Just wondering now: what do "Weev" and Jeff Fortuny have to gain from being profiled in this article? Do you think they just thrive on the attention and publicity? Wouldn't they prefer to remain relatively anonymous, or am I missing something?
At work, we talk a lot about "cyberbullying" and how to prevent it, which was something I didn't have to worry about as a teenager. I keep marveling about how, in the six short years since I've graduated from high school, the opportunities for adolescent cruelty have grown by leaps and bounds. Students at my school (and, since it's 6th-12th grades, all-girls, we see the worst of the "Mean Girls" dynamics) constantly find themselves the subjects of "Gossip Girl"-style anonymous blogs, and find grainy cell-phone pictures of themselves misbehaving all over the web. I can talk about limiting an internet persona until I'm blue in the face, and encourage my students to keep their MySpace and Facebook privacy settings as restricted as possible, but it doesn't make a difference. I'm also not sure how much of this should fall under the jurisdiction of the school to protect its students, and how much the students' parents are aware of these issues.
This is sticky ethical ground--my school administrators feel that photographic evidence of a student misbehaving (maybe drinking a beer or something) popping up on Facebook is grounds for punishment if it's brought to the school's attention as a violation of school policy, and they also feel compelled to investigate any rumors of bad behavior that might show up (however unsubstantiated) on blogs belonging to students. I'm not sure how I feel about this...and I'm not sure what this has to do with the OP, sorry, I'm rambling. What do you think?