I think it’s impossible to know who’s telling the truth, sounds to me like both parties are at fault in one way or another.
But I am surprised people seem to think he invaded her privacy. She’s fifteen…she shouldn’t have any expectation of privacy on the Internet, and I think he was doing a good thing keeping tabs on her there.
Teen is crazy obnoxious and “get off your ass and get your own coffee” is unbelievably rude.
I liked it but also think the dad is an attention whore (if this is even legit). I would have just given the laptop away to a deserving teen.
Heaven save me, between memories of my past behavior and stuff like this, I never ever ever want to have children!
That dad is a major-league fucking asshole and a shitty parent with what appears to be serious anger management issues. Firstly, there is absolutely no earthly reason whatsoever why he should care in any way about what his daughter tells her friends about him behind his back. Teenagers complain about their parents no matter what they’re like, and I’m sure this unctuous prick did it when he was her age. He should fucking deal with it like a grown-up and shrug it off, not take her laptop out into the middle of a field and blow the shit out of it.
Secondly, I can’t imagine a clearer and more persuasive proof of the substance of this girl’s complaints than the behaviour this gun-toting ten-gallon dickhead displayed in his video. He must be an absolute fucking nightmare to live with. Everything about this man simply screams dictatorial bully. I hope she remembers this later on and sticks him in a shitty nursing home.
His FB page, linked above, has some gems on it. Frankly, he seems like a pretty decent guy and his daughter seems fairly level headed:
Seriously. I’m shocked at how many people here are on Team Dad; were you all raised by abusive parents or something?
Teenagers bitch about their parents all the time; facebook just allows the injudicious to get caught at it. The idea that a reasonable consequence of that is having what’s probably one of your favorite possessions publicly destroyed by an asshole shooting it up is insane. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here.
While I think the dad’s response is over the top, I do think he has the right to prevent his daughter from disparaging him on infrastructure paid for by him. I have no problem with him taking away the laptop, network access, etc. Kids complain about their parents all the time. But if they are going to do so using means paid for by the parents, don’t be surprised if those means get taken away.
But I don’t think he should have done it with a public shaming. That was a childish response to a childish outburst. It would have been nice if he could have handled it like an adult.
Also, wrt to the claims that dad is an attention whore, there’s this, also from his FB page. Again, this seems rather level-headed to me.
Full disclosure, I usually side with the kid on matters like these. Parents tend to say stuff like “When I was your age…” and underestimate the amount of time and work they ask kids to do. Yes, kids tend to overestimate too, but the number of chores was a red flag for me. This isn’t the 50’s anymore, nor is it the 70’s, or whenever the parents grew up. Times change and they need to recognize that. Whereas you could get away with letting the kids just go out and play, or not give them access to a TV or computer back even just 15 years ago, right now any kid without internet access is automatically starting from an uneven playing field.
Plus, what kind of a control freak disallows his kid to vent to her friends? Tell the kid what to do, that’s your job as a parent, give her chores and responsibilities, but to tell her basically that she cannot post what she made to be a private video for her friends expressing frustration? That’s going overboard
And did you hear the guy describe rereading his own post? He went from either crying or being so mad his hands were shaking. What kind of lunatic reads that mildly annoying rant and can barely control himself?
Furthermore, knowing that he paid for the software and was going to charge her the money for damages, he shoots the laptop anyway. Instead of, say, simply taking it away for a period and grounding her, he pulls out a gun and blows it away. Lucky for the kid he didn’t discover it with her around, or else things might have turned tragic. This is an angry lunatic who can barely control himself when his kid speaks out privately to her friends, and he essentially eavesdropped to listen in to her conversation. He’s the one in the wrong
I didn’t see the dad’s video cause I can’t view it here.
If it were I getting unwanted attention, I’d either block everyone besides friends from my facebook or delete my facebook account since they’re not mandatory by law. He’s chosen to option up for a third one and continually feed the machine by talking to it. I’m not saying he’s an attention whore, he’s just putting on a lot of lipstick.
What a redneck moron. Too bad a bullet didn’t ricochet into his eyeball.
Yeah, that statement on his FB still makes me think he’s a total attention whore. Lock up your FB, geez. And the drama-whoriness of shooting a laptop that could have been given away to the school or a charity or something makes me think he’s an asshat.
Of course, he’s an asshat I agree with regarding his daughter’s disrespectfulness and FB TMI. I’m just not sure he’s setting the best example for, you know, discretion.
You jumped to all those conclusions without even watching his video?
He didn’t invade her privacy, the dog did - see upthread where it was posted that they uploaded photos to their dog’s FB account and she didn’t block the dog from seeing her posts. That showed the dog’s feeds featuring her rant about how her dad is so awful after spending all day fixing and updating her laptop and expecting him to buy her a new power cord and battery for it too.
And really, someone who shoots an item to destroy it might be likely to kill someone with a gun instead if she’d happened upon the scene? Really? I’m not a fan of guns but that’s a level of hyperbole that I’d never leap to. I guess my mother is lucky that she never ventured into the backyard when I was using my Daisy air rifle to blow off some steam on tin cans, lest I try to fell her in a hail of BBs. :dubious:
Yeah, sorry I didn’t do my due diligence in researching the entire backstory, rather than just going by what he himself said in the video, which was:
That certainly sounds like he used his IT skillz to find the post. Of course, now that we know he didn’t do anything of the sort he sounds like even more of a jackass.
While I don’t think he’s likely to run around shooting people, deliberately destroying a kid’s possessions is a pretty freaking aggressive act. I don’t think people would be so supportive if he youtubed himself cutting up his kid’s teddy bear if the kid didn’t share, smashing up a teenager’s car because he got a speeding ticket, or (probably closest if she had pictures and things on it) burning up a kid’s diary because you don’t like what she wrote about you and she showed it to her friends.
That was my first thought. I’d have never forgotten or forgiven something like this myself. And someday he’ll be old and sick, while she won’t.
And why would I believe anything his daughter is going to be saying with a control freak, bully, & vandal of a father looming over her monitoring everything she says? She’s clearly not allowed to to do anything but agree with him.
I wouldn’t be so supportive, because I see a difference between something sentimental or personal like a teddy bear or diary, vs a laptop. I’d be more likely to put a car in on the laptop side of the equation - more expensive, but still totally interchangeable/replaceable.
Quite the opposite, since you asked. What has that got to do with it?
Out of curiosity, are you a parent/raising any children yourself?
It’s one thing to ‘bitch about your parents’ to your friends or whoever else that might listen (and take your side in the issue), but to do so with a letter posted on a public forum like she did, is way out of line, IMHO.
And wishing permanent blindness in one eye (or possible death) isn’t a little extreme? :dubious:
That depends on whether she has all her photos, personal stuff, and schoolwork backed up somewhere. If she doesn’t, though, it will have taught her a valuable lesson about redundant storage. Maybe that was his calm, rational motivation.
Of course she’s acting level-headed in public. She’s seen what happens if she rants.
Or since he’s an IT guy and just rehabbed her system for her ungrateful self, it’s all backed up. Plus they both got a lesson in not posting hotheaded shit online lest people see it and freak the fuck out, so it’s win-win really… 