April 19, 2007

Stunned

A deranged young man shoots 32 people dead on a university campus. Among the dead is a young woman, an architecture student from India called Minal Panchal. Turns out she was on Orkut, and people have been flooding there to leave messages in her Orkut scrapbook.

You know, "May your soul rest in peace", "Wish your family the strength to bear your loss" and the like: sad messages at a time when words fail us all.

But if you page through the entire list of such messages (which I did when it was very much shorter than it is now), you will find one that is substantially different from the others. (Sorry, I don't know any way to point directly to it except for you to page through them all).

It reads "May I **** you in peace".

(That's a four-letter word familiar to all. It's not because I'm a prude that I've *-ed it out, but because the crude offensiveness of this message left me stunned).

Why would someone leave a message like that? I have no idea.

Who would leave a message like that? This person.

***

Update: Apparently I was wrong, I can point you to it. You can see the message in the middle of this page in Minal Panchal's scrapbook.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

if you go to the orkut page to sign in, one of things you will see is a link to 'keep orkut beautiful'. indeed. am headed to that page now to see wat sugestions the orkut people have.

Shuchi Grover said...

Dilip, your links to Minal Panchal's orkut account don't work anymore - it says "This profile has been deleted". I guess it was done to prevent a free-for-all after that sick message. "That person"'s profile has been getting a few hate scraps after his sick contribution to Minal Panchal's scrapbook.

wise donkey said...

Apart from how sick it is, i feel sorry for the person who posted it..must not be a pleasant person to live within..