Occasionally Snarky and Meta

So a blogger and school head supposes that popular books like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games cause brain damage.

Let's get our spork on! (NOTE: I did leave some parts out. You can suffer through the entire thing if you'd like.)

( Read more... )

"Aww, you're an only child! Are you spoiled? I bet you're spoiled."

"God, you must have been so lonely growing up."

"Only children are totes like the oldest because they're smarter and more responsible than anyone else."

( The real deal on being a lonely only )
What birth order (I'm beginning to hate that term) are you, and what don't people know about it? Feel free to do a similar meme, or just comment here. :)

 Let's face it, children's and young adult literature, comics and shows gave us a certain impression of life. Except of course, it was all a dream. I hated those endings. :P

So without further ado, I present...

( Ways Things We Loved as Kids Screwed Up Our Perception of Reality )

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So many stupid things were said and done when we were kids. We're old enough to, and perhaps do, have kids of our own; move on and let the past stay in the past.

Unless the person grew up to be a bully in adulthood - but even then, if growing up didn't change them, bumping into an old "friend" won't either.

Girl commits suicide because of bullies

First, I want to emphasize that I'm not entirely sure I think suicide can be entirely blamed on these girls. The temptation, perhaps - I know people who were bullied and while they otherwise had no depression, the feeling of being hated by people they had to sit in class with five days a week drove them crazy. And these people weren't even physically harmed. However, they never went through with it, and even they very well may have had issues.

The sad thing is that I feel this article shows how bullying really is not taken seriously.

A few weeks ago, I found a disturbing YouTube video of a girl who was being told to kill herself, that she was fat, that she was ugly. Luckily, this girl was saying she didn't care, but the point is, she was being harassed. Because I care about kids, I went to report the incident.

The "abuse form" on YouTube doesn't exist, as a google search proved. I emailed several address (help@youtube.com, abuse@youtube.com, etc), and they either didn't work or were ignored. Meanwhile, the harassment continued.

YouTube did not provide a way for me to help this girl, and google research took me to a parent who claimed even calling YouTube didn't help. Please bear in mind that this is the internet, so who knows if she was being honest - however, if she was, that's pretty disturbing. Despite all the hooplah about YouTube's "moves" to prevent cyberbullying, it doesn't seem much is being done.

But that's another issue.

I think that people need to all take part in bullying prevention, and while I'm no expert, I do have thoughts on how.
( Slightly tl;dr thoughts )