A North Carolina father who pumped his kid's computer full of lead and then posted
It all started when Tommy Jordan's 15-year-old daughter Hannah took to Facebook to express her displeasure with her folks, venting in a piece called "Dear Parents."
"I am not your damn slave," wrote Hannah, describing an arduous life of school, unpaid housechores and nagging of the "get a job" variety. The teen ended by saying mom and dad shouldn't count on her when they get old and infirm -- she won't be there. She then filtered her privacy settings so her parents wouldn't see the rant.
But Dad -- employed in IT -- found it, and retorted with his own: "Facebook Parenting for the Troubled Teen" is quickly picking up speed on Youtube with nearly a million views.
Sitting in a lawn chair with a smouldering cigarette, Mr. Jordan reads Hannah's diatribe from a sheet of paper. After putting holes in her logic, he pulls out his .45, turning his daughter's beloved laptop into Swiss cheese with nine shots -- one of them from Mom.
"Kid, you've got it easy, way easy," he seethed, before uploading the video to YouTube and then to Hannah's wall for all her Face-friends to watch.
Was it tough love, or a bullying Dad unhinged? Viewers are divided on the parenting move.
"He's using shock value to get a message through to his rebellious daughter," wrote one commenter on Mashable. Another: "Sometimes you have to do crazy things to get a kid's attention."
Others disagreed, suggesting that one social media rant for another is childish: What about talking face-to-face, instead of humiliating your child before the Internet masses?
(It was not Hannah's first online rebellion; the first landed her a three-month grounding, a punishment that yielded little result, apparently.)
Others were concerned about the gun use: "What is Dad teaching? Will this teen learn to shoot what she can't manage?"
Viewers asked how the girl would study without a computer, and wondered where she'd be in a year -- out of dodge, or dutifully loading her parents' dishwasher.
Was this savvy use of social media in parenting, or is dad a loose cannon?