To This Day

I'm going to step aside from talking about the Harlem Shake and instead talk about the next best thing: the To This Day Project by Shane Koyczan. It is a 7-minute long video in which Shane Koyczan recounts his bullied childhood and how it affected him. In addition, he reflects on numerous other cases with classmates and friends, and how confronting bullying is such a hard thing to do, yet it is so important to accomplish. This is an amazing video illustrated by a myriad of art mediums and narrated by a poem that Koyczan himself wrote. I was awed by the simple beauty of this video and the profundity of the message that follows.

If you were as touched by this video as I was, please share it! 

The awful truth is that out of the millions who watched this video, a good chunk would have been vulnerable to its message. After all, the majority of us have been both the bully and the victim at one point. Or a subtle action or a few words might have hurt someone way more than we intended. However many of us could relate to this video, it is really hard to change people and the way we behave towards others. I would love to live in a utopian world where bullying and the like don't exist, but that simply isn't possible. People (including myself) take too much comfort in being safe and unnoticed by the bullies by the overarching shelter of pack mentality. It is really hard to step out of your comfort zone, walk up to a "bully" and say, "hey, stop that", even when we have played it out again and again in our heads.

I merely hope that this video- even if only for an instant- lets you come to terms with how seemingly "okay" actions might have affected someone, and you wouldn't even know it. Maybe it doesn't hurt to smile at some of your classmates or colleagues more, or ask how they're doing.

Hope you guys enjoyed this video and how it was beautifully rendered. Thank you!

Online "Grounding": A response to Facebook Parenting

A few days ago, a video was posted on YouTube that went viral within a day or so.
To sum it up, a father of a 15 year old girl named Hannah found out that she had ranted about her parents on her Facebook page and blocked them, thinking he wouldn't find out. Too bad her dad's worked in IT for years. Needless to say, he found out about her posting to all her friends about how she was treated like a "slave" because she had chores and demanded that she get paid for them... well, that and a lot of other things. You can watch the full video here:

Now, I understand that she is only 15 (I remember when I was 15 years old like it was yesterday) and may be going through a lot at that age. But in my honest opinion, that really is no way to talk about your parents. What angers me the most, however, is the fact that she didn't even directly say these things to her parents. No, she chose to completely humiliate her entire family by letting hundreds of her "friends" know about her personal situation. And for what just cause? I can't think of what was going through her head at the time.

About the punishment. As in, the whole "publicizing your daughter's life and angry ramblings to millions of people all over the world, while conveniently making your Facebook profile easy to find". At first, although I was shocked at the girl's be havior, I was rather iffy onwhether what her dad did was really fair. Take it from me, I'm no parenting expert but once a video like this goes viral, there really is no turning back. I wonder how this might affect her life?

At the moment, I am assuming she is probably furious at her parents. But I do truly believe that it will benefit her overall in the long run. Help her become a better person. And kids really do need to know how to treat their parents (and others) with respect and gratitude. Trust me, I myself hated doing chores but I realized my parents' selfless contribution to me was so much more that it really was the least I could do.

And to end on a happy note, I hope everyone enjoyed Valentine's Day yesterday! I think my stomach is still feeling a bit hurty from all the chocolates but... hopefully it gets better.

What do you guys think on this topic of "Facebook Parenting"?