AskFM Continues to Weed Out the Weak
AskFM, a social site popular with tweens, continues to exercise its Darwinian power by weeding out the weak minded so regular society doesn’t have to deal with them. And its pretty lulzy too. After weeding out Hannah Smith, now the site has caused a second teen, Daniel Perry, age 17, to jump off a bridge in Scotland.
From the DailyDot here:
In less than an hour, what was supposed to be an innocent Web chat turned deadly.
Daniel Perry, 17, believed he was simply chatting over webcam with a girl. But blackmailers jumped into the Skype chat; they warned Perry they’d share a recording of the conversation and that he’d be “better off dead” if he didn’t pay up.
Within an hour of the threat, he jumped from a bridge near his home in Dunfermline, Scotland. A lifeboat crew rescued Perry, but the apprentice mechanic died shortly afterwards. Police are investigating.
“Knowing [Perry] as I do, he has felt embarrassed, horrified and has thought he’s let everybody down,” said his mother, Nicola. She believes the blackmailers manipulated footage of him.
Bullies also targeted Perry on controversial Q&A site Ask.fm, urging him to take his own life. The site is at the heart of at least seven other teen suicide cases over the last year.
Indeed, Perry’s death is only the latest in a troubling trend in which teens feel suicide is their only option in the face of Internet shaming. Tormentors often trick children into posing naked or carrying out sex acts on webcams. They bully their victims into paying up or sending further compromising images if they don’t want family, friends, and classmates to know. One man blackmailed more than 100 people into committing sex acts on camera.
This month, 14-year-old English girl Hannah Smith took her own life after Ask.fm trolls implored her to “drink bleach.” Victims also include Jessica Laney and Anthony Stubbs, who both hanged themselves after receiving vile taunts.
Yep, suicide is the only option after internet shaming. For all the teens that are “An-Hero”ing themselves over AskFM, please don’t stop. Its great for a website to carry out Darwin for the rest of society.
