Underaged brother

While I forget the lady's name, I recall reading about her in Morgan Spurlock's book "Do Not Eat This Book", which is the accompaniment to his film "Supersize Me", which I'm sure you're all familliar with.

Morgan was shocked by this case at first, until he discovered three facts; the coffee in question was about 20 degrees hotter than MacDonald's website said it should be, the lady in question was in her 80s and she suffered third degree burns to her legs. He goes on to talk about those two fat girls who sued MacDonalds for making them fat. At first, he says, he too thought it was frivolous. He likened it to someone putting their hand in the garbage disposal then suing the manufacturer.

He then goes on to talk about the advertising budget that MacDonalds has - which is about 2000 times larger than the advertsing budget for the 5-A-Day campaign.

He ends the chapter by pointing out something most people miss; yes, putting your hand in the garbage disposal is stupid. But no one is spending billions of dollars a year trying to convince you to put your hand in the garbage disposal.

I've gone completely off at a tangent, I know, but that's what I do best.

And once again, you need only to point towards current events in Washington to prove it.

joeypt Plutonian has not participated in this thread since post #50, which makes this pretty much a trolling exercise.

I cant believe I read the entire thing...*rubs her eyes and wanders off again*

That was pretty much my mother's philosophy in a nutshell. Well, she didn't "beat" me, but I pretty much got spanked everyday growing up. (I was a feisty one!)

ok, its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to early for this, im goin back to bed.

@ Conan: Mom??!!!!

Tell your parents, or get them to tell the neighbour or the neighbour's parents. They are the people who can do most to stop this.

Thats alright because everyone pretty much forgot the OP after post #1 anyways.

There was an OP?

A lot of problems can be solved with duct-tape. A lot...

I really appreciate all the input you guys have given me aside from the post counting trolls. I'll have to resolve to consulting professional help. It's just not possible to stop my brother from accessing Second Life without it. My brother has set the location of his IP to be in Africa, so I don't think LL can block SL access in our house. I'm not sure what LL did to verify if he is of age or not, but my brother is telling me that he has verified his account. LL refused to disclose any information of the account to my parents and said that it would have to verify his account prior to doing so. In any case, my brother is using an alternate account to access the game at this time with the same first name. He knows a lot about decryption, proxies, and coding, so he can get around the passwords my parents put on his computer. If my parents take away his computer, he reconnects it and takes it out when my parents come. He uses my neighbors' internet connection, but I doubt putting a password on it would stop him. Several of my neighbors had encrypted passwords for their internet, but he cracked them and has been using their internet connections. Again thanks for all of you who put your advice into it, but I think the only way to solve this problem is to get professional help. I'm not sure how to fully go through with it, but I'll start by talking to the crisis counselor. I'm not sure what right the state has to take my brother for questioning to a psychiatrist, so if anyone knows how that works please post. Thanks.

Using Second Life is now considered a mental illness?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dmtQ8pKTk0

You seriously didn't realize this thing is just one big, virtual asylum?

Wouldn't that make Second Life the treatment, not the illness?

Then again; I read an article last year that said some psychiatrists consider shyness to be a mental illness. Inter-personal Avoidant Syndrome they called it.

Soon everything will be a mental illness, and none of us will have to take responsibility for our actions because we're sick. That sounds nice, actually.

Did you read the entire thread? If kids went around saying five times a day they're going to kill themselves and the rest of the day sitting coding virtual sex items, there's something definitely wrong.

I would call a person answering that description "a teenager". That's a mental illness too.

If he hasn't killed himself by now, he probably won't. 70% sure. Isn't that an encouraging thought?

If he does though, can I have his stuff?

Hmm...I'd never considered that bling, hoochie hair, particle poofers, and chat-spamming genitals might be an advanced form of therapy.

Have you ever heard of Drama Therapy? Second Life has it in spades.

And your parents aren't getting him help from a mental health care specialist... why?

While you're at it, get it for yourself and your parents, if you are going to blame a video game/platform for merely being a gateway for an existing problem. Seriously, it's not SL's or LL's fault that you're failing on an epic level to help your own family member to GET HELP. All they can do is ban accounts.. which doesn't solve your real problem, now does it?

If you're really concerned about this possible ficticious brother why arent you helping? Posting this in these forums is getting no help and why I call this BS.

Based upon everything else you have said, I would say that the professional help needs to be the Police as the teenager is breaking the law in a lot of ways!!! Stop coddling him and make him be responsible for his illegal actions.

That's why they have a younger kid who's a loser with no social skills, who doesn't obey or respect his parents, and who lies pathologically; and an older kid who's a whining bully that justifies his scapegoating by coming up with a special reason why any proactive approach to the problem on his part won't work.

Maybe his problem is that his older brother is a jerk,

So he drowns his sorrows in Virtual Sex Coding.

Wow, if he's really THAT GOOD in cracking ALL THOSE ENCRYPTED PASSWORDS...

He should be hired by the government!!!!!!

Sorry.... if any of this were even true... how would you expect any of *us* to help, when he's so clever and cunning and able to crack through such barricades?

Although... truth CAN be stranger than fiction.... the more you post, the less believable it becomes.