Imagine a father gives his teenaged daughter a lovely carved wooden box. Imagine she puts her diary in it, and letters she’s written to her friends, and letters they’ve written to her. Imagine she puts photos in it, and keepsakes, and mementoes. Imagine it’s where she keeps her camera, and her iPod.
Imagine he overhears her once with her friends, looking at stuff from the box, giggling. Reading diary entries aloud, sharing photos. Private things. Silly things. Imagine he sneaks into her room one day when she’s at school and breaks open the lock. Imagine he reads everything. Imagine he finds something that’s crudely, stupidly insulting to him.
Imagine he gathers everything up — the diary, the letters, the photos, the music, the trinkets. Imagine he makes a fire. Imagine he methodically burns it all. Imagine he presents her with the ashes.
Imagine he smiles as he does it.
Imagine he gloats.
How is that different from this?
studentactivism.net 
18 comments
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February 11, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Pambo
Excellent point. There’s been some speculation that the video is a viral ad of some sort. I find the guy incredibly creepy on several levels, starting with choosing to discipline his child in such a public way.
February 11, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Chris Clarke
It’s better than the behavior at the link, because as bad as it is it doesn’t imply a threat to set the daughter on fire.
February 11, 2012 at 7:55 pm
Rachel
Seriously? I applaud that man. First off, this was a very public letter she wrote, and second, she had done stuff like this at least once before. She had her chance and didn’t learn from it.
February 11, 2012 at 8:03 pm
jo(e)
Your comparison is great. Teenagers have always complained about their parents to their friends — that’s a normal part of adolescence. Most parents handle that kind of thing by talking to their teenagers, explaining why they’ve set the boundaries they’ve set, etc.
But a father who chooses to publicly humiliate and shame his daughter, who reacts with an angry act of violence? The video is deeply disturbing. He fits the profile of an abusive man.
At the very least, he’s a terrible role model.
February 11, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Michael Toussaint Stowers
Fourteen million views?
There is no difference whatsoever. In fact this is far worse. What about all the schoolwork this kind ‘man’ has destroyed, all the music, art, knowledge, the relationships which will be damaged by such wide exposure? What about the other ‘fathers’ who might be inspired by this act of senseless violence – and there’ll be a few, I’ll bet.
Explosive .45 rounds? This looks like a public place in a suburban area: is this legal? Didn’t he mention he worked in a ‘clinic’? I wonder what kind of clinic, and in what capacity. I wonder if he still works there and, if so, why.
And he rails about a quite normal adolescent’s rebellion against his parents while holding a cigarette which he doesn’t even smoke. In the UK, I hope, family mediation would be automatically invoked.
What possible product might this be a ‘viral ad’ for?
This is obscene.
February 11, 2012 at 9:13 pm
Meirai
I don’t quite agree with your analogy.
Facebook is not private. Many people persist in the notion that it is, and there are tools allowing one to achieve a high level of privacy. But ultimately, Facebook is designed to broadcast messages to everyone you know, is much more effective in that role, and is far more often used in that role.
I think that context is important. A disrespectful letter, brought out once in a conversation with close friends and then relegated to storage where no one is likely to ever see it again, is one thing, and more or less understandable. A disrespectful message, sent to everyone this girl knows and a fair number of people she doesn’t, and then remaining where every single one of them can see for as long as they care to look it up (longer, really), is somewhat different.
My point is that the disrespect shown here is not quite on the same level as the typical adolescent mischief which, I would wager, every one of us have engaged in at some point. That is why the response, as well, was on a higher level than most of us are accustomed to. While I don’t think I would do the same thing (I don’t have kids and don’t plan to for years) I can see how an acceptably reasonable parent would react as the father in the video did.
February 11, 2012 at 11:52 pm
Joseph G
This is completely acceptable, punishment for undesirable actions is required in parenting in order to raise a respectable human being. I am a seventeen years old, and in no way disagree with the disciplining of the child in this situation. In other words, she got what was coming for her.
February 12, 2012 at 10:17 am
Tom
I think the only form of shame is public shame. If it’s not shameful to others, then why fear judgement for actions called such? Indeed, I would have liked to have seen the father give that computer to a youth, his friend that helps around the house, lock it up, etc., pretty much anything but destroy it. He made his point in keeping his word to his daughter, who knew better than to publicly (Facebook, IMO, is extremely public) badmouth her parent.
