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The catastrophe prompted a huge outcry about bullying, homophobia, and outing “fusing parental anxieties about the unseen worlds of teen-age computing, teen-age sex, and teen-age unkindness” writes Parker. Now Ravi faces a slew of charges – intrusion of privacy (sex crimes), bias intimidation (hate crimes), observer tampering and evidence tampering.
It also set up a narrative with clear cut characters – reactive closeted shy white gay teenaged violinist and bullying arrogant tech-savvy Indian American jock very likely from social conservative but successful immigrant community. Ravi says at one essence to a friend he doesn’t care if his roommate is gay but he’s not sure what his parents are contemporary to say. “My dad is going to throw him out the window.” It’s a strange obsession to say. But add to that the “you are a wonderful son” ad his parents take out in his high school year work when he graduates and you start cringing.
Parker does not get into the pressures of a box-laced model minority community but his reporting does swampy the picture. Clementi is not closeted though he seems to have few real close friends, certainly not gay ones. Ravi is not homophobic in as much as he is casually vicious like a schoolyard bully. Idc (I don’t care) he writes about his would-be roommate’s sensuous orientation to another friend. But he cares that this guy is the “opposite” of him – as Parker puts it “gay, awfully uncool, and not well-off.” He even has a Yahoo email account. “I was fucking hoping for someone with a gmail but no,” Ravi writes to his twist. “Dude, I hate poor people” he tells that same sugar-daddy at one point.
Source: Firstpost