So, I saw this one and I was thinking is this worse than the blackface incident at UVA a few years back?
Apparently, the reason this hit the news was because of incorrectly managed privacy settings on Facebook. Most of the news media won’t show the pictures, but you can see them below.
They beep out half the stuff in the interview, but obviously this is poor taste. The guy on the phone who dressed up as one of the victims explains:
It’s not that it was funny, it’s that we are notorious and infamous in the state college, so we have to do things that push the envelope just for shock value.
He sounds insensitive to me. Listen to the whole interview, look at the pictures and tell us what you think?
Penn State officials were quick to respond to the costumes.
“We are appalled that these individuals would display this level of insensitivity, indifference, and lack of common decency and sense by dressing up in this manner,” the school said.
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Tagged as: Activities, Halloween, Pictures, Pranks, Protests, Questions, Rants, Yuck
The title of this post “When a joke goes too far” mis-states things a bit. In the interview, the student involved says that it wasn’t meant to be funny, but rather “thocking, we wanted to thock them and thow thothse thix people how thocking we could be” (paraphrasing). I hope Penn Thate thends him a thock of ith own and tellths him to go *bleep* himthelf.
I’m guessing he couldn’t find any life-like fake brains for his back-of the-head wound so used what little he had of his own.
Next time these fools want to shock each other they should use a car battery and jumper cables.
Thocking, truly thocking…
Google search results on their names are forever.
Shocking/Joke/Dress-UP or whatever: it’s all disrespectful
Two other problems I have with this interview:
If there are unintended (though CLEARLY foreseeable) consequences of your actions, fucking APOLOGIZE.
He says that they wouldn’t have dressed up as Penn State shooting victims at Penn State, or as VT victims at Blacksburg, but last year they dressed up as little amish girls with bullet wounds after the amish school shooting? Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Penn State all that far from amish country? (mapquest says 135 miles from State College to Intercourse)[though these two are probably much farther from seeing intercourse again now]
Where’s Harrison Ford in faux amish garb when you need him?
If one were to rank on a scale of importance the myriad social issues facing Virginia residents today, I believe that this one ranks a notch or two higher than alleged deceit by a local butcher and a notch or two lower than loud talkers in cinemas. They’re all definitely in the top 10 though. In that respect, I believe that this site should change its motto to “Charlottesville Truth & Justice, Served Fresh Daily.” Thanks for having the guts to tackle the issues that no one else would dare touch.
The part about how popular they are, and how everyone looks up to them caught my attention. Even had that been the case, I think it fair to say it is no longer true. Idiot…
Here are the pictures and names.
Penn State Students Virginia Tech Halloween Costumes
http://ezineblog.org/?p=103
I did some pretty tasteless things for Halloween at Penn State, but even I never went that far. Almost, but not quite.
What a complete and utter douchebag. The interview only reinforces the fact that they are idiots.
BTW, if there are only 6 people at your party it’s either not really a party or you’re not as “popular” as you thought you were.
I didn’t go to Tech, I’m not particularly a fan of Tech, but some sensitivity still exists. And at the risk of my own karma, I still kind of want something bad to happen to these people.
It’s not that the costumes were funny, but rather the reaction to it. How many people dressed up as Steve Irwin right after he died, with khakis clothes and a fake stingray taped to the shirt? I find it hilarious that anyone would have the balls to do that, after my initial reaction of “aww, that’s fucked up.”
Well, the guy is right. I remember of group of people dressed up in hazmat suits of Halloween 2001. This is right around the time of the anthrax scare and the “new world” that emerged after September 11. I dressed up as a few recently deceased celebrities while a student. Lots of trolls spawn from Penn State.
Ethan, how many zookeepers do you think dressed up as recently-deceased Steve Irwin? I think they would be particularly sensitive to the impropriety of doing so, and these mindless college students dressing up as murdered college students is no different. Dead celebrity costumes? Celebrities live their lives in the public view and have to take the good with the bad, these tech victims are known to us only through the circumstances of their deaths… exploiting that as a party theme is depraved. You (as well as these two at PSU) have the right to exercise the poorest judgment and display all the empathy of Hitler, but don’t get upset when the rest of society calls you on it.
Ha. What about all the people that exploit the tragedy for profit or to further a political motive? Somebody made money from those stupid black ribbons and We Are…Virginia Tech t-shirts. It didn’t take more than 5 minutes for the incident to be turned into some debate about gun control or about the ills of movies or video games. It’s not the costumes that exploited the dead students. Our society already did that. The costumes merely expose the hypocrisy of society.
Ethan, I’m not going to argue with you that some level of exploitation is ok, its not. If some company profited from the tragedy that occurred there and then posted pictures of its execs rolling in piles of money it made exploiting the victims, they’d be out of business the next day and rightly so. Plus those that take that risk and exploit to make money or further a political motive do so for reasons other than simply to poke a finger in the eye of victims families, rightly or wrongly. There is no absolute good in this world, any deviation from which requires the ultimate condemnation, everything can be viewed in varying shades of gray, but these guys, doing this for purposes with no redeeming value are on the darker end of the spectrum.
They were stupid enough to do something so offensive without being smart enough to get away with it. I have no sympathy for them, and whatever condemnation befalls them they deserve.
What do you want, an exploitative free-for-all? Is nothing sacred to you? Your failure to be offended by this is disconcerting.
But then you’re the one who told another villain to shoot themselves in the head,.. right?
Only if they’re a Falsies fan. Let’s not take things out of context here.