Internet Fire Challenge Leaves 12 Year Old Girl Horribly Burned and on a Ventilator

cageymaru

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12 year old Timiyah Landers was conversing with her friends as her mother took a nap. Then suddenly an explosion awakened the mother and little Timiyah was a human fireball running through the house. Timiyah had taken part in the new, dangerous internet craze called the "fire challenge." In the fire challenge, participants douse themselves with rubbing alcohol from head to toe and then set their bodies on fire. Timiyah was burned over 49% of her body and will spend many months in the hospital on a ventilator instead of starting the 7th grade with her peers.

"These kids are trying these YouTube challenges," she said, "that's where they get this challenges is YouTube, and they're trying it with their friends." "Monitor these kids, especially with these phones, and if I could after with this happening - my kids would never be able to be on social media. No more iPhones. Nothing," she said.
 
Sounds like some first class parenting there.

I wish for your kids, if you have/are having any, to never do fucking stupid things, ever. Then, once they're 18, you can claim to be a first class parent. Congratulations, you are truly one of the few. Kudos.
For the mere mortals among us, our kids do stupid things. When I was young, I did stupid things that if gone wrong, could have put a good hurtin' on me or killed me.

In this case setting oneself on fire is a stupid thing from any angle. But not from a kid's angle when they see some fake shit on youtube and maybe have something to prove in front of their friends.

Oh, I know I know, you teach children about fire and danger and stupid and don't follow others and youtube is stupid. But guess what, they'll still do stupid things. It's not always the parents fault.
And unless you do extreme helicoptering, which IMO on the whole is more hurtful to children, well you're not gonna catch all of those things.

Instead of berating the parent, I'm glad she openly spoke about it even though most likely she must've felt humiliated and judged by people like you already. Good on her, she might prevent a few of those instances.
 
I wish for your kids, if you have/are having any, to never do fucking stupid things, ever. Then, once they're 18, you can claim to be a first class parent. Congratulations, you are truly one of the few. Kudos.
For the mere mortals among us, our kids do stupid things. When I was young, I did stupid things that if gone wrong, could have put a good hurtin' on me or killed me.

In this case setting oneself on fire is a stupid thing from any angle. But not from a kid's angle when they see some fake shit on youtube and maybe have something to prove in front of their friends.

Oh, I know I know, you teach children about fire and danger and stupid and don't follow others and youtube is stupid. But guess what, they'll still do stupid things. It's not always the parents fault.
And unless you do extreme helicoptering, which IMO on the whole is more hurtful to children, well you're not gonna catch all of those things.

Instead of berating the parent, I'm glad she openly spoke about it even though most likely she must've felt humiliated and judged by people like you already. Good on her, she might prevent a few of those instances.

their needs to be a [H]ard Like Button for posts like this! i quote it to like it again!
 
There's not a single damn thing you can do to stop a 12 year old from doing something this idiotic.

If you reach 12 and you don't know that dousing yourself in alcohol/gasoline/lighter fluid or what the hell ever will kill you then you aren't going to live to be 21.

Maybe the parenting was bad, maybe not but by 12 EVERYONE knows flammable liquids and fire are dangerous as hell.

I personally learned that one when my age was single digits and I accidentally used the top of an electric burner element to prop myself up on the kitchen counter. Yep, it had been on a minute earlier. Lesson learned.

But lighting alcohol covering your body? WTH is supposed to happen? Bunnies and unicorns? My most crazy-ass friends who were absolute terrors wouldn't have lit themselves or someone else on fire with alcohol!
 
their needs to be a [H]ard Like Button for posts like this! i quote it to like it again!
I agree, but at the same time I did some stupid shit as a kid and teenager, with life consequences to deal with, Never do I blame my parents, but at the same time: parenting HAS to play a part.
 

Maybe it's more about checking what kids do with they're free time, what they watch on YouTube and so on

Did I do stupid stuff as a kid? Sure
Do I let my kids watch stupid stuff unchecked on YouTube? Nope
God I hate some stuff on there, probably gonna block it sooner or later.


Parenting is also about trying to tell them bot to get into a stranger's car.
This would be the same really.
Where did they get the flammable alcohol from? And matches?

Also I guess there was a really good reason for that Southpark episode about stupid memes/challenges whatever

lvoq.gif


At the end of the day its tragic and I wouldn't want that for anyone, but you don't go around blaming everyone else for what should've been your parental responsibility.

