What a pathetic incident with senior. I feel sorry for her.Happy to note that she is now being supported by public.



Forbes Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/06/21/bullied-school-bus-monitor-video-and-the-paradoxical-public-will-to-make-good/


By now, everyone has caught a glimpse of the upsetting, cell phone video of 68-year-old Greece, NY, School District bus monitor Karen Klein being tormented by four, foul mouthed middle-schoolers. It’s hard to watch, and yet so far more than 1.6 million people have.

Beyond disgust, it’s hard to know what to feel about the event documented in the video. Mommy Blogger Jacqueline Burt calls this “Lord of the Flies-level ‘bullying,’” and I think that’s an apt reference. Klein, herself, says that the kids never gave her trouble individually—only as a pack. Her composure, her lack of reaction to the cruelty of their words, is both heroic and pathetic. Heroic because she maintained her adult role and responsibilities under relentless provocation, but pathetic because, her caution was also influenced by poverty and fear. “ I probably would have been fired,” she told Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends, if she had responded in any kind of physical way, and she couldn’t afford that.

So, watching the video becomes a kind of exercise in empathy—but for one thing. Although we feel Klein’s pain and we squirm, wanting her to react and put the kids in their place somehow, we are also watching a video taken by one of the bullies himself. Here is where our emotional wires get crossed. The boy with the cell phone must have intended the video as a document of humiliation.

And, it is also important to realize that of the 1,656,318 people who have watched the video on YouTube, 13,712 have disliked it, but 1,015 have liked it. Given that some viewers may have confused the YouTube “like/dislike” with the monolithic Facebook “like,” and really meant to say that they “like” the fact that this video was presented as a stand against hate—some viewers are “like” the kid who shot the video and actually find it funny. The paradox is that this video represents different things to different people.

Somewhat like the KONY 2012 video, this kind of strong moral ambiguity produces strong reactions. According to BetaBeat, “A Ukranian nutritionist named Max Sidorov started an Indiegogo campaign with a goal of $5,000 for Ms. Klein to help raise money for a much-needed vacation following the incident. As of this writing, the campaign had raised over $175,000.” [At this moment the fund has raised $283,944 and is still open for 29 days] A lot of the success of the campaign owes to Sidorov’s standing on Reddit. He posted this yesterday and it now has 1632 “points.”

That someone named Case Prince has set up an indiegogo fund for Sidorov himself (with the modest goal of $2,500 to buy the well-meaning guy a new laptop) only adds to the self-referential labyrinth of the story. I believe that Sidorov’s intentions are fairly honest, but the viral wave raises all ships. Buzzfeed’s tech editor John Herrman tweeted, “Guy who raised over 100k for a bullied bus monitor is promoting a fundraiser for himself: over 1k. Not how this works!”

But this is how it works. Klein is a compelling character. She has clearly endured suffering and hardship in her life, but never in a way visible to millions of people. Sidorov is compelling too, in his citizen’s advocacy—Silicon Valley style. Something really horrible has happened the reminds us of other horrible things that happen around us every day and we want to respond. We want to make it right.

Does this seem a bit like the lottery? It is, perhaps. But it is also a public expression of disgust at the rampant inequality that is America in 2012. Ms. Klein needs (or at least, before this windfall, needed) her job, as low paying as it is ($15,506 a year, according to Sidorov’s pitch copy). The bullies on the bus intuited her vulnerability and seized upon it, as they would, in another situation, with “the wimpy kid,” “the asian kid,” “the black kid,” “the special needs kid,” etc.

We all know that this is just not right. And although the bullies’ bad humor probably originates, in no small part, in stuff they saw in the darker corners of the internet, and although we are all witnessing this—being subjected, like Klein to this—through the internet, it is also through the internet that we feel we can make it right. In a world as litigious as ours, is ±$300K a fair payout for such pain and suffering? Maybe. But the point is that beyond a few TV interviews and a (hopefully ) short spell as a local celebrity, she will not have to relive this in court to get that justice. The internet community, the Reddit community, the indiegogo community—are giving it to her as an expression of immediate empathic equalization.