February 12, 2012 at 10:38 am
Angus Johnston
Chris, Michael — I absolutely agree that what the YouTube laptop-shooting guy did is worse in various ways than my hypothetical.
February 12, 2012 at 10:47 am
Angus Johnston
On the question of whether a Facebook posting is public, a few thoughts.
First, the dad in the video makes clear that his daughter went to some trouble to keep him from seeing the posting, and that he went to some trouble to find it. Whether or not it was public, she believed it to be private, and attempted to make it private, by his own account. If she had in fact sent it “to everyone [she] knows and a fair number of people she doesn’t,” as Meirai suggested, her father wouldn’t have been bragging about his leet skillz in the video.
Second, he obviously wasn’t all that troubled by how public the posting was, because his first response was to make it MORE public. She posted it behind a privacy wall, and then he read it on a video that he posted publicly.
And this is where my analogy comes in. The fact we live so much of our lives online these days doesn’t mean that nothing we do in online spaces is private. (It does mean that our attempts to keep things private can fail, and that our privacy can be violated, but that’s always been the case.)
If I send someone, or a group of people, an email, that’s private. If I post something to a friends-locked blog, that’s private. If I post something to a restricted group of friends on, yes, Facebook, that’s private. It may be made public later, and I should anticipate that possibility, but it’s not public at the time that I do it.
February 12, 2012 at 10:49 am
Angus Johnston
And Tom, I’m a father. I can’t imagine a situation in which the right thing for me to do as a parent would be to publicly shame one of my children. Literally can’t imagine a situation in which I set out to shame them publicly.
I can imagine a situation in which an act of discipline had the side-effect of embarrassing them, but not one in which publicly shaming them was my goal.
February 12, 2012 at 10:55 am
Michael Toussaint Stowers
Not having children myself I only have the childhood to go on. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, or a nationality thing. And I was far from angelic at fifteen either, and for that was parentally reprimanded by my father as he saw fit (he was an ex-Commando, so his idea of discipline was quite entrenched).
I don’t know. I might be without a moral compass. It wasn’t the discipline that bothered me. I think it had something to do with the gun, though. Had the father made the video and posted it with the father simply walking off screen at the end it would have been less shocking.
If discipline is to be effective, I suppose, the dispenser of the discipline ought themselves to be disciplined. My father climbed the mast of a Nazi fortress to take down the Swastika which I still have, strafed with holes considerably wider than those left in the belly of the girl’s computer, yet never would he have responded to even the most egregious trespass in such a manner.
Please feel free to delete this post if it violates any protocols, by the way. It’s probably quite objectionable to be so bothered by the appearance of such a small weapon. (Or the fact that the thing has been viewed by over 19,000,000 so far, 5,000,000 in a few hours: if only such numbers of citizens could be brought to bear on other issues we might have a better world.)
February 12, 2012 at 10:56 am
Copcher
While Facebook is more public than a diary, that’s more a fact about the world changing than it is about the behaviour of this man’s daughter. Things are a lot less private now than they were before we had these social media sites, and I think we’re still learning how to navigate sharing vs publicizing. This man doesn’t want his daughter sharing personal family problems with her friends online, and his reaction is to publicly and violently shame and humiliate her. I really don’t see that as an effective way of teaching boundaries and privacy.
February 12, 2012 at 1:30 pm
pete
@Rachel I agree with you. I warned my wife about burning the dinner before already (even more than once) so when she did it this time I shot all her favorite things in the house.
February 12, 2012 at 2:26 pm
djschwei
@pete That was the first exchange about this that has made me laugh.
I really don’t understand so much of the debate on this – as in, how it’s debatable. I think Copcher is right: there was nothing about his actions that suggest a response to her actions as benefiting her or as a response to changing mediums. If this had been the case, it wouldn’t have needed to be publicized and he wouldn’t have used a firearm. I’m told, not having kids myself, that one can take away a favorite teddy bear without gutting it in front of the child or can take away a teenager’s right to drive without setting their car on fire. The violence of shooting the laptop is what indicates to me that this was primarily an excuse for this man to publicly reinforce how violently he can destroy a young girl’s possessions – I won’t speak to what I think the implications of that for his view of a father-daughter relationship is.
