This caption says it all: The people pictured are crying and clearly disturbed because the football season was canceled, not because some players sexually violated others. Sayreville students are equally disturbed. According to The New York Times, Sayreville High School students are tweeting their virulent rejection of the decision to cancel the football season. One 16-year-old female student wrote that venom against first-year students had increased: “If freshmen thought we hated them before we sure as hell hate them now.” In this same article, the Times reports that “[a]nother girl posted a picture of two trash bins, saying it was a real picture of the freshman football team.” Such electronic depravity or “e-depravity” reminds me so much of the angry mobs that attacked black children in the 1950s:
This venom has significant consequences for the psyche, the soul, and the bodies of those who have come under attack. In the aftermath of the backlash at Sayreville, one freshman on the football team told the Times that he “wanted to shoot [himself].” I hope the town, the adults, and the students believe this child because he wouldn’t be the first child to kill himself after having e-rocks hurled at him in cyberspace.
R.I.P. Tyler Clementi and all the others who took their own lives because an ugly, mean spirited, mob using the internet and new technology were persistent in their efforts to kill them.
In Reverie Blog 