This blog is called "Net Insanity" but I rarely deal with the products of actual mental illness. Most of the stuff featured and mocked on this site results from some combination of stupidity, eccentricity and the mostly consequence-free environment the Internet provides. The truth is that real, clinical insanity isn't very funny or otherwise entertaining. It's scary, sad, disturbing and very clearly a debilitating condition that needs to be managed or cured. At the risk of not being entertaining, I decided that I couldn't just ignore the unsettling saga of Kerligirl13, an 11-year-old Youtuber with all kinds of problems both in her head and lurking in the background just behind it.

So, what did Kerligirl13, real name Jessi Slaughter, actually do on Youtube? Well, she posted a 4+ minute rant in response to another video, a rant consisting of a grab bag of stereotypically gangsta posturing, classic white trashisms and a smattering of other choice bits of modern pop cultural idiocy. This, on its own, doesn't even begin to qualify as mental illness. Kids are stupid, pop culture is roughly 95% stupid and when the two meet it's a sickening reflection of everything that's wrong with society. The really disturbing stuff comes with subsequent Kerligirl13 videos that get more unbalanced and more upsetting as they progress. The final video in the series features Slaughter's father, who is either a certifiable lunatic or the most abhorrent attention whore in recent memory (and he's competing with Balloon Boy's dad). The elder Slaughter in the video positions his crying, frightened daughter in the foreground while he screams at the camera and threatens all of us punks on the innernets with an impressive string of delusions.

Kerligirl13's videos have all been removed from Youtube, a development that likely has the more irresponsible and reactionary wing of the net neutrality squad in a collective, forum-based panty twist. As a believer in the reasonable policing and ethical filtering of Internet content, I'm going to come out in support of the decision to relieve viewers at home of the privilege to watch an obviously troubled child broadcasting her dysfunction for the amusement of strangers. Between the increasingly violent Youtube videos and the nude photos of herself Kerligirl13 posted elsewhere on the Web, the state finally decided to step in and separate Jessi from her dangerously incompetent parents. With a proper education and some lengthy therapy, the girl might just be able to function happily in the real world.

Like it or not, stories like Kerligirl13's inspire yet another discussion of how modern technology relates to children. It's obvious that a decent parent would never have let things escalate as much as Jessi Slaughter's videos did, but it's also clear that there's no way to completely protect our kids from the intense ugliness that pervades the Internet. The would-be morality police are naturally calling for all sorts of draconian measures against Internet content and access, but these are the same people who thought that MTV was going to spawn a generation of devil worshipers (MTV is now too lame for the Morningstar and yet somehow more insidious). Should we censor the Internet or keep kids away from it? Even if either of those things were possible, I'd still say no. We just need to do with the Internet what modern-day TV news refuses to do with anything-- We need to present its content in context. The problem isn't that Jessi Slaughter posted the things she did. The problem is that a troubled girl has horrible parents and a lacking education.