February 12, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Iris
I will start with the caveat that I am not a parent. So, I look at it as an attempt to exert power and dominance, at any cost, by the person who already has most of the power in the realtionship. The winning, the being right are the most important things for this guy. His interpersonal skills consist of public shaming and terrorizing her into compliance. And, she still has to live with him? I am appalled people think this is an acceptable way to interact with others, adult or child. It’s as though he’s trying to break her spirit. No one has a right to do that to another.
February 13, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Pat
This man is a bully at the very least, and more likely a verbally and psychologically abusive father. It makes me sad to see how many people support his actions.
February 23, 2012 at 8:04 pm
gardengal
I was, upon reflection, very worried about this account. In fact, when some suggested it was a hoax, I felt relieved. To my mind, this type of extreme action just had to be fake. Regretfully, that does not appear to be the case.
Even though I do have a Facebook page, I’ve never really been a fan of Facebook. Undisciplined, regular use of Facebook has been proven to cause depression and other mental health problems for some people http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_illness_facebook_depression.php , and to even lead to a decline in one’s literacy and scholastic success http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-04-15/entertainment/17920831_1_facebook-social-networking-site-college-students . I can easily understand Mr. Jordan’s frustration, embarrassment, and hurt feelings when he discovered his daughters insolent post regarding her home life. Many parents are, therefore, justifiably angry over their children’s misuse of Facebook.
What Hannah did was wrong, but it was also childish. But I am wondering whether or not a childish response was the correct one.
Honestly, my very first impulse was to congratulate Mr. Jordan. After all, I harbored fantasies of smashing my daughter’s computer as well after she used Facebook to humiliate and embarrass me in a rebellious and impertinent way. But after having some time for thought, and hearing of Mr. Jordan’s gloating over this matter, I have come to see Mr. Jordan’s posting of his vengeful destruction of the daughter’s computer as only a Pyrrhic Victory. Mr. Jordan would have been far wiser to confiscate the computer, wipe it, sell it and keep everything else to himself. This should have been a family matter handled quietly within the family.
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with such a devastating eventual cost to the victor that it carries the seed of their ultimate defeat. Also known as a “no-win” situation, such instances lead to outcomes where everyone ultimately loses big in the end. This is the position now occupied by Mr. Jordan.
Without devoting much thought to the outcome, and with a high emphasis on his own embarrassment, Mr. Jordan rashly decided to post his anger on Facebook in a way that surpassed what his daughter did. But did the punishment fit the crime?
Mr. Jordan did win the battle. Millions of parents supported his decision to “put his daughter in her place” by publicly destroying the instrument that she used to embarrass him and his wife. By demolishing the computer on video and subsequently posting that video on his daughter’s own Facebook page, he has succeeded in having the last word in the matter. After all, the daughter cannot remove or alter the page now. Furthermore, as millions of people have viewed and continue to view his video, and as the video or parts of the video have now been downloaded, uploaded and stored in other places, he has succeeded in having his daughter humiliated on a daily basis. There are also hundreds of flattering and unflattering parodies and similes of Mr. Jordan’s rant. Even if his daughter is able to remove the Facebook page when she turns eighteen, the unforgiving nature of the Internet has guaranteed that ten, twenty, even thirty years from now, she will continue to be embarrassed and humiliated. Hannah can never live this down. She will now pay every day for the rest of her life for a moment of foolish teenage angst. It is certain that her children, and even her grandchildren, will see this video. Mr. Jordan’s revenge on his daughter for her teenage rebellion is really quite complete, because his video is guaranteed to outlive her. I mean that. This is now viral, so it belongs to history. Mr. Jordan’s video now occupies the list of the most-watched internet videos of all time. This video will be around long after the daughter’s natural life has ended.
While some might pronounce this notion “good,” and say that Hannah got what she deserved for her defiance, I would ask them how daily humiliation for years makes any relationship better? How is the parent and child relationship improved by having the child embarrassed for years for a stupid thing that was done when they were young? Is never being able to live your mistake down a good thing? If you were a young parent, would you want your children associating with grandparents who took pleasure in humiliating you when you were young?
