Monday, September 21, 2009

It's 2009 -- Do you know who your children are meeting on MySpace?!

Lawrence Auster covers the quadruple homicide in Virginia of a Presbyterian minister, his ex-wife and daughter and the daughter's best friend here, here, and here.

Very disturbing stuff! Make your way around the MySpace community these young, impressionable elois were heavily participating in starting here, MySpace page of murder victim Melanie Wells, where she wrote on Sept. 13:

SFTW was f***in amazing, back in Virginia now, be back in West Virginia on Wednesday. I MISS EVERYONE!!!Mood: havin a blast
Posted at 7:43 PM Sep 13.

If you're a parent at all concerned about your childrens' mental and physical well being, you'll be shocked.

4 comments:

The_Editrix said...

That is truly shocking. Having no children, I never gave those social networks much thought. What I see now is simply appalling. Even if one doesn't take the obviously dangerous implications into consideration, what does all the uglyness, vulgarity, stupidity, superficiality and vanity do to a child's -- and specifically a girl's -- mind and soul? When I arrived in the Internet I was safely over forty already and that was at a time when social networks were still unknown. Now I shudder if I think what they may have done to me as an Internet newbie even at a rather advanced age. Even as it was, I went through some silly stages and have finally come to a position where the Internet is a true enrichment of my life because of its amazing information potential. On the way, I seem to have ignored the dark side. What an additional burden to patents! But then, it's nothing but a reflection of our time and society.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I understand the point. Certainly, it is profoundly ironic that the daughter of a Baptist minister would count people heavily involved in quasi-Satanist culture among her friends and invite them to her home, but it is hardly shocking. Particularly when we consider that her home was no longer the home of her father, due to divorce. That may sound judgmental, but leaving aside any moral considerations the practical effects of divorce on proper upbringing of children are far too well established to be ignored in this case.

I must admit, I object to the evident dysthetics of her chosen associates more than their morality. Those who can only kill the utterly defenseless have no natural right to engage in the arts of death, even in a purely symbolic fashion. It is, perhaps, my real objection to abortion. It is poetic for the apparently frail to endure and thrive, and for the evidently strong and fit to die. The inverse is so grimly prosaic that it is naturally repugnant to the discerning palate.

Then again, if I had my way, the role of the angels of death would be mainly to forbid it to the unprepared. Those of us who truly appreciate death are offended by any who take it lightly or partake of it unworthily. But perhaps I say too much.

The_Editrix said...

"I must admit, I object to the evident dysthetics of her chosen associates more than their morality."

Good point, but I'd say both are inseparable. The former are only a symptom of the latter.

Anonymous said...

In a practical sense, this is true. After all, a fine appreciation of death cannot be achieved in the absence of a healthy understanding of life. In a more purely moral sense, however, there is a fundamental division between those who value life for its aesthetic qualities and those assign it an intrinsic worth separate from aesthetics. It is easier to bridge than that between either notion of value and the nihilism these sorts illustrate, but worth remembering.