I am reasonably sure this young lady will have helped tens of thousands of worried, anxious teens and young adults, just by speaking her mind empathetically and humorously. Good on her.
This is a very impressive young lady.
Her name is Lucy. She speaks great good sense. About self belief. Self confidence. And not letting the bastards grind you down.
Her entire peer group needs to listen to her.
Impressed? Hell, yes we are.
Also a timely reminder that young people can be inspirational, together, witty, charming and powerful. Which is something one tends to forget as one scrambles closer to being dead. Well, middle aged, at least. So it’s good to remember.
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It’s real. It destroys lives. And you can help stop it.
Almost every week, it seems, we hear of another tragedy where a young person (it’s usually a young person, battling their twin demons of peer pressure and their self-expectations, not to mention their hormones) kill themselves because of the cruelty of cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying is especially pernicious and awful. It is often soul-destroyingly harsh – people say things they would never say to people face to face – and it often spreads seemingly inexorably, backing the young person who is being victimised into a corner, feeling that they will never be free of the curse.
Young people reporting cyberbullying sadly sometimes don’t find themselves taken seriously. “It’s just words on a phone, ignore it” is still sometimes the response of tragically unaware or unsympathetic parents and teachers, who fail to understand that in a world where electronic devices are ubiquitous, for some young people they are much more than just words on a phone, or laptop. They represent their entire peer community turning against them, and often overnight.
In reality, of course, cyberbullying is like any other form of public embarrassment. With luck it can be yesterday’s news as fast as tomorrow. Those with strong self-assertiveness or excellent support systems around them will survive. Most kids thankfully tough it out, leave school and move on. But some will never make it. And it’s those kids we need to protect with all our might.
The best protection for all kids is simply to make it increasingly socially unacceptable to bully, because bullying, like everything else, is subject, above all, to the pressures and fads of teenage opinion.
Even more than listening carefully and intervening when necessary, we need to arm teenagers with the weapons to argue that cyberbullying is never acceptable, because so much of their regulation of what is and is not OK to do or think is decided within their own peer group, far from the gaze of adults.
That’s why I urge you to help make this simple but brilliant video “go viral”. It’s the work of a young friend and work colleague, and I think it’s one of the best of its kind I have ever seen. It’s compellingly viewable, and beautifully simple. Just click and watch.
Directed by: Pat Langton Director of Photography: Matt Langton Actor: Meghan Langton Visual Effects: Matt Langton
Take one minute to watch it, and then one minute to share this blog with everyone you can think of, and on all social media you use. Use the hashtag #cyberbullyinghurts
You could save a life. Maybe more than one. Worth two minutes of your time, eh?
Thanks.
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Unless you are completely humourless, or a fundamentalist religious fanatic of some persuasion, have a long, hard look at this. It’s clever, funny, (in that delightfully witty way that the Europeans do so well), and it is strategically clever and brilliantly well executed.
I have spent some of my working life addressing so-called social advocacy issues, not to mention an active involvement (usually, although not exclusively, behind the scenes) in politics and current affairs. In that time, I have urged countless bureaucrats and politicians to treat the public with intellectual respect, and to use both humour and frankness to convey vital public health messages. Which is why I applaud this ad so much and desire it to have as wide as possible an audience.
I am not sure of its provenance, although given its length I suspect it is viral in nature, if you will forgive the obvious pun. Personally I would run it on mainstream TV in every country in the world.
Let’s just sanity check why this ad is so brilliant.
1) It’s set in a toilet. Why is that clever? Answer: it’s where many young people actually get access to condoms. It’s also (parents of teenagers cover your ears here) where many have their first sexual experience, and not always a protected sexual experience, despite the instant availability of condoms in the location. Once seen, this ad is highly memorable, and will be remembered by the audience at the point of impact, if you will again forgive the pun.
2) It is clearly aimed primarily at young men, who are the sex most likely to try to achieve sexual penetration without a condom. It sells them two messages – first, you are likely to get rejected without offering to wear a condom, (and how brilliantly it conveys the dejection caused by sexual rejection), and secondly the corollary to that message, ie you are more likely to get laid if you do.
In sending this message, it also empowers women to insist.
3) It is aimed at the heterosexual community, the great “unspoken about” marketplace for AIDS education in the western world in particular, and very relevant in Africa and Asia where heterosexual infections outnumber homosexual. In the West, there are a small but significant number of heterosexual infections that occur every year, savaging people’s mental health, their physical wellbeing, and their lives forever after.
As the recipients of penetration, whether vaginal or anal, it is women who are at risk more than men. In sending these messages, the ad is extremely socially responsible.
Young people are going to have sex whatever their elders and betters think. And no, condoms do not make sex “safe”. But they make it a hell of a lot safer.
So bravo, mes amis. And may this ad be seen far and wide, especially in the United States, where the number of unwanted pregnancies, and resulting abortions, are a public health scandal. Oh yes, did I mention that condoms can stop women getting pregnant? Sometimes from their very first, fumbling, uncertain moment of sexual intercourse? How often we forget that simple point.
I urge you to share this ad with your personal network.
Keep the conversation going. Tell others! Feel free to print the article, too.
It's the thin line between reality and fantasy. It's the thin line between sanity and madness. It's the crazy things that make us think, laugh and scream in the dark.
Well, This Is What I Think 