Well, 8:23 to be exact.  That’s the length of the video that Tommy Jordan posted on Facebook in rebuttal to a rant his teenage daughter posted.  His intent was that the same audience who saw her rebellious rant should receive his video.  In the video, he addresses her rant and as then as punishment for her publishing this rant, he followed through on his warning of what would happen if she did this again – he put a few bullets in her laptop.  Personally, I think it’s very important for a parent to follow through on what they say they will do, and be predictable.  So Kudos to Tommy for doing that 🙂

But then, the unexpected happened – the video went viral, and now has over 27 million views!  This wasn’t something he predicted or even wanted, but as he says on his website “it is what it is”.  If he’d just backed his truck over the laptop… a few times… it may not have taken off, but the fact that he used a gun to destroy it seems to really have rocketed this to the forefront of American consciousness.

In order to get this traffic off his Facebook page, and to have more control of it, he’s made a website for it: http://8minutesoffame.com/

It’s quite amusing the different responses to this albeit unusual method of meting out punishment.  Apparently, words were tried and failed, and other methods were tried and failed also.  This apparently got her attention (a tough thing when dealing with teenagers).

Something like 73% of people in a today.com poll (121,000 people responded) agreed with Tommy’s method of punishment.  Of course, there are lots of vocal folks who took issue with it, claiming that his daughter would be scarred for life, and oh how horrible, etc etc.  C’mon people get a clue.  Kids really aren’t that fragile.  Really.  If a parent takes away something and destroys it or sells it or just locks it up so the kid can’t have access to it, then perhaps the kid will learn something.  Or not, but at the very minimum the kid sees that there is a consequence to their actions.  If that consequence is not significant enough to prevent the kid doing something similar in the future, that’s fine, but at least the kid knows that there are consequences for things we do in life, and that will weigh into the decision on whether or not to do “behavior X” or not.