Today’s post isn’t really food-related, but more blog-related.
I recently read this article on Rolling Stone about a girl who became an internet celebrity.
This girl goes by the alias of Kiki Kannibal. She was only 13-years-old when she registered into MySpace. Within three months, she had amassed 25,000 friends. Now, she’s famous. She’s adored all over Twitter (12,000 followers), a Tumblr, a Buzznet, a YouTube channel and two websites, one which she sells her own jewelry and apparel.
She’s also majorly hated. In fact, the catch-in blurb on the Rolling Stones cover was: “The Most Hated Girl On the Internet.”
Because when you’re just a tween posting sexual pictures of yourself, uploading videos of you dancing in panties…you attract lots of attention…the kind of attention that nobody wants.
Not only is this girl receiving death threats and hate comments every day, her family had to move because of increasing danger against her and her family. A few days after a death threat against her cat, the cat disappeared. Her house has been spray-painted “Regal Slut” and egged. But even before that, she hooked up with a 17-year-old she met online and got raped.
Now she and her family live in fear for their lives, and the abrupt move has caused her parents to go bankrupt. The stress and toil of it all has strained relationships within her family.
And yet…Kiki continues to be active online.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Because I’m thinking along the lines of: What. The. EFF?!
I can’t believe it. I’m writing about this because this article seriously disturbed me. I cannot believe someone who has been burned so badly by the Internet would still be so sucked into it. I cannot believe the parents of a 13-year-old would allow her to have free access to the Internet. And I cannot believe how cruel the Internet community can be.
It makes me really marvel at this high-technology, fast-paced, overwhelmingly public world we live in right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total geek and I love all things Apple and I spend the majority of my time online. But at the same time, I wonder how much is too much.
Even as a journalist, I’ve seen the double-effects of wireless technology. While there’s a greater demand for news and information, anyone can put out information. Now the readers want their news fast, free and entertaining, so it’s a great struggle for traditional journalism to decide how to accurately and ethically deliver this information while competing with the other mediums that dole out news for free.
Meanwhile, there’s us. Bloggers who post daily or weekly, sometimes private and personal stuff, basically trusting the readers with the inner details of our life.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to think of the online community as…well, a community. When I write and post, I imagine that I’m talking to a friend, someone who is nice and casual.
I love the feedback I get from my readers. I cherish the personal emails that I get. I enjoy “stalking” my fellow bloggers and sharing a brief conversation via comments.
So reading this article was highly disconcerting to me. Because I know at times, I do give out too much of myself. Sure, I’ve received a few nasty comments before, but they weren’t so bad that I had to move and hide in my house. But I couldn’t help wondering…if some of the things that Kiki suffered from happened to me…would I be able to stay away from the online world?
The answer is I don’t know. It makes me admit to myself that the seduction of the Internet is stronger than I think. We all like to think we’re in control, but maybe we just haven’t been in that position to choose yet.
And also, even though we are the ones who are creating and using this incredible online platforms, my opinion is that we (as in us humans) still don’t know how to control them.
For example, what do we do about these Internet predators and trolls? How do we bring justice to them, or should they be protected by the rights to free speech? Because that’s essentially why Kiki and her family cannot ask the authorities to persecute her harassers.
And another question: what do we do about the new generation? Should teenagers and tweens be allowed to use the Internet? I mean, let’s face it, they’ve got the maturity of a teenager. That kind of immaturity + the power and publicity of the Internet = Dumbassery + potential life-destroyer.
And yet another question directed at ourselves: can we control and behave ourselves while we’re using the Internet? Sure, the Internet is a learning process, in which you make mistakes and figure out what works and what doesn’t…but what if the damage is too big and too late? After all, anything on the Internet is permanent. Any unsavory mark made on the Internet against you is…forever.
Yup. Questions, questions and no answers. That’s the situation with our fancy high-tech world.
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{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
I have to wonder WHY her parents were not monitoring her online activities much or at all. What normal, decent parent allows their THIRTEEN year old CHILD to post such explicit images on the web? If that were my kid her privileges would be cut off immediately. And sure, I know damn well she could get online elsewhere but in my house? Wouldn’t happen. Period.
I hate to be the ass but to an extent, she brought it on herself. Even at 13 a teenager should still have enough common sense to know those kinds of images are inappropriate for a girl that age. I am sorry it’s caused her and her family so much grief but the damage has been done. It’s time for her to unplug for at least 1-2 years and move on with her life. Establish a new identity if need be.
