Right now, an annoying racist brat is trying to leave abusive comments on PooterGeek—my favourite so far: “niggers stink of shit”. Well, this nigger’s shit hot with UNIX.
If you’re reading this, mate, I already know what school you attend and the name of your head of year. She is going to ring me back when she gets out of her next class. Welcome to the Internet, where your every step to exclusion is logged.
UPDATE: The kid responsible has been identified, has spent the morning in tears apparently. He’s not going to be expelled or suspended, but is going home from school with his dad today. He has been given a talking-to and is going to write me a letter of apology. That’s the end of it as far as I’m concerned, so I have removed the link to his school’s Website from this post.
Maybe it was and, in a Scooby-Dooian reverse, thanks to those pesky kids he got away with it.
Wow. One kid writes something controversial and you guys really go after him. The mob bays for blood, demands a public outing, or at least the knowledge of his whereabouts or IP address. The ad hominem attacks flow with genuine bile accompanied by accusations of trolling, ignorance and stupidity.
Poor old Lone Voice.
Hi Benji. I was wondering when you’d fetch up.
I’ve let you post this one just for amusement. It’s so gloriously stupid. I’ll be deleting any other false identities you adopt today.
I thought the other one was benji personally, the insults which he tries to take back or disavows, the claims which weren’t really claims after all when people try to question them, and the sheer vacuum where there should be an argument of some kind are textbook examples of Mackian discourse.
Speaking of trolling with ignorance and stupidity…
‘he’ll soon conclude that there’s a conspiracy against him and his kind ‘
If there isn’t, I’d like to start one.
Well done on tracking that child down, bet he was not expecting that.
🙂
A more cynical person than me might wonder if “lone voice” was trying to clumsily prod PooterGeek into responding with a post of spluttering pomposity in order to win a game of Pompous Post Poker.
No, i am not Benji, whoever he is, nor am i Lone Voice in another guise, merely someone who disagrees with your heavy handed approach. How old is this schoolboy? 11?, 12?, assuming that this is a secondary schoolboy we are talking about not a primary schoolboy.
His comment is stupid and unpleasant but that hardly makes him the first schoolboy to make dumbass remarks. I used to think i was a Leninist-Stalinist when i was fourteen. Luckily no-one reported me to my school headmaster for supporting the views of people responsible for the deaths of millions.
Ignore him, ridicule him, laugh at him, be rude about him. Just don’t take his IP address and report him to teacher.
If he were in my class I’d want to know. I doubt he confined his free speech to the internet and toe-rags like that have to be dealt with.
( In the teaching profession, toe-rag is a term of affectionate exasperation.)
Having checked your IP address properly now 🙂 , I have to admit you probably aren’t. Sorry about that.
But, like Benji, you’re still comprehensively wrong.
Not only do I not have to justify my actions to you or anyone else, I really can’t be bothered.
pommygranate: “One kid writes something controversial…”
Yeah, all he did was express an opinion (with whose central premise many of us find that we have little basis upon which to honestly say we agree, though none of us, we must admit, has had the integrity to offer one iota of support for our side in this controversy).
There’s no reason to get personal or to taint the discourse by injecting a tone of judgement or hostility. Why, what if this tiny human soul were to feel loathe to share his opinions in future on account of the abuse that was his only recompense for the fragile gift of trust given us by this yearning, questioning infant mind? He, innocent of the depths of human experience into which he has wandered, reaches out a trembling hand, seeking nothing more than our guidance and, because we happen to find fault with the empiricism of his piquant hypothesis, can think of no better way to conduct ourselves than to be arch and accusatory, to pay him not with wisdom but with vile contumely.
O, Sweet Judas…what…have…we…wrought?
The continuation of liberal civilisation depends on evryone recognising that the right to be offensive is one of our most fundamental liberties.
Liberal civilisation as we have come to understand it from our own history also depends on people understanding that there is a context in which people should exercise their liberty.
I assume since it were possible to identify the school the boy went to, this meant that he was accessing this site through school equipment. Are we being asked to take seriously the idea that a commitment to free-speech necessitates the use of resources that are intended to assist teaching and learning should be used to deposit racist absuse on people’s blogs?