Can already hear "but think of the children" reasons why something needs to be forbidden or blocked.
 
Most kids I know...know the logic. "FIRE HOT"..."FIRE BURN".... which there for leads to..."FIRE HURT"....

Its cave man knowledge.
A 7th grader should know damn well that fire is going to hurt.

And it's not YouTube specifically, it's anywhere the videos of dumbasses doing stupis crap can be uploaded.
Which is almost every where.
 
Where did they get the alcohol and matches? Come on. The kid is 12.

The alcohol is in the medicine cabinet. It's good for cuts scrapes and cleaning the oils off your face. Hell, at 12? I was using alcohol all the time to clean off CPUs for replacing thermal paste.

And matches? Lighters, matches and BBQ lighters are in the pantry... where they belong... so we can start the BBQ... or the burn pile... or whatever.

When the kid is between 0 and 4 years old you can put dangerous stuff up higher but 12 !?!?! If you have to hide bathroom alcohol and lighters from a 12 year old you have other bigger problems you were already aware of before whatever it was happened.
 
Maybe it's more about checking what kids do with they're free time, what they watch on YouTube and so on

Did I do stupid stuff as a kid? Sure
Do I let my kids watch stupid stuff unchecked on YouTube? Nope
God I hate some stuff on there, probably gonna block it sooner or later.


Parenting is also about trying to tell them bot to get into a stranger's car.
This would be the same really.
Where did they get the flammable alcohol from? And matches?


At the end of the day its tragic and I wouldn't want that for anyone, but you don't go around blaming everyone else for what should've been your parental responsibility.

Can already hear "but think of the children" reasons why something needs to be forbidden or blocked.
I'm not justifying any of it because it is true that this is stupid behavior. I'm also not calling for anything to be forbidden or blocked, and I'm not advocating blaming anyone else.

The gist of my post is: kids unfortunately do stupid things. And sometimes you can look at it subjectively and say "Well MY kids would never..." just to later on find out they did something else that's fucking stupid, but unrelated. So fine, you get to claim your kid would never do X. Later, they'll do Y. They are learning the world, and they make mistakes on the way, some of which are unreasonable and not-so-smart, sometimes dangerous. It's the way of the world and nothing will change it.

I still maintain that I credit the woman for making it public and reminding people to keep an eye on their kids social media/youtube/whatever. I think it is plain wrong to turn one's back on her and be all "oh that's just sooo dumb, bad parent." She takes a very tragic personal event and tries to spread awareness, and that's good.
 
Darwin, chlorine, gene pool, etc.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes - not to be "that guy" but by the time you are 12 you damn well know the dangers of fire. Shit parent, stupid kid, unrestricted access to social media full of other fucking morons...and this is the result. Maybe one day people will learn.

Just my harsh opinion.
 
No matter how hard we try to protect ourselves from the natural world and its selection processes, stupidity will out.
 
Wasn't this a thing a few years ago? I recall a guy doing this in a shower and not going well back then. Who the fuck brings this shit back?
 
There's not a single damn thing you can do to stop a 12 year old from doing something this idiotic.

If you reach 12 and you don't know that dousing yourself in alcohol/gasoline/lighter fluid or what the hell ever will kill you then you aren't going to live to be 21.

Maybe the parenting was bad, maybe not but by 12 EVERYONE knows flammable liquids and fire are dangerous as hell.

I personally learned that one when my age was single digits and I accidentally used the top of an electric burner element to prop myself up on the kitchen counter. Yep, it had been on a minute earlier. Lesson learned.

But lighting alcohol covering your body? WTH is supposed to happen? Bunnies and unicorns? My most crazy-ass friends who were absolute terrors wouldn't have lit themselves or someone else on fire with alcohol!
Yeah, I was going to say I definitely played with fire by 12, but I don't think the thought of setting MYSELF on fire, on purpose, ever crossed my mind. I guess that's the generation gap.
 
I wish for your kids, if you have/are having any, to never do fucking stupid things, ever. Then, once they're 18, you can claim to be a first class parent. Congratulations, you are truly one of the few. Kudos.
For the mere mortals among us, our kids do stupid things. When I was young, I did stupid things that if gone wrong, could have put a good hurtin' on me or killed me.

In this case setting oneself on fire is a stupid thing from any angle. But not from a kid's angle when they see some fake shit on youtube and maybe have something to prove in front of their friends.

