Friday, November 20, 2009

What It Feels Like to Kill Someone

I am laid over in JFK for nine hours, so surfing the net is my saving grace at the moment. Loving the blog posts recently, but here's something a little heavier. I'm sure you've heard about this murder of a 9-year-old girl by a 15-year-old girl...what interests me is her motive. Apparently, she wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. There are a lot of teen girls this age who get into "emo" and self-expression/individuality through such styles and alternative trends.

But for some reason this case goes beyond a simple emo teenaged girl who cuts herself. How unbelievable the departure is from a few shallow cries for attention on a wrist to a 9-year-old with a slashed throat. Hard to get my mind around it.

Gawker's article, with pictures.

1 comment:

J said...

Yeah, it is pretty crazy. I looked into it some more and found an interview with her friend that claims she was nice, friendly and social...
While I'm sure being emo fed the frenzy, I wonder that depression wasn't a mis-diagnosis, or that other drugs were involved. Last time I checked, depression demotivates you... so you probably won't go dig two huge holes.
Here's something in another article that caught my attention, it's relevant to our "internet as another way to navigate around your identity" conversation:
"Alyssa Bustamante, at her core, seems to be torn between two worlds. She never missed class, was an A and B student and friends say she was talkative, social and liked to meet new people.

Online, though, she rebelled. On Twitter, she said she hated authority and wrote: "Bad decisions make great stories." On YouTube, she listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting."

Bustamante was being treated for cutting herself, according to court testimony. It's something her friends say was a cry for attention but not something she openly talked about."

Maybe this new, two-wold life was too much for her already sick self. While Facebook is mostly neutral, if not annoying, maybe here it served as a wrench to further isolate her emo-expressive side from her "happy, friendly" physical self.