Personal Responsibility
June 20th, 2006 - 6:56 pm
A 14 year old Austin girl meets a boy on MySpace.com. They chat on-line and email each other, and then she decides to meet him. She lets him pick her up at school. They go to dinner and a movie, and then he takes her to his apartment and sexually assaults her. Naturally … this is the fault of MySpace.com, so she’s suing for $30 million.
I’m sorry that she went into a stranger’s apartment and was sexually assaulted, but somewhere along the line, you have to ask yourself how much responsibility does any web site have to protect you from doing stupid shit off-line. What if two people met here on my web site, chatted on-line, then decided to meet and something bad happened? Am I responsible for people not having the sense to not go out alone with people they don’t know? According to this girl and her mom, I guess I would be. And of course, my usual refrain … where were the parents, and why weren’t they keeping track of what their kid was up to? Oh yeah, it’s obviously not their responsibility to do that anymore. Everyone else on the planet is suppose to do the parenting for them.
Like I said, sorry that happened to her, but she got into a car with someone she didn’t know and then WENT INTO HIS APARTMENT! Even as a much younger kid than 14, I knew not to do that. Her parents failed her, not MySpace.
4 Responses to “Personal Responsibility”
This is a case of a ‘nuisance’ suit intended not to go to trial, but rather induce the respondent to cough up a few thousand to make these people go away. It’s based on the assumption that it’s more cost- and time-effective than paying the lawyers.
The girl’s actions show what a sorry job her mother had done raising her, and how desperate the girl was for attention. The fact that the mother isn’t upset with herself and is eager to shake down a presumably deep-pockets outfit really tells you what a shallow person she is. The attorney involved here probably solicited her on the phone as soon as he saw the police or news report, then made sure every news outlet in town got a press release. All the while the girl remains (I assume) in the care and custody of her incompetent parent. In many of these cases the daughter is trying to emulate the mother (father absent?), but instead of doing girl things together, she’s copying the mother’s slutty ways, confused as to what constitutes grown-up behavior.
Yup, it was the mother that let her down not MySpace by not teaching her how stupid meeting people you don’t really know alone is. A long time ago in the age of BBS’s, I was young and silly and decided I wanted to meet this guy I’d been exchanging messages with. I didn’t meet him alone. Several of my friends went with me (and everyone I knew was informed I was meeting him, when and where), one of my friends drove us all around in her car, and we went out to eat at a busy place and didn’t go anywhere alone. Good thing too, because he turned out to be pretty creepy.
You can meet people face-to-face that you meet on line, but you do have to be careful about it. I’ve met several people face-to-face that I have met through my web site, and always with other friends along in public places. While I don’t think any of them are ax murderers are rapists, I still won’t get in a car alone with them, because I haven’t spent enough time with them off line yet to actually know them, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I mean, I wouldn’t get in a car with someone or go to their apartment if I had just met them at a restaurant or elsewhere, why would I do so just because we had exchanged some emails? Common freaking sense and something her parents should have taught her.
Another local example of this is a group of brothers (young) who were playing with a lighter in a van and caught it on fire causing themselves a great amount of physical damage. Naturally, the lighter company gets sued and they just settled out of court rather than face the possibility that a jury would award some gazillion dollars to the kids and mother. How the hell is it the lighter’s fault if the damn kids played with it and set themselves on fire?! Or people who want to sue McDonald’s because their kids are fat. If Lin falls asleep with a cigarette in his hand and burns down our house, is it the fault of the cigarette or lighter? No, and the thought would never cross my mind. Is it BlueBell Ice Cream’s fault is I eat a gallon a week and gain a few hundred pounds? No, it’s my own damn fault for buying it and not putting down the spoon. All these stupid lawsuits where people just don’t want to face the fact that they were at fault themselves just piss me off. There are good reasons to sue companies when things don’t work as they should and someone gets hurt or what have you, but these reasons aren’t good ones.
A-frickin-men
When will we learn that others are not responsible for our actions? Once we appreciate that giving is far more productive than taking, we will move forward — until them buyer beware!!!!