In this issue, we poke fun on our front page at an incident which unfolded in Sliema.

To cut a long story short, two men were involved in a driving altercation and the whole thing was recorded on video and uploaded to Youtube. It went viral. It was inconsequential, save for a bit of a loss of face.

But what happens when things are uploaded on the internet that do have consequences – severe ones?

We have seen time and time again that people have been shamed and embarrassed as their behaviour has been recorded and uploaded onto the net, from here in Malta.

We have seen the famous “Euros f*****s” hunter tirade, a man crawling through Paceville naked, people jumping on cars, others hurting themselves after jumping into the sea from cliffs… the list goes on and on. But ultimately, there was no real comeback. It was a laugh at their expense and everyone gets on with their lives.

The law allows for anyone to take photographs or videos on public land. There is no restriction. Everyone is fair game. But this state of affairs comes from a time where there was no social networking or the ‘viral phenomenon’.

The latest, utterly, most awful case to have come to light is that known as “Slane Girl”.

It involves Youtube footage of a 17-year-old girl performing oral sex on two different men, kissing others and being fondled sexually at a concert in Dublin, Ireland.

She was drunk, and very far gone, that much is clear. To cut to the chase, the girl was giving oral sex to a 'man' who sickeningly had his arms raised in triumph. She then was caught on video kissing another man. A group of about eight ‘men’ started shoving her around and encouraging her to give this other man oral sex. She did. And she will regret it for the rest of her life. Many say there is no excuse for such behaviour. And perhaps there isn’t. Many say that the girl should not have been that intoxicated – on her own – at a concert. And perhaps this is also true. But the next day, when she woke up, and had no recollection of the events of the night before, she logged into Facebook. She saw photographs of herself doing what she was doing, and the videos too. She was taken to hospital in hysterics and had to be sedated.  Social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have all removed pictures and videos involving the girl in recent days. The two-minute clip, which named the teenager, was removed less than an hour later.

The worst thing about the whole thing is that it is only the girl that has been targeted by the internet trolls. She has been branded a slut, and worse. Yet the men in the video – sorry, filthy excuses of the male gender - have been hailed as heroes. And that really does speak volumes of our interpretation of society. Of course, in this age, one has to say, all those involved in the footage are idiots. They are, there is simply no other way to put it. People – no matter what their own morals are – should know better than to engage in such behaviour in broad daylight with cameras and mobile phones everywhere. But the real blame here lies in the filthy piece of work who decided to post the whole sordid affair online. Whatever this silly girl did sexually, it is certainly no worse than the behaviour of the pigs that cajoled her, encouraged her and calculatingly destroyed her life by taking part in an impromptu ploy to post it all online. Even those who stood by idly have to share a portion of the blame. God help all teenagers in this era of society and perhaps, at least, Slane Girl might open the eyes of others in what she has had to endure. One hopes that she can someday rebuild her life and forgive herself and that society will allow her some modicum of respect. One also hopes that she will not become another suicide casualty, once she returns to school today.