Well done! A few weeks ago, while overtaking a school bus, some cretin threw something out the window and bounced it off my windshield. Then they did it again. The windshield wasn’t broken and no harm was done.
I reported it to the school board and asked for the video tapes. Did I interfere with his right of free expresion? Or bully him?
One day they are throwing things out a school bus window, the next day they are dropping cinder blocks off a interstate overpass and killing people.
Why? Because they don’t realize it is wrong! No one ever chatised them. No one caught them or cared when they were young.
Dirigible implies that my commitment to free speech is so mindlessly uncompromising that I would happily tolerate acts of gross personal defamation.
Well that’s easier for you to respond to than actually taking my point that freedom of speech does not require that you devote your own time and resources to assist abuse directed at you that would not otherwise see the light of day. Well done.
If freedom of speech covers posting to a blog comments page, it covers phone calls to teachers as well. We then get to the substantive content of the speech. You are making excuses for hate speech but not for critique of hate speech. Why is that?
“The continuation of liberal civilisation depends on evryone recognising that the right to be offensive is one of our most fundamental liberties.”
Ummm….. has anyone on this thread ever attempted to deny that?
PooterGeek has not infringed his right of free speech in any way whatsoever. Free Speech acts for all. The boy has the right to make his offensive remarks, and PooterGeek has the right to say “This boy must be fairly loathsome and others ought to know that this is what he said”. The difference is that PooterGeek will be able to back up his assertion if challenged.
It would be insane to suggest that free speech means the right to say anything you like without being held to account for what you say.
Indeed, this is a rather important lesson for our young scrote to learn…
Well, it’s likely this kid was too preoccupied with surfing the web when he should’ve been paying attention in his lesson. But perhaps now that the magic of IT has exposed him, the kid will take more of an interest in his studies and who knows?—he might become a computing genius . Okay, okay, maybe not but wouldn’t that be a beautiful end to this episode?
Note to PG: if this story makes it into Hollywood, you probably won’t get a mention; you’ll only be referred to as the “‘blog guy”. It’s unfair, I know, but hey—that’s show business.
Just as well the kid didn’t write something REALLY offensive, like UNIX IS SHITE. In my experience, for the average UNIX geek, NOTHING compares to criticism of his horrible OS.
I was a terrible little racist when I was a kid (as were most of my friends and my parents) until someone had the good sense (and courage) to confront me about it and shame me into changing my mind.
Pootergeek has done this kid a service, he has shamed his ignorant pig headedness.
One Lone Voice. There is a difference between free speech, and going to someones house and deficating on the kitchen table. This is what that young man did. I have a rule in my rules for commenting on my blog and I’ll repeat it here for your benefit.
Good on ya, I would have done the exact same thing!
Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
Urban 75 used to print the IP addresses and Email’s of those who left troll posts. Along with grovelling pleas for forgiveness from the perpetrators as they suffered a hail of flame mail.
Way to go pootergeek!
for all those who opposed pootergeek’s action… Honestly what harm was done? He was just sent home for a day. that’s it. no serious punishment.
why take such a small punishment to an epic level?
Kids need punishment to keep them in their place, I’d never oppose the idea, because I was punished often for doing idiotic things once I was a kid.
I honestly can’t say much because this is my first year of ever having internet, or even a modern operating system above DOS for that matter.
but please take into consideration that a punishment is a small price to pay to teach a child/teen their place in this world. 🙂
Way to go pootergeek!
for all those who opposed pootergeek’s action… Honestly what harm was done? He was just sent home for a day. that’s it. no serious punishment.
why take such a small punishment to an epic level?
Kids need punishment to keep them in their place, I’d never oppose the idea, because I was punished often for doing idiotic things once I was a kid.
I honestly can’t say much because this is my first year of ever having internet, or even a modern operating system above DOS for that matter.
but please take into consideration that a punishment is a small price to pay to teach a child/teen their place in this world. 🙂
(just look at the time. It took forever to read all of those posts XD)