Rosalind Wiseman is an internationally recognized author and educator on children, teens, parenting, education and social justice. Her work aims to help parents, educators and young people successfully navigate the social challenges of young adulthood.
Rosalind Wiseman
creating cultures of dignity
Jessi Slaughter: A Cyberbullying Case None of Us are Taking Seriously
Last week, I once again came across a case of internet use gone horribly wrong, this time in the form of an eleven-year-old girl on YouTube. For those of you who haven’t heard, Jessica Leonhardt, who goes by the screenname “Jessi Slaughter“, was a regular video blogger on YouTube. What started as a few lighthearted videos about shopping and boys, quickly disintegrated into violent and explicit videos containing threats, and much more profanity than you’d ever expect a preteen to know, let alone use.
After Jessi received a few unkind comments on her earlier videos, she decided to take matters into her own hands and address all the people she refers to as “haters”. The video she made to retaliate against the hateful viewers is laced with violence and expletives and as one might imagine, was not well-received. Shortly after it was uploaded, the harassment got much worse, and the next video Jessi posted was of her crying and talking about how depressed all the comments and messages were making her. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep”, she sobs, while her indignant father paces behind her ranting about the police investigating the people sending the messages. To make a very long story short, Jessi and her parents were interviewed on Good Morning America, and she is currently receiving therapy for her recent encounter with cyberbullying.
According to traditional media, this story is a cautionary tale about how children use the internet as the tool to hurt each other. That’s a cover—a trick to give this story a veneer of responsibility.
But that’s not what the story is about at all. Instead, viewers from around the country have been able to dismiss the family in their complaints yet again, because they’re able to use what they’re seeing on screen as different from them, and therefore as a reason to believe that their kids won’t find themselves in Jessi’s position. Put it this way: there is no way a middle class person seeing Jessi’s father, a man with teeth missing, screaming at the camera in an inappropriate and unrefined way (“you dun goofed”), will think this story has any relevance in their own lives.
No one is taking this family seriously. Countless memes quoting the father or just poking fun at Jessi herself have popped up all over Tumblr and other social networking sites, and though Jessi deleted her personal accounts on YouTube, Tumblr, and several other websites, her videos have been reuploaded, remixed, and redistributed for their entertainment value. When we laugh at her tears, and her father’s anger, we ignore the fact that this could have ended tragically.
It may be easy to write off Jessi and her parents because of how they look or speak, but there is an underlying problem that affects parents of all socio-economic groups: You don’t know what your kid is doing online.
I have heard countless middle class parents reassure me that they know what their teen is doing online because they “just use YouTube to make silly videos with their friends”. Or parents who are so intimidated by technology that they don’t make the effort to learn how to responsibly oversee their child’s online behavior. The fact that this young girl was able to make these videos with extremely explicit content in her parents’ home, completely undetected, says a lot. Her parents may have never found out about the types of videos she was making if it all hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.
The worse part of this entire situation is that Jessi hasn’t learned anything from her ordeal. She recently posted yet another video on YouTube and seems to be headed down the same path as before. The few hundred comments the video has already received are in the same vain as the comments that sent her over the edge just a few weeks ago; violent, mean-spirited, and written to elicit a reaction.
In light of this case, I feel that parents need to keep a few key points in mind:
-Know your kids. Recognize the level of responsibility you are giving your child when you allow them to use the computer, especially if they aren’t being monitored or they have a PC in their bedrooms. It takes a certain level of maturity and just because your child asks for their own computer doesn’t mean they are emotionally ready for it. It’s not “just a computer”. You’re trusting them to use it responsibly and you should discuss what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior online.
- Hold your kids responsible. If something does go wrong, be able to admit your own child’s involvement and address the issue accordingly. Like Jessi’s parents, too many refuse to acknowledge when their child is a part or the cause of a problem. It’s easy to only see what was done to your child and not what they did to others. Hold your kid responsible for their actions, online and elsewhere, and they will become more conscious of their choices in the future.
-Talk to your kids. Keep the lines of communication open and honest, and hopefully, if they do something irresponsible or they become a target of cyber bullying, they will feel safe coming to you to talk about it and you will be there to help them deal.
If you liked this, you might also like:
Talk To Your Daughter About Cyberbullying Now
5 Ways to Prevent and Stop Cyberbullying
9 Responses to “Jessi Slaughter: A Cyberbullying Case None of Us are Taking Seriously”
Leave a Reply
August 28th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
I agree wholeheartedly with what Cole Stryker of Urlesque.com said about the matter:
“Decrying the trolls is sort of like decrying a gang of thugs who mugged a guy wandering dark alleys wearing a suit made of hundred dollar bills. The girl was posting suggestive photos, making death threats on people who posted nasty comments about her videos and taunting her bullies. In other words, this girl was inviting it.
This doesn’t excuse the harassers, but no one would have come after her if she hadn’t been acting wildly inappropriate for an 11-year-old girl.”
Someone ought to call child protective services and have this girl removed from her parents’ household. Jessi Slaughter is clearly suffering the consequences of their irresponsibility and neglect. When an 11-year-old child is distributing nude photos of herself and threatening to put a gun in someone’s mouth, you know that there is something seriously wrong with the way she has been raised.
