Who doesn’t love an inappropriate status update? We all have a ‘friend’ on Facebook who's status we'd rather avoid. They might be the constant complainer: ‘Jane is soooooo over this morning sickness. Today, I thought I was going to barf up my ring.’ The over-achiever: ‘Jane is jetting off to Switzerland to give a presentation to the UN on human rights and woke up 3 kilos lighter. Yay for me!’ Or the criminal: ‘Jane - YOU ARE SUCH A FOUL BITCH. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR BACK COZ I’M GONNA KICK YOUR HEAD IN, BISCUIT TIN FACE.’ (I sanitized that last one for you, as the original contained a lot of swearwords that started with ‘f’ and ‘c’ and actually named the girl that she threatened to beat up.)
But whilst their lack of tact/awareness/sensitivity might be mildly annoying – imagine you are a teenager trying to navigate technology! Childhood is hard enough without the net or mobile phones adding the extra layer of anonymity and distance that allows bullying to be particularly insidious. (Check out Formspring, where you can anonymously ask questions on people’s profiles – e.g. ‘Why are you such a slut?) The writer never has to engage with the ramifications of their comments.
Hortense (a Jezebel regular) tries to lighten things up for us. She wonders how several iconic teen movies would change amongst today’s technology? I started to panic about my favourite teen movie The Breakfast Club -- would the stereotypes even make it to detention? Andrew Clarke (the jock) would video himself taping the kid’s buns together, upload it on to youtube, and would be arrested instead. Claire (the princess) wouldn’t have cut class to go shopping, she could sneakily check out net-a-porter.com on her iPad and no one would be any the wiser. Brian Johnson (the geek) needn't take shop to get an easy grade and fail his elephant lamp task – he could attend any number of software design classes instead and really excel. Allison (the freak) who doesn't have anything better to do could stay at home and play Second Life. But, I truly believe that John Bender (the criminal) would still set off that fire alarm and that means I can fantasize that it’s just him and me at detention and I can give him one of my earrings to wear as a memento. Maybe this new version ain’t so bad after all!
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