For Slain Youth, World Wide Web Of Mourners

[Shana A]

For Slain Youth, World Wide Web Of Mourners
Strangers Create Memorials To a Gay Teen Named Larry
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 3, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203800.html?hpid=moreheadlines

No one really dies on the Internet. A private life becomes public. Every life finds an audience. Look at Lawrence "Larry" King. The openly gay eighth-grader who was shot and killed nearly two months ago lives on.

Larry lives on Wikipedia, where we learn about his tense life at school, the name-calling, the taunts, the teasing. Larry lives on Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, where he's mourned by strangers not willing to let go. Larry lives on Web sites where the 15-year-old's photos -- Larry in front of the White House, Larry on ice skates, Larry getting a haircut -- stare back at us, as if incarnated. Alive.

[Kaelin]

There's a pretty interesting set of articles reflecting on this incident, but a lot of them seem to point back to the massive forces that deal with bullying, discrimination, intimidation, and outright hatred.  Sort of the beautiful thing with the Internet is that it has given people a place to fight all of those negative emotions with love and sympathy, but there's still unanswered matter of nipping cruelty in the bud so that we don't have people assassinating others.