When I first saw the viral video of the father shooting a gun through his daughter's laptop computer to punish her for writing negative things about him on social media, I was disheartened. Many thought it was wonderful, funny, and clever. Go, Dad! That'll show her! Oh, cool -- a gun! And then there was me: the one who felt uncomfortable watching a grown man to sink to a teen's level of bad behavior. Then this summer we saw the mom who sold her daughter's One Direction tickets online as punishment for making "prank calls like a trollop." Again, this mother was widely praised for this immature gesture. All I saw was slut-shaming, questionable disciplinary tactics, public humiliation, and just downright horrible parenting.
Yes, thanks to smartphone cameras and social media, these people who choose to take the low road in life have an easy way to make it bumpier for their "loved ones." The innernets have made the concept of privacy invasion seemingly foreign. Many of us spend a lot of time worrying about the government spying on us and aren't even giving a moment's thought to the fact that the people we are supposed to trust most and who are supposed to love and support us through good times and bad are the ones with the most access to invade our privacy, to publicly humiliate us, and to create a permanent record of our worst moments for the world to mock.
Last month I saw yet another video, put out there as humor, designed to humiliate a child. In it, a father "lip syncs" the "temper tantrum" of his off-camera 6-year-old daughter while his sons laugh along. Yes, I know that the tantrums of a 6-year-old girl can be overly dramatic and devoid of logic and that plenty of 6-year-olds frequently exhibit such behavior in an attempt to manipulate or attention-grab. It's a fairly normal part of development, yes, and I understand that many of these displays of emotion don't need to be taken very seriously or even acknowledged.
But this video goes a step further -- it's not just dismissing the girl's emotions. It's mocking her and publicly shaming her. The fact that all of her tormentors are male makes it doubly uncomfortable for me to watch. The person who posted this video on YouTube included the light-hearted but all-too-telling-about-society comment "They should play this at her wedding!" Because in this day and age, any bad behavior you exhibit even as a young child will be documented and follow you forever.
Pretty damned scary, if you asked me.
It wasn't long after this video was posted that I became aware of America's healthy marriage poster children, Whitney and James Mongiat of Tennessee, who became famous after James videotaped his 30-year-old bride having a "temper tantrum" over their difference of opinion about Saturday afternoon plans and posted it on YouTube. Whether Whitney's reaction was authentically obnoxious or, as she claimed, provoked, isn't really the issue. The issue is that it's not any of our business. The issue is how a husband could be so awful and disrespectful as to videotape the wife he is supposed to honor and cherish at her worst private moment and then actively work to make her the laughingstock of the Internet. Even if your marriage is in horrible shambles and headed for divorce, this is not a respectful thing to do to any person.
No one among us is so high and mighty that he hasn't laughed at others. I certainly have. But we are also all flawed people who have had bad moments in our lives -- moments that, in the past, caused us plenty of private shame. Moments that are now apparently fodder for public humiliation on the Internet.
I share these examples not to draw more attention to them but to suggest that perhaps we all, as parents, spouses, friends, and world citizens, owe our loved ones a little more respect and understanding than this. They shouldn't be taken advantage of so that we can get a few laughs or re-tweets. It's a line we really shouldn't be crossing but that, because we're a society that doesn't know how to stop itself, we do.
The world is watching, but it doesn't always have to be. Let's think before we hit "record" next time.
