Taking a little break from the indie film self-absorption. My friend lost her substitute teaching job today because someone affiliated with the private school found her blog and decided that it talked about the kids too much. Apparently they used words like "libel" and "legal action." Now, she never ever used names, specific places, or even said anything negative about the kids, school, or anyone. She was just writing about interesting anecdotes from her day at work. But apparently the parents of these privileged kids thought their children were somehow threatened by the existence of these anecdotes, because some of them are celebrity's kids or kid actors in their own right, and someone could read the blog and deduce how to kidnap them blah blah blah.
...DID I MENTION THIS IS UTTER BULLSHIT? This is a direct hello to whoever it is that trolls the internet reading blogs, looking for someone to sue and put out of a job. HI. This Is Freedom of Speech Being Exercised. I am not naming names, giving out your phone number, or talking about your dog. I can and will write a book about whatever real person I want and change their names because that's what writing is. Or maybe I'll give them the same name and you won't know the difference because you have no idea who they are. The point is there is nothing you can do about it, mainly because you don't even exist, because who the hell even reads this blog, or my friend's blog, except maybe 10 of our personal acquaintences who don't give a farthing who you are, and wouldn't be able to figure it out even if they tried real hard because we don't mention full names and personal information, partially out of courtesy and partially because our blogs are not really about you or your sad-ass rich person paranoias?
...But oh look! Now my friend's lost a job. I suppose you won't mind if we blog about that, do you? Good, because even if you did I don't care.
...All this injustice in the name of protecting children. What can be done?