...Is that a good or bad thing, I can't tell...?

Bad in a bad way, or bad in a good/cool way? (Damn you, vernacular/vocabulary confusion!) ;)

HAHA, obi, i think the reading of the letter was good, his explanation of it all wasn't that interesting. He should have just read the letter...and shot a bullet in her laptop for every little section. Don't refer to her as the cleaning lady, BANG. You have basic chores to do, mainly fixing your bed and sweeping the floor, BANG. You are ungrateful and lazy, BANG. etc etc. That might have made for more fun :)

What a fucking looney.

I think shooting an expensive piece of equipment that could probably be put to good use by many people is not a good idea. The letter part was good, though.

Xapi, Agree with you there. But I guess he could just go rage on her laptop rather than hit her across the face wouldn't you say?

@Yonni:

How's he being a looney? He reads a letter, responds, and shoots the laptop...

I agree with Sandgoose:

I'd rather a father shooting a laptop and posting it online to make a point than their brutalizing their children...better a bullet to her facebook than to her face, I don't think he's looney at all, he seemed reserved to me.

And anyway:

The dad works for IT--the laptop's expensive, but if he bought the laptop and then just spent $130 and his whole day upgrading it, only to read this being posted after he's warned and punished her BEFORE...

I think he has the right to shoot that thing 90 times, if he wants...HE bought it.

^ sandgoose has +1'd this comment :)

When I did this, mine was 7 Microsoft word pages long :)

Man do I feel immature for doing that.

But yeah, I support the father on this, especially given that she was grounded for 3 montsh for doing something similar

There is one thing i can't agree with, having spent 130$ on new software, he destroyed his own work, and then told her she had to pay for it.

I was thinking he'd be stupid to do other than selling off her laptop to reclaim his expense, but no, he decided to be all macho and shoot at it... well done sir (sic)

Well, I guess that sends something of a message...

Parenting and getting his message across meant more to him than the monetary value of a laptop, so I still say kudos.

(I still want to know how she thought she'd get away with it...her dad works for IT, so it's not as if he doesn't know how to access the info, and he said she'd already done something similar...if you're the son or daughter of a cop, would you really be so dumb as to commit the same, easily-traceable crime, not once, but TWICE, AND in your cop-parent's own home to boot? She may be a very intelligent girl, for all I know--

But THAT, categorically, is just DUMB.)

I think he's an idiot, and just stroking his own ego by posting on her Facebook page. It's not to teach her a lesson, it's to show how cool he is. That father-daughter situation is messed up and this is not going to help it.

It would not surprise me at all if she ran away from home and he never saw her again. But the important part would be that he showed her who's boss.

How's it stroking his ego?

He didn't go on about how awesome he is...he spends the 8 minutes essentially saying:

1. You're acting like a brat
2. When I was your age, I had school, college, and jobs, you have it easy by comparison
3. Your mother and I buy everything for you, and you're still ungrateful
4. You were VERY disrespectful denigrating that "cleaning lady"
5. I just fixed this laptop out of love, and you use it to do what we already told you not to
6. You were warned about this before
7. YOU NEED TO STOP ACTING THIS WAY

So he posted it...SO MAYBE it'll have an impact on her.

As a part of the Facebook generation...yeah, I'd have to say, that WOULD have a bigger impact on a child than just the old "go to your room, no TV or dessert for you, young lady" and whatnot...and as she was already grounded, it seems as if he's even already tried THAT.

How is she being so badly mistreated?
How is that going "HOHO am I awesome!" on his part?

Look at me, I'm a big man. I pack a .45 and will make sure you, the viewer, know that. (Apparently, I also live somewhere where I can discharge my weapon in public near a roadway). It's not enough that I try to embarrass/humiliate my daughter in front of her friends, I have to be Dirty Harry and shoot up her computer. Boy, I sure showed her. Now she will see the error of her ways and be more grateful and respectful. No way will she hate me even more and find new and different ways to show it.

It looked like he lived outside any city limits, where it is very likely legal to discharge his weapon.

THM, I could not disagree with you more.

Hey, reasonable minds can differ. I don't think he handled this well. I think what he did was childish and attention-seeking, rather than a sincere effort to help his daughter back on the path toward becoming a responsible adult. While I think that his frustration will resonate with many viewers, I don't find it an example of good parenting.

Lots of teenagers bitch, including the whole "what am i, your slave?" attitude. They are in that awkward stage of no longer being children but not yet having the perspective and experience to see the bigger picture. IF it was normal teenage bitching (and I'm not saying it was), then this is an extreme over-reaction.

As far as her behavior, I don't think it anywhere merited this level of response. Was she stupid to think that filtering her Facebook page would prevent him from seeing her letter? Yes, especially since it sounds like she had already been busted that way once. But really, all she was doing was venting her frustration to a select audience of her Facebook friends. There's nothing to suggest, for example, that she is doing drugs, committing crimes, skipping school, destroying property, etc. If she had been at the mall and said the same thing to her friends orally, would he have been so ticked off? What if she passed a note in class to her friends saying the same thing? She didn't post it on his Facebook page, or on Youtube, or at his place of work.

So let's assume it is not normal, and Hannah is out of control way beyond the norm. How about taking some personal responsibility? Somewhere along the way in the past 15 years, dad failed to teach his daughter some important values (with which I generally agree). If his past lessons were anything like this one, I have an inkling of why. Where is his humility? Where is his acknowledgment that maybe HE screwed up as a parent and that it is not all about his wild child daughter?

I'm probably more critical than the average person of parents who divorce when they have kids. I know there are astronomical divorce rates, and I know there are plenty of relationships where it is the right thing to do. I also know that it very often has a bad effect on the kids, and can scar them for life. I think in many situations, parents divorce and then when their kids act up the parents fail to take personal responsibility that something they did -- whether it was the decision to divorce, the acts leading to the divorce, a remarriage, or something else -- screwed up their kid. If I were a parent who decided that divorce was the best thing despite the fact that I had a school-age kid, I think I would be forgiving and supportive when I saw my kid having behavioral problems, knowing that I may have largely contributed to them. I certainly wouldn't be posting lessons for other parents on Youtube as though I were a paragon.

I have no idea for this father and daughter what the circumstances were for the divorce, and maybe it had no impact, but I find the father's reference to the mother and stepmother noteworthy. I can't really think of any scenario where what he did is the best way to handle the situation as a parent.

Americans, and their obsession with murder machines, make me want to vomit.

Quoth the obi-dork, " Ooooo look. This parent is using his murder machine in a cool nurturing fashion. Oooo, isn't he so cool....."

What a moron.

@THM
Reading his subsequent posts on the wall clears up more or less everything that you, and about half of everyone else critical of it keep going on about. In short, no he's not an abusive father, yes, he takes responsibility for him and other parents spoiling kids today, yes, the daughter is okay with it ("Huh? It's just a laptop") as verified by a woman from child welfare services and the cops, and handling it much better than most of you. Move along, people, move along. Show's over.

That parent is a terrible parent. Feeling the need to embarrass your child in front of the whole world is pathetic.

How did you come to know what the child welfare services verified? Was it from an unbiased source? Do you even expect the daughter to be completely open and honest with the cops, when she knows she'll be abandoned if she says/reveals bad things about him?

@Lando: In his defense, he had no idea the whole world would end up seeing it. He probably just wanted her friends who thought her post was 'cool' to get the message