Thursday, March 27, 2008

Staging fights for Web video-sharing

It has become "an Internet rage for teens and young adults," the Chicago Tribune reports (story picked up by RedOrbit.com). And - judging by the popularity of other negative adolescent uses of cellphones (see last week's feature on naked photo-sharing) - it could be true. The Trib leads with the account of five 8th-graders huddled around a camera phone watching "video of a fake fight they staged in a bathroom at Benjamin Middle School. They had filmed multiple rounds of a shoving match ... and planned to post it on YouTube." Some of the fights kids post aren't staged. The New York Times this week ran a tragic story about a long-term bullying victim. The online part of the bullying is on p. 2: "A couple of the same boys started a Facebook page called 'Every One That Hates Billy Wolfe.' It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

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