"Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge" Book Review

Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge by Jim Schutze
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Bobby Kent was a bully, —a steroid-pumped 20-year-old who dominated his peers in their comfortable, middle-class Ft. Lauderdale beach community through psychological, physical and sexual abuse. But on a summer night in 1993, Bobby was lured to the edge of the Florida everglades with a promise of sex and drugs. . .and was never seen alive again. The tormentor had become the victim in a bizarre and brutal act of vengeance carried out with ruthless efficiency and cold-blooded premeditation by seven of his high school acquaintances —including his lifelong best friend— and instigated by one overweight, underloved teenager who believed her life would be perfect. . .if only Bobby Kent were dead.

"BULLY is a riveting story of adolescent rage and bloody revenge—all the more harrowing and horrific because its true."

I found this a fast and engaging read, even though it is about a vicious murder. I can't feel entirely sympathetic with the victim, nor his murderers. He seems to have been a sociopath and the rest were not of a sound and reasonable mind. It's obvious from every move they made that they were not responsible adults, instead their parents just let them do whatever they wanted and paid their bills. I am disgusted with the parents a lot more than the actual 'kids' involved in the murder. They should've put their foot down at some point, much earlier than this sad story begins.

*SPOILERS*

I do feel bad, to a certain extent, for what they went through before Bobby's murder. But they could've gone to the police and asked for help. The one girl was raped, but with her past it may have been hard to convince anyone that it was a rape. But then, she could've at least stayed away from him. I think the other girl should've just left Marty and Bobby, and never went back. Marty could've done any number of things - gone back to school somewhere else, joined the army - but he didn't even look into it. Murder should've been the last thing on their minds. Especially with the way they went about it. They told nearly everyone they met on the street that they had killed somebody and that's like the first thing you shouldn't be doing.

I had a bit of a problem concerning the way the author wrote this book. I'm more of a factual person, I read a lot of biographies, histories, and the like. Sometimes I watch true crime shows and that's where my interest in the book stemmed from. In the beginning, there was a pointless part about a teenage prostitution ring, but you didn't really need to know any of the people involved.  It would've been easier to mention that the girl was a part of one at one time and leave it at that. Also, the author acted as if he had been a fly on the wall during the discussions the murderers had before the murder. It was a novelistic speculation of what had happened, which, while good and exciting reading, was a bit irksome to me, because it was speculation and not entirely truthful. Also, I didn't like how the relationship between Marty and Bobby was represented in the beginning. That whole gay-but-not-gay thing that they supposedly did. I'm not sure if it should be in the book or not.

The perspective I wanted to see the most was from Bobby Kent's parents and family. And that was sorely lacking. It was their son who had been murdered and their lives had been changed forever. I also wanted to see how his relationship with his family was and that was barely in there. Those other families, who can't see what idiots they raised, can still see their dumb kids. Most of them are already out on parole.

The ending was rather depressing. These people and their families will seemingly never understand what they did. And after reading a recent interview with one of the murderers, I think I'm right. (The video doesn't work.)

Otherwise, I found it a fascinating and well written read, barely a grammatical or editorial error. The movie is on my to-watch list, although I have doubts that they could make an interesting dialogue between these people, with their "likes" and their "cools" being so much a part of their conversation.

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I give this book 3 out of 5 books.

"We Are Anonymous" Book Review

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency by Parmy Olson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"WE ARE ANONYMOUS is the first full account of how a loosely assembled group of hackers scattered across the globe formed a new kind of insurgency, seized headlines, and tortured the feds-and the ultimate betrayal that would eventually bring them down. Parmy Olson goes behind the headlines and into the world of Anonymous and LulzSec with unprecedented access, drawing upon hundreds of conversations with the hackers themselves, including exclusive interviews with all six core members of LulzSec.

"In late 2010, thousands of hacktivists joined a mass digital assault on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their treatment of WikiLeaks. Other targets were wide ranging-the websites of corporations from Sony Entertainment and Fox to the Vatican and the Church of Scientology were hacked, defaced, and embarrassed-and the message was that no one was safe. Thousands of user accounts from pornography websites were released, exposing government employees and military personnel.

"Although some attacks were perpetrated by masses of users who were rallied on the message boards of 4Chan, many others were masterminded by a small, tight-knit group of hackers who formed a splinter group of Anonymous called LulzSec. The legend of Anonymous and LulzSec grew in the wake of each ambitious hack. But how were they penetrating intricate corporate security systems? Were they anarchists or activists? Teams or lone wolves? A cabal of skilled hackers or a disorganized bunch of kids?

"WE ARE ANONYMOUS delves deep into the internet's underbelly to tell the incredible full story of the global cyber insurgency movement, and its implications for the future of computer security."

You can tell it was written by a journalist: clean prose and well-edited, sometimes I really miss that in today's writing. It was well researched - has a timeline, notes and sources, index, and glossary, which is very helpful as these people have their own language and terms for everything.

I don't ever want to make these people angry; they will mess up your life.

It's quite a page-turner of a fascinating world of people. It's books like these that make me realize how big this world is: I had no idea there were so many skilled people out there. It's funny because I used to think I was computer literate (or, at least, where I live I am very computer literate) but these people would scoff at me.

It does make me wonder if the group of people called "Anonymous" like the attention this book is giving them. It does present them as both vigilantes for their cause as well as a huge threat towards the online community. It should be noted, and everyone should read this book, because of the way everything is going online now, it could be very dangerous for people and their stuff to be online and this book tells them, in great detail, why that is. For instance, I will never put all of my stuff in an iCloud. They can never make me, it will never happen.

The one person that I found that I couldn't sympathize with at all was Jennifer Emick. While I wouldn't say that Anonymous does wonderful things, I can kind of understand where they are coming from - they blasted the Church of Scientology and the Westboro Babtist Church, and nobody likes those people. And when they attack companies, it's like 'well, at least they're hitting the big man'. But Emick seems very odd to me. She claims to be raising her kids to be 'self-reliant' but they are not yet teenagers and they have to cook their own food, while she's on the computer for eighteen hour stretches. She got this idea from her parents who made her cook her own food and pay the bills before she was even fourteen, but they were alcoholics and therefore not the prime example for how to be a good parent. Also, Emick has pissed off a group of people who have no problem ruining her financial life by posting her social security number online numerous times and they have even started going after her family. I am wondering if her kids might grow up to really resent her. Also, there must be something off with her personality because she keeps falling out with her business partners and they have even turned around and started going after her, too. I'm wondering if the thrill of catching the bad guy is really all that is keeping her doing this, because she certainly doesn't seem concerned with the safety of her family. She obviously has an addiction to the computer for one thing.

Also, it's kind of interesting that a group whose basis of existence is that they are safe with their numbers and focus on their ability to be invisible, should focus so much on such a small group of people. Also interesting in that Hector 'Sabu' Montsegur should almost rule over these people so long because he has the same bombastic personality issues that Charles Manson and Jim Jones had, while also handing them over to the Feds. They are so emotionally detached and lost touch with reality.

It's a long read, but fascinating and I totally recommend it if you are even remotely interested in the online community.

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