I read the article cited below, and couldn't help but think about the stuff that's on, well, any young man's computer if he has an account on MySpace.com.
LITITZ, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- The images are disturbing: A 14-year-old girl in various stages of undress; two gun-toting young men making plans to break into a house and kill everyone inside.According to a court affidavit, police found the images on computers belonging to David Ludwig, the 18-year-old Pennsylvania man charged with shooting his girlfriend's parents and fleeing the state with her.
CNN.com - Police: Ludwig's computers hold crime plans - Nov 19, 2005
I took a look at my son's MySpace space -- with his permission. The pictures that these girls post to his site are, well, pictures of young women in various stages of undress. None of them are nude. But they are deliberately sexy.
The girls are taking these photos, and the girls are sending them to young men they do not necessarily know. And I have no idea how old these girls actually are. They may well be thirteen, fourteen years old.
So is Ludwig's collection -- the pics on his 'puter are of the GF whose parents he offed -- truly "disturbing"?
NB: I am NOT attempting to defend this guy's crime.
Yep, some of my daughters' friends--some as young as 11--have sexsay pics posted up for anyone to look at or copy to their own myspace (or wherever). My kids have "regular" photos up, but pervs will find something sexy about who-knows-what anyway. And normal-ish men who want to look at pics of teenaged girls? Eh. Now pics of guns or plans to commit crimes is a different thing. If I saw that on one of my kids' friend's sites, I'd be upset.
If I'd had myspace type stuff available when I was a kid, I'd have put bomb plans and killing lists and purty girls and everything on it, just expressing my inner teenage self. Give a kid a hint of that stuff, and riffing on it is normal. It seems the press wants to sensationalize and the police want to cover their ass and the parents want to be shocked - so to stay out of trouble a normal teen has to be concerned what adults will think. But teens aren't like that. Molehill to mountain is what I say. The kid fucked up really really bad but some of the stuff on his computer indicates nothing.
Some of the other stuff, though - videos of him and his creepy friend planning to kill people - making a video about that is seriously twisted. What an attestment to home schooling.
I know enough people who homeschool who aren't loons that I can't say that Ludwig's vids are tied. Seems more like, based on the stuff in the article, the whole Ludwig family and those he hung out with were into the whole being armed, everyone's a potential enemy kind of thing.
'course, a lot of THOSE kindsa nutcases are homeschoolers, so I can kinda see yer point.
The press likes to sensationnalize stuff that isn't illegal nor immoral (at least where pees like us are concerned). Peeps that aren't comfortable in their own skin then feel validated when the press reports on something they are uncomfortable with.
Aw, fuck! PEEPS, not pees.
I really didn't have a point, I was just kicking homeshooling because I could.