I am sure that Mr. Jordan now feels that he has won what he wants: peace and obedience in the home at all costs. But Mr. Jordan HAS, in fact, lost the war.
My Vietnam Veteran brother used to say that each of us has to “choose the hill we will die on.” It is clear that Mr. Jordan has done just that. This is a case of “one-upsmanship” that will cost him everything in the end.
Fear will make the daughter “shut up” about her circumstances in life. Notice that I said that FEAR will keep her silent, not love and definitely not respect. Because of all this the daughter will be forced to live her life at home “on the down-low,” keeping all of her feelings and opinions to herself. AT HOME, the complaining about the chores will stop, because she no doubt now fears that the voicing of any complaints could result in further humiliation to her, which is near murder to a modern teen. But everyone must have someone to talk to, so I expect that there will be secret friendships and associations that Hannah’s parents will never know anything about. For example, Hannah can still talk to school counselors about her lot in life. To Mr. Jordan and his wife, it will appear that she is now the docile and obedient child they always wanted. But they would do well not to mistake this for love or respect. Bitter resentment will definitely be simmering beneath the surface, and Mr. Jordan’s actions have guaranteed that the wounds will be salted afresh for years.
For example, this resentment will be sharpened because the daughter will want to get some employment so she can have her own things back, but we all know the deleterious effects that Facebook posts can have on obtaining employment. With that Facebook post up, Hannah will have a very difficult time getting hired for any job. Mr. Jordan wants her to get employment, but he himself has sabotaged those efforts.
I certainly hope that someone somewhere is monitoring this child for the signs of suicidal intent, because the parents will be too busy enjoying her submission to even care.
It is absolutely certain that if the daughter did not have college plans, she will now. She will get the best grades possible in order to be certain to get into a good school, NOT to make her parents proud, but to make certain that she can get out of their home and as far away from them as possible. At eighteen, which is only two short, quick years from now, she will qualify for state and federal financing as an independent student. Once she takes this course, she can legally and financially separate from them completely, and she can bar them from having any part in her life’s course. They will not be able to dictate what school she goes to, nor will they have any right to know any information about her, including her major and how she is doing in school. Sadly, once on campus she will be known once again as the girl whose father shot her computer, so the humiliation of her will begin afresh. That will reinforce her determination to separate from them. I think that they can forget about attending the parent’s weekend at college. That’s not going to happen for them. That will make the hard feelings worse. These parents will be lucky to be invited to the graduation.
Furthermore, the “extra bullet” from Mom will not be forgotten either. This mother has lost the privilege of being her daughter’s confidant for good. When the time for the wedding comes, I don’t think that either of them will be first choices for attendance. After all, Brides can bar their parents from being in or attending the wedding. Think about this: would YOU want a person who arranged for your daily public humiliation to have anything to do with your wedding? In fact, that video posted by Mr. Jordan is certain to be dusted off and replayed at every major step of his daughter’s life. It will appear at her high school graduation, her college entrance and her college graduation, the occasion of her wedding, the birth of her first child. She will be humiliated over and over again.
How do I know that Hannah will behave this way? It is because Mr. Jordan behaved this way. Instead of being the better person, and setting the better example and acting as a wise father by confiscating the offending computer and keeping the teenage nonsense out of the public eye, he allowed his personal hurt feelings to inspire an act of pure revenge. He modeled vengeance, and so I expect Hannah to model vengeance in return. He set a wrong example in repayment for Hannah’s wrong behavior, and so Hannah will learn from that. What Hannah will learn is to be much more covert in her actions. Her parents will never know what she is thinking or feeling ever again. The more forced control they exert, the worse things will be for them in the future. Hannah is not stupid. She knows that their excuses of having done this to love and protect her are actually lies. She knows that hurt and resentment fueled her father’s rancorous act, not tough love.
In the end, it will be clear that everyone involved in this sad situation has lost and has lost bigtime. To me, this is just a clear-cut case of a frustrated parent doing the wrong thing. As parents it is not our job to act on our own hurt, embarrassment and frustration by paying back tit-for-tat. Modeling a spirit of revenge and poor anger management will not make our children better persons.
In victory, Mr. Jordan has sown the seeds of his own defeat.