As for the attackers? Hate speech. We protect minorities and the gay/lesbian/transgendered communities from hateful attacks so how or why is this any different? Being called a slut? Death threats? Vandalism to their home? Lawmakers need to stop hiding behind “free speech” and realize there is a line to be drawn and in her case, that line has been crossed too many times. At this point, defend the girl who made a very short-sighted error in judgment and prosecute all those who committed the hate speech, especially those who initiated death threats and vandalized the home.
It’s a tragic case and I hope EVERY parent with teens/tweens reads her story. I am an adult and can choose what I will and will not put on the net. I am capable of handling the consequences. A teenager? Not so much. And unfortunately their actions not only destroy their lives but it also destroys the lives of their parents and takes away everything they’ve ever worked for. Fair? Definitely not.
Wow, great comment, Kim. Agree, agree, agree.
Geez. 1) I gotta repeat it: what the heck is going on with her parents? I know that parents have no way of knowing their child’s every move but once the threats and the vandalism and general harassment were made known, why didn’t they step in? Were they the type that just want to be their kid’s “friends”? How could you go bankrupt from the whole debacle and not say enough is enough? I should stop there. This just blows my mind.
2) As for those anonymous (or not) harassers, it’s sad how easy the internet has made it for anyone to have a certain anonymity. At a former job, one of my roles was to do customer service via chat. Every so often you get someone who is lewd, rude or downright viscous. 99.9% of people who leave nasty comments or trash talk via the internet would never actually say those things face to face.
3) We DO need to remember that even though our blog community may feel “safe” we need to remember that ANYONE can access our blogs so we have to be careful what we post. Things like this make me grateful that my blog is small.
I was seriously just thinking this the other day. How everything I say on my blog is forever public information. I kind of got a small sense of how celebrities must feel every single day of their lives. We always say that they choose that life for themselves, but then again, so do we. We choose what we say, what we do, and how we share that with people.
I heard about this story and it broke my heart. But it also made me think twice about what I post.
It’s funny…when I was 10, my stepdad was ALWAYS telling me I’d wind up raped and murdered if I so much as revealed my first name on the internet. Now with Facebook, Paypal, and blogs, we give out tons of personal information. I guess high exposure can also bring about a sense of safety (and the fact it’s been scientifically proven people think the world is more dangerous than it actually is), but there’s always the rare case like Kiki.
Honestly, she makes me sad. She has no real life identity so the only way she exists is through HTML coding and Java script. People think they are invincible on the internet. Lies. One just has to strike the weaker person behind the Profile pic.
But what makes me sick is the cat. Who the fuck kills a cat just because a girl posts slutty videos?
But yeah, those parents need an ass-whupping. I’m all for hands-off parenting if it suits the child’s personality (some need firmer hands) but letting it get to this point was crazy. The girl did bring it on herself, but she was also an unsocialized teenager at the time. Most kids are by and large stupid, but “righteous punishment” for stupidity is equally stupid.
These are tough questions that I don’t know if I have a definitive answer to…it’s a pretty complicated issue. I think part of this is why even though I am pretty open in many of my posts on my blog, I’m still really guarded. The internet is a scary place, but it’s not going anywhere. I think it’s the individual’s resposability to self-regulate. However, I did read a research report saying that 40% of children under 12 are exposed to explicit material on the internet on accident. So I don’t know. Like I said, there’s no easy answer!
I read the article after you posted it on Facebook, and it is completely shocking. She’s obviously a smart girl, seeing that she got her GED at 15, so how is it possible that she could be so clueless about the ramifications of putting her scantily clad, prepubescent body out for all to see? The Internet is truly an addiction. She’s destroyed her family’s sense of well-being and run them into the ground, and yet she still can’t drag herself away from the computer screen. And now, she has an article in a major magazine devoted to her. Yeah, that current picture along with her story is SURE to keep her anonymous and safe in her new town. Ugh.
The thing is smart does not equal wise. You can have an IQ of 380 and still do stupid things.
Things like this (and the occasional hostile stalker who tries to goad me but doesn’t get past my comment moderator – my husband) are why I don’t put my face on my blog. I wish I’d never revealed my full name, but that boat has sailed.
Orchid64 » Oh man…what happened? I think I remember reading an article on you; a friend of mine introduced me to your blog bc she knows I have a fetish for Japanese snacks. I hope everything is fine now though!
Fortunately, my stalkers remain “cyber stalkers”. Mainly, they send me nasty e-mail messages or leave horrible comments attacking my character (baseless assertions based on their twisted or distorted conclusions of what I’ve said – inferring a great deal, and always the worst). They always do it behind the veil of anonymity (fake I.D.s) and one of them set up a bunch of sock puppets to make critical comments under various aliases.
