One month ago, a young girl posted an intriguing video on YouTube. The video showed this girl and her father, the girl crying and her father enraged. In his fury, the father sputtered out nonsensical phrases like “I’ve backtraced your emails and the cyberpolice are on their way,” “You dun goofed,” and “Consequences will never be the same.” The interesting thing about this circumstance, however, was that the father was not yelling at his daughter, and his daughter was not crying because of her father’s scolding. The father was yelling at the webcam, directing his anger at the viewers, and the girl was crying about what had happened to her as a result of previous events. How did this all happen? You’re about to find out.
Meet Jessi Slaughter, an ordinary eleven-year-old girl who wishes to be anything but ordinary. Being involved with a band called Blood on the Dance Floor, Jessi Slaughter flaunts her slight advantage in popularity, and feels like she has the right to insult the general population by threatening them over YouTube. And that’s exactly what she did.
On a fine morning, Jessi Slaughter got on her computer and started recording a video. She was addressing haters and trolls – people who say negative things about something for the sole purpose of a feeling of self empowerment and enraging others. Generally, people combat haters by either saying “Stop” (which usually doesn’t work) or “I don’t care what you think” (which also usually doesn’t work, but tends to be slightly more effective than telling them to stop). Jessi Slaughter, on the other hand, chose to say “I’ll pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushie.”
Now we change the scene to a place called 4Chan. If you have any friends obsessed with the internet, you have most likely heard of it, but may not know what it is. 4Chan started out as an image board, a website that people can use to communicate with one another and share pictures. However, as the 4Chan community grew, things started to get out of hand. 4Chan is now popular for its disturbed participants, stupid
memes, and occasional outbursts of child pornography, among other creepy things.
The most important thing about 4Chan, however, is how powerful it is as a group. A majority of the people that go on 4Chan are people that are not a part of the real world and do not actively participate in society. As a result, these people have tons of time on their hands to do whatever they wish. “Whatever they wish” can range anywhere from masturbating while watching bestiality porn to utterly destroying the life of an eleven-year-old girl with poor judgment.
Remember the “pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushie” video I referred to earlier? 4Chan got a hold of it and passed it around from member to member. Thousands of people watched it and saw a small girl threatening to do something that she would never actually be able to do. One thing I forgot to mention is that many people on 4Chan are pathetic in real life. To make up for how weak they are, they act like vicious monsters when they are behind the safety of the electronic barrier we call the internet. The 4Channers decided that it would be funny to take what this girl was saying seriously and fight back.
Jessi Slaughter began receiving more hate mail than she had ever received before. 4Chan found out her home address, phone number, and information about her parents. The harassment went on for a few days and became more severe; people started making death threats and the releasing Photoshopped pornographic pictures of Jessi Slaughter. Eventually, the police department decided it would be best to (attempt to) take control of this situation, and put Jessi Slaughter under police protection. Three days later, Jessi Slaughter was released from police protection and did an interview for Good Morning America. Following suite, other news broadcasts, such as CBS, also did segments about Jessi Slaughter and how her life took a drastic turn.
The depressing part is, it didn’t stop there. Shortly after posting her breakdown video of her dad screaming into the camera, Jessi went into her video chat room and appeared perfectly fine, even saying “any type of fame I’ll take.” She continued making more threats to the haters, and started fueling people’s ideas of her having a sexual relationship with the lead singer of Blood on the Dance Floor. On August 2 and August 4, she was heard on Tinychat while she was arguing with her dad; there is a distinct slapping noise, and Jessi threatens that she will curb stomp her father.
Time to start pointing fingers. Who’s at fault? Most people say that Jessi Slaughter is responsible for all the trouble she’s caused. I say her parents are mostly to blame.
First, we have to keep in mind that Jessi Slaughter is still a preteen. She was eleven years old when a majority of this happened, and recently turned twelve on July 27, 2010 (according to one of her online profiles). This is usually the age when kids start going to middle school. In the United States, an individual must be eighteen years or older to be considered an adult; until then, the actions of the child is the responsibility of his or her parents. Furthermore, science has proven that the brain does not even finish fully developing until someone is in their early to mid-20s. What’s the point of blaming someone who is around half that age?
Next, according to an interview by a website called Mom Logic, Jessi Slaughter’s mother did not even know about what Jessi was doing online. Jessi’s mother claims that she has not yet watched any of her daughter’s videos – that means, Jessi’s mother has never seen her daughter announcing that she’ll “pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushie,” even though millions of other people worldwide have seen this video. I dunno if it’s just me, but that sounds a little bit ignorant.
