If you search Youtube for the keywords “Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen” you will get this result of the video of a very angry father who explains to the camera why he is so angry with his daughter and then proceeds to shoot his daughter’s laptop.
Since it was posted on 8 February 2012 the video has had over 23 million views, and close to two hundred thousand comments that either laud or grudgingly admire his style of parenting or which roundly criticize it.
Tommy Jordan’s video on Youtube
The Youtube video is by a man called Tommy Jordan, who made a video about his 15 year old daughter’s facebook post and his reaction to it. The daughter apparently posted on her facebook page, a long and winding complaint about her parents making her do chores around the house, about how unfair her life was and how she should be paid for doing those chores.
The father’s response to this is to sit in a deck chair and read out a print out of the FB post and then explain why he is so livid with his daughter’s behavior. He then proceeds to shoot several rounds of bullets into his daughter’s laptop and announces that his daughter is grounded; basically indefinitely, that she doesn’t get to use a laptop until she buys her own and asks his daughter to pay for the bullets as well.
The fact that the video has gone viral so quickly and become such an online rage indicates that it hasstruck a chord with parents and kids alike. There are segments of the parenting population as well as children who think this is the right response to children who are disrespectful.
Negative responses to the video
But then there are saner voices who ask other pertinent questions: is a vengeful and violent response that involves a gun ever appropriate for a parent? How much maturity is the father showing by correcting a supposed transgression with a violent and very severe punishment?
Also is it ever appropriate to humiliate your child by making the punishment that public? Is social mediaan appropriate forum to punish your own child? Does it not make the father appear in a negative light as an angry attention seeker?
These and several other questions are being asked on the facebook and youtube pages of the video, with blogs and other publications reacting in anger, admiration or with mixed feelings. They are questions that most parents would do well to ponder upon!
