Okay! Okay, I ‘ve got one…
Did you hear the one about the 15 year old girl slutting around online and putting a hit out on her aunt -…hey… wait a minute. That’s not a joke. Somebody check the teleprompter while I issue this depressing news to the public.
Once upon a time, there was a young girl who lived with her aunt. She liked to date men online and then bring them back into her aunt’s home – offering favors of the vaginal genre in exchange for things like having her phone bill paid. This troubled her aunt. Her aunt said, “How can I get through to her?” and catfished her slutty niece online – pretending to be a pedobear. To her great surprise, her nefarious niece asked her new binary boyfriend (which was really the aunt in disguise; do keep up) to be her prince charming and rescue her.
But not before having her aunt murdered. And her fiancée. And the family dog.
Naturally, the aunt informed the authorities. Because, ya know. She wanted to carry on living and stuff.
This heartwarming tale comes on the heels of that one other kid killer story – the two 12 year olds who dealt their classmate half the stabs Lizzy Borden did mom and dad – as an offering to a make believe monster they became obsessed with online.
That has tentacles.
Or…tentacle shadows?
I don’t get it. Let’s try another picture:
“Does this make me look fat? I want to lose like three pounds. Whatever, I’m getting cheese fries.”
Right. Since I’m too lazy to lookit up, I’ll just assume that much like knife wielding clowns, the horror is in the irony. It’s a faceless alien… wearing a business suit (Dude, maybe he was just trying to blend in while he escaped Area 51.)
So, what’s happening here?
Nothing terribly different from the kid who shot up coeds in California. In the thing he wrote before exacting vengeance on the world for living its life, there’s that same pattern – lack of love (yes, really) and excessive time spent in alter-reality (technology interaction or entertainment). His parents split, his dad’s never around, his mom just buys him shit, and he becomes a world-of-warcraft obsessive when he can’t get along with his peers.
And both parents give him whatever he wants when he stomps his feet loud enough.
I’ve heard a few femmes say the violence is to do with rape culture or whatever, but that’s myopic. It’s a symptom. It doesn’t address what comes before. That void is at the foundation – a failing by parents to love their kids enough to learn who they (by asking) and show (not tell) them how to be. And that failure’s followed by another – not monitoring after-school activities.
The pattern emerges:
-Kids don’t have love or acceptance at home and school, respectively.
-This causes an inner sadness.
-To escape that sadness, they try drugs, video games, or online worlds.
– If that escape works, it becomes constantly necessary, to avoid misery.
-If it becomes constantly necessary, it becomes an addiction.
-If that addiction is to violent games– that becomes their reality
-When they have to leave their new reality for real reality, they resent it – and all the people living in it.
So what’s their answer?
What would be the answer in first-person-shooter land?
I don’t know what it’s like to have children but I know it’s a commitment.
A vow to spend half the day earning income with half your attention on that possible incoming call about your kid, and then actively participating in their well-being and development in between. I realize that. And I’m not willing right now. If I ever am, it’ll be because I had an epiphany wherein I became prepared to do whatever it took to be the person I want my kids to emulate. I’m too selfish now.
But you know what’s more selfish? Forgetting the fact that you’re growing a human from the ground up. They’ll be capable of “finding the x” in math class and making little boys cry on the playground at recess soon. Then they’ll be facing cruelty by their cohort group and being traumatized by drugs and pornography. And when these bad things happen, do you think they’re going to come to someone who doesn’t practice what they preach and yells?
“Not now, I’m trying to decide whether this is for him or me.”
If you want them to come to you, you have to change.
What’s more important than raising an integrated human being? Perhaps it’s an expensive house. A new car. Straight A’s so you can brag about on a bumper sticker. Or looking perfect on the outside right down to the day the police come to handcuff your daughters for attempted murder to appease a demon wrought from online urban legendry. In a society with sufficient externals dictating how to be or what to do – must we just be more pedantic noise?
If we’re too lazy to apply a heuristic critical-thinking approach for teaching youth, how will they turn out in twenty years?
Help them now so you don’t have to help them hide the bodies later.
“Jeffrey, dear, I said please scalp the cabana boy’s head before we put him in the fridge.
Such a mess for mama to clean up.
Sigh.
…boys will be boys.”