It’s not the worst that can happen by a long shot, of course, but being assaulted verbally by people keeps your walls up when it comes to things like revealing your face on-line. The last comment I got from one of the stalkers was vaguely threatening, but nothing overt. People out there need to be angry at someone or something, and they will choose a target and keep shooting at it to exorcise their demons. If you ignore them long enough, they grow bored and go away, at least for awhile. Sometimes they drift back, and sometimes they grow up a little and move on.
You’d think that the impersonal nature of what I write would dissuade people from personal attacks, but people can take issue with the smallest thing if they’re dead set on doing so. Fortunately, the place where I live is huge and it’s hard to find me, even as a rare foreigner in a place with relatively few of them.
That’s pretty bad parenting if the kid is still allowed online. I’m not blaming the parents, but they need to get her off the web if she’s already caused them to go bankrupt! So selfish of her.
I try to be careful about the internet, you just never know who could find you. The greatest stalkers don’t need that much information to be able to figure out where you are at one point of your day, and learn more from that. Scary, I know, but it’s reality.
Oh, my gosh! I hadn’t heard about this girl until now, and I am very disturbed. Where on earth are the parents!!?? Why aren’t they putting a stop to this!!??
Poor, un-parented girl.
Rape is NEVER the victim’s fault. NEVER. End of story. One does not bring rape upon one’s self, no matter how one dresses. It is never okay to harass, insult, or rape someone no matter what the other person has done. She did not bring it upon herself, but people have failed to teach their sons and daughters that rape is never okay. Of course, I agree that her parents also failed at protecting her by allowing her to post those kinds of pictures. I would put the blame on the parents and the perpetrators-not on her.
The Social Network is a brilliant movie. One of my favorite lines in the movie is when Mark’s Ex tells him, “The internet is written in ink”. Its safer to actually tell someone in person something hateful. But on the internet? its there forever. I read a blog of an old woman (like 70 plus) and someone in the comment section called her a moron. No one is immune. Whether your blog is unicorns and fairies or if your blog is filled with racism and violence, someone, somewhere, will find a reason to hate you. Sometimes, we just need to get some balls, bite the upper lip, and keep doing our thing. Because if all the haters out there, there is a lot of love too.
Are we twins? I was just thinking about that line from The Social Network while I was writing this, but left that part out because I wasn’t sure anyone would get that sentence.
Like what you said about there being love, too.
Love you!
P.S. I meant that in a non-lesbian way, of course.
So I tried to read the article and got up to the point where her parents were letting her date that guy, and I just couldn’t keep reading it. It made me feel too sick.
The internet and the blogging community is a HUGE part of my life, and I just can’t imagine it turning on me like that. But honestly, I think that if it gave me that much pain and so little support…I don’t know that I would keep on with it.
Wow, just wow. You’re right, there are so many unanswered questions…in the end though, it really is a horribly sad thing that it had to come to this. You bring up a really good point, Sophia…if that happened to one of us, would we still use the internet?
How the hell do parents let their 13 year old daughter do that is THE questions! We bought Hannah a laptop when she was 13 – we installed software, so I could log onto a site and it would be like I was standing behind Hannah’s shoulders – every key stroke was recorded. I wasn’t too worried about what Hannah would do, but what other weirdos might send her – I am proud to say that she mostly used her computer for school – there were a couple suggestive pictures she took at age 14, that I convinced her I found “on-line” so she wouldn’t know about the software.
She’s now 19 and survived her teenage years on the internet – whew! And to think, when I was 16 I was so excited to have and extension of my parents phone in my room – I thought that was high tech!
Great post Sophia!
I used to myspace a lot and I remember Kiki Kannibal. It is insane how we put ourselves out there on the internet. You bring up an excellent point.
Honestly, you would never have to worry about receiving death threats or getting raped. You’re not an idiot. Pre-social media stupid people were taken advantage of and that’s not going to change as technology progresses. It’s all about making smart choices and having a healthy support system.
I never heard about her, but that’s disturbing to hear that she’s 13! I’m not going to lay all the blame on one person here, because clearly there’s a lot of messed up people involved but her parents really should have been the one to A.) monitor what she was doing online and B.) after all of these threats started happening delete all of her “sites” completely. That’s just protecting and caring for kid 101. They should have called child survices or something!
Wow, I hadn’t heard about any of this. But seriously — what are her parents thinking??? 13 years old is WAYYYYYY to young to have free access to her own computer to be able to create accounts like that. And to have cameras and video cameras unmonitored to take pics/tape sleezy poses/dances. I just can’t believe that AFTER all of this and their discovery of her actions and their consequences they’re STILL allowing her to continue to be active online.