August 18th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
there is no doubt as you say a lot that is disturbing about this case. I dont like to think that my ten year old son who right now still care only about sport and lets stray dogs chase him home will be talking like this in a year. Personally I see a little girl with far more freedom than any little child can handle posturing wildly and trying to compete with the big kids and getting in way over her head. I strongly doubt she was sexually active with that singer but in the event that this did happen then she would be a victim and the police should be called. If it is as i suspect made up her parents need to have a lengthy discussion about the consequences of making such an outrageous claim for all concerned.
I also do wonder what would possess any parent to allow a kid so young to continue to post online once they found out what was going on. My youngest is not allowed to look at u tube clips without supervision.
I am sorry to hear about your situation at school. I was far from an angel myself. I agree that kids can be hideous of their own accord. although I do note that the most cliquish and elitist parents at my kids private school seem to have similar kids
August 18th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Hey, mother, I thought about your reply to my comment. Looking back on it, I do feel really sorry for this girl and her situation. It wasn’t right of me to laugh at the misfortune of others. But you’re right, it was just so easy to laugh at. Adults and children alike should take this case more seriously. I agree with what you said. No adults should laugh at that. However, I don’t feel that us kids really “absorb the message” that we can laugh at and ridicule anyone we feel is below us from parents. Most of us would still laugh at the misfortune of others even if our parents didn’t think it was okay. Kids are really cruel, let’s face it. I’ve been a victim many a time myself, since at my school I’m sort of an outcast, and I still would laugh at things like Jessi Slaughter. But I don’t think I’ll be laughing at anything like this again for a very long time, if not forever. Thank you for opening my eyes. One last thing before I’m done: it wasn’t just the “sluttiness” of Jessi Slaughter that made people, as she says, “hate on her.” People didn’t like her because of her rude language and behavior. “Rude” isn’t even a descriptive enough word. She had such a foul mouth and was incredibly vain at only age 11. She also allegedly had sex with Dahvie Vanity, and people found that to be sick and wrong. I find everything about her to be on some level of sick and wrong, quite frankly.
August 18th, 2010 at 7:21 am
I don’t think the “sluttiness” of the girl’s outfit should be a reason to “laugh hysterically” at the misfortune of this family. To me that is akin to saying that a girl asks to get raped.
it is so easy to laugh at those that we feel we are better than. Our children then absorb this message. I agree that the parents should cut her off from the internet at least for a few years. I dont agree that an adult has the right to laugh at or ridicule anyone in this case.
August 16th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
My friends and I laughed hysterically at the video of her dad screaming “YOU DUN GOOFED UP!” Her father didn’t handle the situation appropriately; he actually made it much, much worse. If I were him, I would have cut Jessi Slaughter off from the internet completely. I also would’ve been really ashamed at her profane language and vanity. She also, for lack of a better term, acted like a slut, wearing low cut shirts, a ton of makeup, and saying that she had sex with a lead singer of an emo band (I forgot his name). There is no way that she had sex with that man, she’s only 11 years old. This whole case is a great example of why one has to be extremely careful about what they post on the internet.
August 16th, 2010 at 3:33 am
Missy I agree that this child behaved very inappropriately and her parents handled the situation in a way that was far from ideal. But really I think the “consequences” have certainly gone far and beyond the “crime” of behaving badly on camera. This kid and her parents have been ridiculed on an international scale continuously. They cant “fix” the mistake because it has gone viral. These people have received death threats from other adults.
It struck me that jesses parents were not people with a lot of education and that because they allowed the kid to dress and talk in a way that society at large deems shocking that meant that the world had the right to “punish” them by humiliating them and terrorizing them. There is not much a stretch between this logic and the idea that if a girl dresses sluttily she is “asking for it”
August 15th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
So, I may have to revise my earlier comment. When I first watched the video with Jessi crying and her father so upset and mad I felt really bad for that family and I still do. However, I went back and watched some of Jessi Slaughter’s other videos that she posted on youtube and was pretty much horrified by this girl! I cannot believe what she was posting. I have never heard such a foul mouth on an 11 year old! Wow. I hope her parents had no idea what she was doing. If they did know and they didn’t step in and yank her computer from her room and have a serious talk with her, then they are a big part of this problem. Hello? How about some consequences? She was loving the drama and starting a ton of it with other kids. I’m not saying that gives anyone the right to bully her. It doesn’t. This is one messed up little girl. Where do you begin if you want to fix this? She seriously needs help.
August 14th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
I felt bad for this family. It is really easy to laugh at those with less education or who we perceive to be making bad decisions. It especially saddens me that many of the harsh remarks directed at this little girl were made by older kids or worse adults. We claim to be a classless society but this case indicates that we are not. It also highlights to be a bigger problem. Our schools constantly talk to kids about bullies. We are getting continual news stories that claim without always backing themselves up with hard facts that our kids are getting worse. But then in this story It is as much adults as kids that seem to have a free pass to say anything to an 11 year old child and to then mock her misguided but understandably angry father
August 12th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I watched the video and it made me sick. That is a little girl with a broken heart. I don’t care what she was wearing or what her makeup looked like. I was so grossed out by the hateful, ignorant comments that people left on youtube about this video. Is that all anyone can see? Her furious father, a low cut top, lots of makeup? It’s so easy to pick on someone when you don’t have to look them in the eye or see how things work inside their home.