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Originally posted by seenimesh

What a pathetic incident with senior. I feel sorry for her.Happy to note that she is now being supported by public.



Forbes Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/06/21/bullied-school-bus-monitor-video-and-the-paradoxical-public-will-to-make-good/


By now, everyone has caught a glimpse of the upsetting, cell phone video of 68-year-old Greece, NY, School District bus monitor Karen Klein being tormented by four, foul mouthed middle-schoolers. It’s hard to watch, and yet so far more than 1.6 million people have.

Beyond disgust, it’s hard to know what to feel about the event documented in the video. Mommy Blogger Jacqueline Burt calls this “Lord of the Flies-level ‘bullying,’” and I think that’s an apt reference. Klein, herself, says that the kids never gave her trouble individually—only as a pack. Her composure, her lack of reaction to the cruelty of their words, is both heroic and pathetic. Heroic because she maintained her adult role and responsibilities under relentless provocation, but pathetic because, her caution was also influenced by poverty and fear. “ I probably would have been fired,” she told Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends, if she had responded in any kind of physical way, and she couldn’t afford that.

So, watching the video becomes a kind of exercise in empathy—but for one thing. Although we feel Klein’s pain and we squirm, wanting her to react and put the kids in their place somehow, we are also watching a video taken by one of the bullies himself. Here is where our emotional wires get crossed. The boy with the cell phone must have intended the video as a document of humiliation.

And, it is also important to realize that of the 1,656,318 people who have watched the video on YouTube, 13,712 have disliked it, but 1,015 have liked it. Given that some viewers may have confused the YouTube “like/dislike” with the monolithic Facebook “like,” and really meant to say that they “like” the fact that this video was presented as a stand against hate—some viewers are “like” the kid who shot the video and actually find it funny. The paradox is that this video represents different things to different people.

Somewhat like the KONY 2012 video, this kind of strong moral ambiguity produces strong reactions. According to BetaBeat, “A Ukranian nutritionist named Max Sidorov started an Indiegogo campaign with a goal of $5,000 for Ms. Klein to help raise money for a much-needed vacation following the incident. As of this writing, the campaign had raised over $175,000.” [At this moment the fund has raised $283,944 and is still open for 29 days] A lot of the success of the campaign owes to Sidorov’s standing on Reddit. He posted this yesterday and it now has 1632 “points.”

That someone named Case Prince has set up an indiegogo fund for Sidorov himself (with the modest goal of $2,500 to buy the well-meaning guy a new laptop) only adds to the self-referential labyrinth of the story. I believe that Sidorov’s intentions are fairly honest, but the viral wave raises all ships. Buzzfeed’s tech editor John Herrman tweeted, “Guy who raised over 100k for a bullied bus monitor is promoting a fundraiser for himself: over 1k. Not how this works!”

But this is how it works. Klein is a compelling character. She has clearly endured suffering and hardship in her life, but never in a way visible to millions of people. Sidorov is compelling too, in his citizen’s advocacy—Silicon Valley style. Something really horrible has happened the reminds us of other horrible things that happen around us every day and we want to respond. We want to make it right.

Does this seem a bit like the lottery? It is, perhaps. But it is also a public expression of disgust at the rampant inequality that is America in 2012. Ms. Klein needs (or at least, before this windfall, needed) her job, as low paying as it is ($15,506 a year, according to Sidorov’s pitch copy). The bullies on the bus intuited her vulnerability and seized upon it, as they would, in another situation, with “the wimpy kid,” “the asian kid,” “the black kid,” “the special needs kid,” etc.

We all know that this is just not right. And although the bullies’ bad humor probably originates, in no small part, in stuff they saw in the darker corners of the internet, and although we are all witnessing this—being subjected, like Klein to this—through the internet, it is also through the internet that we feel we can make it right. In a world as litigious as ours, is ±$300K a fair payout for such pain and suffering? Maybe. But the point is that beyond a few TV interviews and a (hopefully ) short spell as a local celebrity, she will not have to relive this in court to get that justice. The internet community, the Reddit community, the indiegogo community—are giving it to her as an expression of immediate empathic equalization.

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