Epic Win/Fail: Bullied Bus Monitor Sparks Overwhelming Support, But Also Death Threats To Kids

from the best-of-the-internet,-worst-of-the-internet dept

A few years ago, I noted the seeming irony in the fact that there appeared to be a decent amount of overlap between groups of people doing amazing altruistic things on sites like Reddit, while also doing amazingly troll-tastic things in places like /b/. Groups getting together to "do something" are a powerful force, and often are a powerful force for good. But they can also get out of hand, and turn into questionable mob-like vigilante-ism. However, it's not often that you see both such forces come together in the same story. However, that appears to be the case with the amazing story concerning upstate NY school bus monitor, Karen Klein. If you've been buried under a rock somewhere, Klein, a 68-year-old grandmother, has a low-paying job as a school bus monitor for a middle school in upstate NY (Greece, near Rochester). Middle school kids can be incredibly cruel, and a group of kids spent a bus ride mercilessly mocking Klein and filming the interaction. Someone else saw the video being passed around on Facebook and posted it to YouTube, where it quickly racked up millions of views, with tons of downvotes. The video is heart-wrenching for the cruelty from the boys in question. Just horrifying: It also appears this was not a one-incident either. There are at least two other such videos.

However, in response to this, someone set up an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for Karen to go on vacation. And, wow, did the internet ever come through in a massive outpouring of altruism, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day. As of this writing, it's already around half a million and there's still nearly a month to go. That's going to be quite a vacation.

Cue tons of great stories about how wonderful the internet can be.

But... then there's the flipside of it. The part where tons of people on the internet who find out about this story then barrage the school, the kids and anyone they think is related to this with nasty calls and emails including death threats:

The names of some of the alleged perpetrators — all juveniles who have yet to be charged with any crimes — and their parents and details about where they live ended up online. And since Wednesday, they’ve been barraged by death threats and harassing phone calls.

Greece police Capt. Steve Chatterton said Thursday that someone even made a false 911 call claiming there were people being held hostage inside one of the students’ homes. He said officers have been assigned to run special patrols down the youths’ streets to ensure their safety.

“We have a cellphone of one of the boys and he’s received more than 1,000 missed calls and more than 1,000 text messages threatening him,” he said. “Threats to overcome threats do no good.”

Karen herself has come out to say:

“This is going too far,” she said. “This is no better than the kids who did that on the bus.”

Exactly. If you're so upset by people acting totally obnoxiously to someone, there are a lot better ways to express yourself than to call them with a death threat.

Filed Under: altruism, bullying, death threats, karen klein, steve chatterton
Companies: 4chan, indiegogo, reddit