The recent arrest of Ruby Franke, a supposed “influencer” who spent years physically, emotionally and mentally abusing her children online while we all watched and said nothing makes me wonder “Aren’t we better than this?”
Even her sisters, Ellie Mecham and Julie Griffiths Deru, said in a statement they kept quiet “for the sake of of her children.” For three years? No. They kept quiet because as a country and a society, we’re taught not to interfere with “parenting.” This isn’t parenting. This is bullying. This is abuse. Parenting is a tough job. It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. And in the end, not everyone reaches the same end goal. Just because people have went generations and centuries of abusing their children doesn’t mean it’s right. It’s easier to yell at your children and threatened them with violence rather than just taking time to interact with them through positive reinforcement.
Slavery existed for centuries. It wasn’t right. Women weren’t given much control over things. It didn’t meant it was right. Just because something has happened for so long doesn’t mean it was right. It just meant people were too scared (or just didn’t give a damn) to make the needed changes. Did people tuning into the now defunct YouTube channel “8 Passengers” stop and ask themselves? Why am I watching this?
Some things might have seemed normal like taking away a daughters’ “food privileges” because parents for generations have tried this tactic. Ironically, when I was working in Wagoner, I heard from a social worker at the county department of human services, foster parents aren’t allowed to do that. After all the horror stories you hear about foster parents, that’s something. Now, not giving someone a dessert is ok, so maybe that’s what people thought about “food privileges.”
But refusing to allow her son to sleep in his own bedroom and sleep on a beanbag for months for a prank is abuse. Threatening to destroy her daughter’s toys is what domestic abusers do. All the time she was getting views and probably encouragement from people. Punishing a child who forgets to pack a lunch and not bring them something is abuse. It seems she doesn’t want to be a parent and just have her kids do “parentification” which has been common with the Duggars.
But I think the reason no one said anything was because Franke is white and they’re from the affluent neighborhoods. Of course, the stereotype is that people from bad neighborhoods are the bad families while people from the good neighborhoods are the good families. I’ve learned that’s not the case. Some of her neighbors said they tried to warn police, but I can understand why they looked the other way. It’s Utah, a very conservative state, and law enforcement is notorious for its own abuse. And some of them probably just though it was “child rearing.”
Franke and her podcasting partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were both arrested on charges of aggravated child abuse after Franke’s children were found malnourished with open wounds and duct tape on their extremities. That’s not child rearing. That’s abuse. Hildebrandt is also a reported therapist with a controversial past of discussing patients’ information and creating ConneXions, which some people have said is a cult. It’s supposed to be a support group for mothers. According to reviews online, it actually destroys families and creates problems between children and their parents.
It’s no surprise. We’re living in the digital age where anyone can be famous for anything and everything. Social media can make celebrities out of regular people. All it takes is one video. Look at Tiffany Gomas, the woman on the airplane claiming “that motherfucker is not real.” She’s supposedly a realtor in the Dallas-Fort Worth era. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t begin an OnlyFans account. Not that I have anything against OF. I have many friends on it. Success is mostly a luck of the draw situation.
I’ve been on TikTok for three years and most of my videos only get a few hundred views. Not many have received over a thousand. And only one received over 54,000 and that was back during the raid at Mar-a-Lago a year ago. This blog has abouit 60 subscribers (and I’m grateful for all of you!) but I really only do it so I can give myself something to do everyday. Laina Walker, who became famous in the 2010s for a video she posted on YouTube where she sings a parody of Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” song became instantly famous and was a meme otherwise known as the “Overly Attached Girlfriend.” But she had to leave YouTube due to mental issues, depression and stress.
And of course, social media has brought out the worst in people. While I’ve never really been a fan of Burning Man, I do know that people should enjoy life. The “pursuit of happiness” is in the Constituion. If they want to attend the event every year and have the means to do so, let them. Yet, this year, the event held in Black Rock City, Nev. in the middle of a desert experienced a lot of rain in a short amount of time. In what it mostly receives in three months, it received in under 24 hours. Since there’s no vegetation to absorb the rain, it caused massive flooding. And this flooding caused people to be stranded.
So, naturally, most of the online comments have been negative. Why? Because only rich people attend Burning Man. Even though the weather conditions said it was going to be bad weather, they went anyway. For the money they had, they probably could’ve eat the costs and stayed at home. Maybe it’s showing, along with the OceanGate Titan incident, people are kinda getting tired of everything favoring the rich.
Where was the support when Texas’ power grid failed during the winter of 2021 or when the summer temps meant people were basically living in homes with central air conditioning that wouldn’t go below 90. They were told to conserve power for the greater good. I haven’t made too many comments about the people at Burning Man but it’s bad. I think along with the Fyre Festival debacle, flaunting your wealth is starting to take a huge backseat to reality. (We should really start looking at why these weird weather events are happening, but we won’t until it’s too late.)
I don’t mind people going to concerts if they have the means. I’ve done it myself. But I’m not going to spend millions to spend a week out in the desert. I think we’ve been told that it’s best to focus on the rich because we’ll be rich one day, hopefully. Yet, people care more about the rich and wealthy because they want to sit at the “Cool Kids Table” one day. As John Steinbeck wrote in Americas & Americans, “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
Even though we tell young people and those who are less fortunate to be happy for what they have, they never really focus on it. It’s about having more and more as you get older. You have to have a summer/lake/winter home. You have to have boats and campers. You have to have multiple cars. People can’t just have push mowers. They can’t even have regular riding lawnmowers. No, the bigger the better, especially the ones that they can do zero turns on. The need to be thinking more about the weeds that help the bees with pollination. I didn’t really care for Blade Runner 2049, but I don’t want to lose all trees in 25 years.
And that brings me to the recent death of Jimmy Buffett. While I was never a really big fan, mainly because the Parrott Heads were nothing more than wealthy Boomer LARPers. I mean there’s nothing really to divide them between Rick and Morty fans except their ages. But at least Buffett, who had a net worth of $1 billion, always looked like he was on vacation at a reasonably priced resort/hotspot. I mean, the man wore T-shirts, tropical shirts, shorts and flip-flops/sandals 90 percent of the time.
A lot of people say that Buffett “did his own thing.” But even that has become something we want to market for the rich and wealthy. (See Burning Man.) We want attention and we want people to see us. That’s why people like Franke would go out and post how awful a parent she is. It got her attention and fame…at the risk of her children’s lives who have been extremely traumatized.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 