J and I have talked about this very thing before. Our kids will have restricted access to the Internet in a centrally located computer (ie: living room) until they’re old enough to be trusted w/ one in their room. And even then, we’ll do some sort of babysitter Internet security thing to block the hardcore stuff. Kids need to be kids, you can’t hand them a laptop and say “here — go discover XXX stuff and meet a child molester and post pics of yourself bent over w/ your boobs hanging out.” Yes you have to trust them once they start to become teenagers and older, but trust is earned and goes hand in hand w/ maturity levels as well. Slowly introduce stuff at an age-appropriate time. 13 is too young to even know about raunchy pics, in my opinion. I was probably still giggling over JTT and secretly playing w/ Barbies at that age.
aahhhh this is just too crazy! but it’s really the world we live in!! I know we shouldn’t criticize anyone, especially when we don’t know them. Perhaps the teen just went through some trauma as a young little girl–and from what we READ the parents may have taken the “permissive parent” approach? even then, boundaries and boundaries and she should have that. I’m definitely not an expert and don’t have a child–yet! but it seems that not being on your children’s back all the time, yet setting healthy boundaries and MORAL/VALUE TEACHING is sooooooooo important! Without a healthy example of morals and world values, the child has nothing. I hope healing comes to this family!
Well. That girl’s mother doesn’t sound like the kind of decent, hard-working Midwestern soccer moms I grew up knowing! I’m ashamed she was labeled as Midwestern:P
Phew it took quite awhile to read that article; how had I not heard of this young lass? Oh wait, I guess it’s cause I’m not 15 or a creep.
I worry about putting too much on the Internet all the time. And yet I can’t seem to stop myself. I think that if I was to do it all over again I might have a blog minus pictures of me and the family. But I don’t know how well that would do??
Poor girl…it sounds like she’s definitely in over her head.
File that under “ignorance is bliss”
Yes, HIGHLY disturbing.
WE live in a very interesting time in terms of what social media will bring. It is downright scary.
I mean, this is what I call EVIL. All this craziness.
God will prevail, I know. Parenting is so vital.
Still, when I see tweens texting eachother in the same room? Scary.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I’m sorry. She did WHAT? And got WHAT? Schadenfreude what?
I’m sending my kid to Taebaek without a cell phone has soon as he’d old enough to impregnant someone. Internet is DANGEROUS.
PS: I’m hurt you didn’t reply my email Sophia.. Really, really BUTT HURT.
Oh shoot, sorry! I’ve been running around all week and I did read your email on my iPhone and was planning to reply but it slipped my mind. I wouldn’t have been able to go though, as I don’t have a car. Yet.
I hope that didn’t traumatize you…didn’t mean to ignore your email! :-p
Haha! No worries. Someone came via public transpo. The locale was right on top of a Red Line stop. Sucks you couldn’t join us, it was rather fun, think you woulda enjoyed. Next time!
You know I only heard about her because of the cover and it’s amazing how many people hate her. I feel bad for her and she is really young and I’ve seen adults act kind of similarly. It’s just so much easier to be nasty about someone on the internet
I used to frequent Myspace as a teenager and used to follow Kiki (I’ll admit I thought I was pretty scene myself)
She was actually a horribly arrogant young girl, whom accused people of copying her… bullied people online and got her “followers” to target people she disliked. She credited herself- a 13 year old girl- of creating the entire scene and harrassed anyone else that had stripes in their hair, liked hello kitty and other such nonsense.
Myspace blocked her account for creating so many problems.
I don’t know her well enough to know if any of her story is even true or exaggerated, she did like to attention seek online.
I notice how it didn’t mention the many other older boyfriends she had after this one? And the videos she posted of her, her little sister and a group of guys trashing a hotel room?? She’s not as innocent and sweet as she pretends to be.
The article has some terribly huge holes in it and being a horrible little girl doesn’t mean she deserved any of what happened to her if it is true.
(Also not referring to your article, but the Rolling Stones feature)
As a mother with child the same age as Kiki Kannibal I was disturbed as how the parents allowed their daughter at thirteen pose in underwear, scantily clothes and such in high sexual way on the internet and then allow her to have a older boyfriend. They brought this all on themselves yet the rollingstone article allows them to blame everyone else to cover up their horrible parenting. There is a YouTube video going around where the mom is filmingand encouraging Kiki getting a hip piercing. You would think they learned their lesson but the daughter are trying to capitalize on their meager fame.