(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm
In a simple black and white set, a young girl talks about her life. On the audio side there is only music, the story itself comes through a wide variety of cards with text that the girl holds up for us. She herself is silent. The narrative is abominable. About how the girl, Amanda Todd, chatted with people online and enjoyed meeting new people. The correspondences evolved into flirting, and flirting evolved into the exchange of nude photos. One day, Amanda receives a blackmail message on Facebook. Either she has to do a nude show, or the message sender will distribute a number of nude photos of her.
Public property. From here, conflicts escalate, which include both online bullying and physical fighting in reality. The blackmail continues and Amanda drowns her grief with drugs and alcohol. She gets further and further out on the exaggeration. All because of some nude photos that were supposed to be private, but which in terms of the network and social media can now become public ownership and thus can act as a means of extortion.
A study recently pointed out that every tenth Norwegian child aged 12 – 16 years has sent nude pictures of himself over the net.
The Holten example. In Denmark we saw an example of the conflict in the case of Emma Holten. Holten's ex-girlfriend had, as a vengeance, distributed a number of nude photos of the young woman against her will. Recognizing that she would never be able to remove these photos, Emma Holten chose a somewhat unconventional solution; namely, to create a series of nude photos of themselves, distribute them online, in order to retrace the narrative of their body. A bold move that will probably be the fewest in the world, and which certainly will not be the optimal solution for quite a few.
Tragedy. A study recently pointed out that every tenth Norwegian child aged 12-16 has sent nude pictures of themselves over the net, so the phenomenon seems to be extremely widespread. Young people often do this without thinking about possible consequences. For the vast majority, nothing is likely to happen, but for some it will go as it did Amanda Todd – questioning whether it now always makes sense to give freedom of expression and distribution of free information a right to stay forgotten. A right that might have saved Amanda Todd's life. A month after distributing the explanatory film on YouTube, 15-year-old Amanda Todd took her own life.