Oh, I know I know, you teach children about fire and danger and stupid and don't follow others and youtube is stupid. But guess what, they'll still do stupid things. It's not always the parents fault.
And unless you do extreme helicoptering, which IMO on the whole is more hurtful to children, well you're not gonna catch all of those things.

Instead of berating the parent, I'm glad she openly spoke about it even though most likely she must've felt humiliated and judged by people like you already. Good on her, she might prevent a few of those instances.

Really?!?!?!?!?! When I was growing up it was freaking common sense even when I was 5 years old that you don't play with fire, much less set yourself on fire.

Screw "peer pressure"... if you are dumb enough to fall for crap like that, then it is either the parent's fault for not actually teaching their child(ren) basic common sense or the person that did it is flat out retarded.
 
Really?!?!?!?!?! When I was growing up it was freaking common sense even when I was 5 years old that you don't play with fire, much less set yourself on fire.

Screw "peer pressure"... if you are dumb enough to fall for crap like that, then it is either the parent's fault for not actually teaching their child(ren) basic common sense or the person that did it is flat out retarded.
You and kirbyrj should have kids together then, they'll be perfect.
 
Doing dumb things is part of growing up. I may have lit my hand on fire a time or two as a budding magician, but it was well researched and I never burned myself.

We had so little adult supervision as kids, yet we made it. I always looked at the ones who didn't as natural selection at work. There's too many people on this planet anyway. Maybe we should stop with all the coddling and get this planet back on track rather than a depressing downward spiral.

There's a reason animals that can't cut it in the wild don't survive to procreate, and the genepool is better for it. Us whacky humans have short circuited the natural processes. Luckily, we're well on our way to destroying ourselves sooner or later.
 
I was watching some of the old videos about the last boy who died doing this. Was I wrong in noticing that they had interviews with him in the hospital afterward? When you get burned over half your body you might look ok a couple of days later, then you DIE when the infections set in. A horrible death too. They don't show that part.

Just because this girl is alive today does not mean she still will be in 2 weeks. It makes me so frustrated and furious at this level of stupid. I'll bet no one ever told her, nor did she notice while looking up her youtube videos of the challenge that getting burned that bad can be a long and suffering death where you get to contemplate it the whole time. Ok, I'm depressed now. Enough of this one.
 
I remember when I was a kid my neighbor kid showed me putting lighter fluid on his finger lighting it and letting it burn off without any damage. He bragged there wasn’t even any real pain.

He told me he was going to do gasoline next. I told him no way!!! Don’t do that!!! He could get badly burned, and it just wasn’t worth it...We were kids, in grade school, but that may have just saved his life because he didn’t pursue elevating the trick. I can see that kind of thing happening, because my neighborhood kid friend almost did it — and it was innocent enough intent on his part.

He turned out to be a good adult. He’s got a nice family and seems to be a nice guy. It’d be a shame to have lost him (or this 12 year old girl) over something you guys are saying is unforgivable ignorance.
 
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Once I took apart my color TV. This was pre-Internet, BTW. I had already unplugged it: I knew about electricity, okay! What I *didn't* know about were capacitors. I proceeded to touch the wrong thing and... I was on the other side of the room and it felt that someone had stabbed me in the shoulder. But drenching myself in a liquid I *know* is flammable and then lighting it? There's no way to explain how someone could be ignorant of what the results would be: not by 12, not by 5, or even earlier than that. At 12-years old, you're probably in *6th grade*. If by that point you don't know what'll happen if you light yourself on fire, then you never will.
 
Maybe it's more about checking what kids do with they're free time, what they watch on YouTube and so on

Did I do stupid stuff as a kid? Sure
Do I let my kids watch stupid stuff unchecked on YouTube? Nope
God I hate some stuff on there, probably gonna block it sooner or later.


Parenting is also about trying to tell them bot to get into a stranger's car.
This would be the same really.
Where did they get the flammable alcohol from? And matches?

Also I guess there was a really good reason for that Southpark episode about stupid memes/challenges whatever

lvoq.gif


At the end of the day its tragic and I wouldn't want that for anyone, but you don't go around blaming everyone else for what should've been your parental responsibility.

Can already hear "but think of the children" reasons why something needs to be forbidden or blocked.

The problem is even if you watch your kids, they're going to be other kids that have uncontrolled access to the internet, and they can easily share it on their smartphones that their dumb parents buy for them.
 
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