The big controversy over the past week was over the video footage posted to the Internet of six teenage girls beating up another girl while two other boys watched ... allegedly over content posted on MySpace. Refer video below from Salon.com (apologies in advance for excessive violence and potty-mouth language):
As reported in The Ledger in an article entitled Mulberry Cheerleader Recovering from Beating by Jeremey Maredy:
"Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said Monday the argument between the teens erupted from "trash talking" on MySpace and through text messaging.
The Sheriff's Office declined to elaborate on what specifically was said, citing its ongoing investigation.
But Judd said the video was created for use on YouTube and MySpace, which has become a growing trend among teens.
"This is animalistic behavior," he said while showing a clip of the recorded video at a press conference Monday. "That is pack mentality."
"It's incumbent upon YouTube and MySpace to make drastic changes," Judd said. "If we desensitize kids to this kind of beating today, what's next?"
According to investigators, Lindsay was attacked about 8:30 p.m. on March 30 by April Cooper, Cara Murphy, Britney Mayes, Brittini Hardcastle, Kayla Hassell and Mercades Nichols, while two boys, Zachary Ashley and Stephen Schumaker, stood outside the house as lookouts.
The girls and Ashley ranged in age from 14 to 17 years old.
All have been arrested and charged with felony battery and false imprisonment."
The bigger issue here is that the blame was quickly directly towards YouTube abd MySpace ... Sorry, I'm not buying it. Teenage girls behaving badly? There's a new phenomenon ... must be MySpace. Jealousy and rage over ex-boyfriends? ... FaceBook must be in the loop somewhere. A teenager displaying poor judgement and posting a video of the beat-down on the Web ... must be YouTube's fault. Why not blame the cell phone industry for including video capabilities in their phones?
Not a single mention anywhere that maybe taking a video of the whole event in someone's private home might be an invasion of privacy. Nor is there a mention that the poor victim likely did not agree to be included in such a video. It was good however, to hear so many in the blogosphere pick up on the fact that this helps in the criminal investigation process ... I'm guessing the person who captured the video and now finds him or herself on the mug shot sheet above will likely think twice about using video while an accomplice ...
These are clearly bad behaviors here ... on a number of fronts.
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