Finally, aside from being ignorant, her parents have not made a reasonable attempt to take control of this situation. Jessi is twelve years old now, and is under the full authority of her parents. With over 40 years of life experience each, her parents should know how to handle a situation like this (and so should anyone with a brain). Are her videos causing the problem? Take away her webcam and microphone. Is she still chatting with strangers? Get an internet filter and block chat websites she uses most frequently like Tinychat and Xat. Is she still causing trouble? Move the computer to the family room or kitchen where her online activity can easily be seen, or just don’t let her use a computer all together. As you can see, it’s not very hard to control a child.
So what have we learned from Jessi Slaughter? Simply put, make sure children know how to stay safe on the internet and realize how dangerous it can be. Never allow them to give out any personal information without getting permission first. Closely monitor their internet activity and start asking questions if something suspicious shows up. And most importantly, if you sense trouble approaching, act immediately.
The next picture is also a request by someone who was interested in seeing what I eat on a random day. I ate this at around 3 PM on a day that I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch. To get an idea of how much that is, that plate has a diameter of about 10 inches. I finished all that in one sitting, but I don’t always eat this much every meal; I prefer to eat a little bit all day.
This is a picture of my calculus textbook. I originally took it to submit as a customer image for Amazon, but I had it handy on my camera so I decided to put it here too, in case anyone was interested.
If you watched my video from August 28, you’ll know that the people that come to my apartment are horrible parkers. The next two pictures were awesome examples, so I decided to share them.This picture shows an online food delivery company parked sideways across about four or five parking spots:
And in this one, it’s almost like those three sideways-parked cars planned this whole thing out:
Back on topic. In City of Glass, the main character, Clary, continues her journey to try and break the spell cast on her mother that put her into a deep state of unconsciousness. Along the process, Clary tries to solve her other problems, including the relationship issues she has with her friends and family, the dangers brought to her and the people around her by demonic forces, and the restrictions placed on her due to her young age and inexperience. By the end of the book, we learn something revolutionary about another main character, Jace, and we find out if Valentine in fact succeeds in taking over the Shadowhunters.City of Glass was originally intended to be the last installment in the Mortal Instruments series, but the author decided to add three more books to the series due to its massive popularity. Back when I read the first book, City of Bones, I said that it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, but for some unexplainable reason, still made me want to keep reading; at the end of the first book, I liked it. The same situation slightly continued during the second book, but it got better and better, and by the third book, it had secured my interest. I still don’t know why I feel so attracted to this series, and still cannot explain lucidly why I like this book so much. From its literal value, it seems like an average book, but it has something mysterious about it that makes it far superior than many other books I’ve read.Like the other books in this series, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy themes, and recommend it to just about anyone that wants to read an enigmatically good book. Like all other series, I suggest that if you decide to read this book, you should start with the first book in the series so you understand the background of all the characters; the third book makes references to things that happened in the first and second books that are necessary to fully understand what is happening. 
… then checking back in ten minutes and noticing that the text was changed to:
So apparently there was a unanimous decision by the jury that the former governor is guilty of supplying false declarations to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, but was no final decision made for the other 23 counts that he was tried for. What I’m WatchingEarlier today, I watched Knocked Up, a movie featuring Seth Rogen and Katherine Hiegl.Knocked Up is about a man named Ben Stone who lives in an apartment with four of his male friends. He doesn’t have a job, and aspires to be successful via a website he and his friends are creating called Flesh of the Stars. One evening, he goes to a club where he meets Allison Scott, a reporter for the E! channel. They go home together, have a one night stand, and think that everything is going to be fine…… until Allison discovers that she is pregnant with Ben’s baby. From that point on, mass chaos breaks out as Allison and Ben’s personalities clash, and the unstable relationship of Allison’s older sister makes the situation worse.I thought this was a pretty good movie. The relationships between the characters are well developed. The plot has a comical twist to it that takes an emergency-level situation and makes it funny while still having the characters act sincerely towards the problem. What I’m ReadingAfter reading and being intrigued by Malcolm Gladwell’s books Blink and The Tipping Point, I went on to read Outliers.
Outliers is a book about the special people in the world – the people that are different enough to be noticed as different when placed in a regular societal setting. These people have gifts and advantages starting from birth that define who they are and how much they will succeed later on in their lives. The main concept of this book is that the fortunate opportunities that affect these people are what makes them so special, not the individual effort they put into their work. Although effort and determination is important, luck is the catalyst for success.Gladwell goes on and gives examples of how this is true, like the explanation behind why people born in the last quarter of the calendar year should not even bother trying out for professional hockey. He also follows the story of the lives of famous people like Bill Gates, who, due to a bit of luck, was able to fall under the 10,000-Hour Rule for programming and become the successful founder of Microsoft.Like all of Gladwell’s other books, I recommend this book to everybody, as it gives insight on a facet of life that not many people realize is important. The ideas of this book may explain to some people why they are unsuccessful, and how they could change they way they live to place themselves in the path of luck. The time invested in reading this book could result in massive benefits in the future. 
