biggest tool in upstanding citizens shed in preaching the deplorable actions of a few against those who have suffered.

Most recently this has been seen in the case of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who took her life after years of sustained bullying against her character after a single indiscretion to a stranger online came to haunt her.

Suicides are never the happiest of topics at the best of times, let alone including a young girl in the mix. The story of Amanda Todd has received massive attention in North America as a by-product youths out of control.

This is the stuff bandwagon jumpers adore. Nothing sets triggers then desire to condemn rise above like those who make light of a tragedy with a morbid sense of humour. Remember the Kony 2012 campaign earlier this year? Probably not. First world inhabitants got enraged over the name of a man who utilised children in his insurgent army. Ask the devout believers now what they achieved, expect red faces and a longwinded excuse.

Amanda Todd

The same is happening again in the aftermath of Miss Todd. Morally outstanding individuals are raging a war on those who use a morbid sense of humour to understand a situation.

As someone who has such a sense of humour, I can’t help but see the futility in these people. News stations have taken it upon themselves to report upon a tragedy before bringing up good ol’ fashioned internet trolls defiling this saintly figure and rolling up the goody-too-shoe self obsessed Facebook police. Self appointed busy bodies that make it their civic duty to report jests at the expense of a dead girl.

Wasters.

To believe what you see on the news at face value is stupid. At best you see the highlights, the shining points of a situation that get emotions all tingly. However reading deeper through research and consorting online lead to revelations that bring the agendas of news corporations into full view.

Amanda Todd was painted as an angelic girl who made one brief mistake, revealing herself to a stranger on webcam as thousands of other teenagers do every week for fun.

This one event then spiraled through blackmail and three schools to her eventually suicide. If you believe that years of bullying and character assassination would occur from one minuet event, you’re an idiot.

Reports from those who knew the girl say that flashing online was the tip of Miss Todd’s secret iceberg with a long list of sexual indiscretions that would earn her the names she earned.

Yet this girl is the victim of the worst bullying from out of the blue and as such took the permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Criticise my opinion if you will, but I cannot comprehend why this girl has garnered so much media fanfare. Hundreds of kids take their lives as they feel it solves the problem every year but none get the media attention she has had.

Is it because they didn’t make a tragically simple YouTube video, charting her trouble via placards? Is it because they didn’t have the sob story of experimentation turned against her? There are countless cases of kids who ended their lives because they were bullied for their looks, intelligence, social class and dozens of other petty reasons kids cruelly pick up on. Far more tragic than Miss Todd’s story, yet they linger on only in the memories of small circles, family and friends instead of in person.

I guess what I’m trying to say of this tragic and complicated situation is that suicide is the most tragic answer to trivial situations. Governments and schools talk of ending bullying and its evolution by censoring the web where a new generation of cyber bullies lurk, waiting to strike. Always want to stem the flow of a wound instead of preventing it.

No doubt as I type, some genius is thinking of a campaign to stop another Amanda Todd from escaping a life of persecution. These people are the problem. These people who look to set up laws, legislation and guidelines to prevent a child from succumbing to their fears when instead the solution is less self absorbed.

Get out of your house and go help someone. Don’t wait for MP’s or congressmen or whoever to get their arse in gear and solve the problem. Don’t become part of the reporting police on Facebook. Go out and find someone in dire need of a shoulder to cry on, to talk too, someone who needs help.

These aren’t words from a hypocrite; they come from someone who has talked to people thinking dark thoughts and tried to help and as such have not known the loss of anyone by their own hand.

Nothing can raise my fury like sit at home helpers, people who think liking a Facebook picture of signing a petition or writing a strongly written, grammatically free statement condemning the evil people who tag a dead girl next to a bottle of bleach. You want change? Go make it happen.

Alas, these words will probably fall on ignorant ears or be quoted by some faceless internet entity and condemn me for not loving or feeling sorry for a girl who took selfish actions to solve her problems.

Perhaps I am being cruel, but in my heart of hearts I know what I feel. Don’t believe everything on face value, dig a little deeper to get to the crux of a situation and for the love of god, if you feel effected and wanted to make a change, go out and do it, I beseech you.