Racking up over 3.5 million views on YouTube over the last 48 hours, a North Carolina man named Tommy Jordan, father of a fifteen-year old teenage girl named Hannah, decided to respond to his daughter’s complaints about their family life. His daughter posted a lengthy rant about her parents on Facebook and attempted to hide the post with the privacy settings Facebook provides for all users. However, her father somehow ended up with a copy to her diatribe and decided to film a video response called “Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen”. He had recently spent over $100 as well as several hours of his time upgrading her laptop, thus the actions on the video were very much an emotional response to what he perceived was a lack of gratitude on her part.
Within the video, the daughter’s profanity-laced complaints were mostly focused on the amount of chores she had to do around the house as well as the lack of money she received for that work. Jordan expressed disappointment in her lack of interest in finding a part-time job while she’s attending school.
Jordan’s response to her sense of entitlement in the past was to ground her and remove the laptop as well as a cell phone from her possession. Since that previous punishment didn’t work, he decided to take her laptop out to a grassy field and fire nine exploding, hollow-point rounds into the black, shiny notebook with his .45 caliber handgun. Not only does the daughter have to earn her own money to purchase a new laptop, she also has to pay her father back for each bullet that he valued at $1 each.
When asked if the punishment was effective on his Facebook page, Jordan stated “I think it was very effective on one front. She apparently didn’t remember being talked to about previous incidents, nor did she seem to remember the effects of having it taken away, nor did the eventual long-term grounding seem to get through to her. I feel pretty certain that every day from then to now, whenever one of her friends mentions Facebook, she’ll remember it and wish she hadn’t done what she did.”
Since the release of the video, Jordan and his family have received an enormous amount of attention from the media and has even received an offer from CBS in regards to some form of show, likely an interview or reality-based series. In addition, Jordan has received attention from the police as well as social services. According to a post on his Facebook page, local law enforcement met with Jordan and social services is interviewed the child today. Jordan posted “Now I’m letting my daughter have her interview with Social Services, so they too can be satisfied that I don’t yell at her, beat her, traumatize her, lock her in a closet without food, deprive her of basic human rights, make her cut the grass with scizzors, hunt for her meals in the wild with only a spork, or otherwise fail to provide for my daughter.”
Comments on Jordan’s public Facebook posts have ranged from other parents supporting the decision to people concerned about the safety and well-being of the child. While the rapid success of the video has caused Jordan to take his phone off the hook for the weekend, Jordan is attempting to use this public forum to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. At the time of this article, he’s raised over $3,000 in the past two days since the video went viral. He’s even received a job offer for his daughter from an ice cream parlor and coffee house located in North Carolina.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
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