Yes, sure, this is horrible, and my first instinct was the same knee-jerk “Oooph” that everyone would have, but in his defense, he’s not in a lucky position right now. He’s a very smart kid with a lot of opinions about things that are of no interest to any of his peers because they have nothing to do with sports, he clearly has no real ability to defend himself and he certainly could not have seen this coming. Like the 11-year-old I once was, a lot of parts of your brain may mature quickly, but self-awareness is the last part to get there.  School starts in a few weeks and he’s going to hear about this plenty (and feel it over and over via punches and pushes into banks of lockers) without any of us assholes on the internet cheering his classmates on. When he comes home after someone shoved his head in the toilet or something, his mother will say, “It’s because they’re jealous of you.” And that’s a lie. No one is jealous of him. Everyone is so unbelievably happy that they’re not him that they want to rub it in by beating him up just to prove to themselves that they are not him. In five or ten years, things will be a lot better. He’s going to calm the hell down, he’s going to continue to have a passion or some interesting things like film and television but he’ll still have a ways to go until he can talk to girls and find other interesting peers who he can openly talk about all the things he likes. Then a few years after that, he’ll come into his own and people may actually be jealous of him, which will be good. If there’s any lesson to be learned here, it’s more a lesson for parents. And it’s not to discourage little weird kids, it’s simply to keep them off television. Let them wait a little bit until they really know what they’re going to look like. The internet, unfortunately, holds onto these things forever and I’m so grateful that when I was his age, there was no such thing.

Also unrelated, the host encourages him to read the Cliff’s Notes to “Beezus and Ramona,” a 170 page book for eight year olds. All the more reason to celebrate smart kids who may be super weird, because at least they’re not cardboard dumb 40-year-old host of the Early Show who could stand to read a Beverly Cleary book once in a while.

thedailywhat:

Kids Make The Darndest Movie Reviewers of the Day: I have no immediate problem with an 11-year-old self-styling as a “movie reviewer” and critiquing movies on TV. It’s only when that 11-year-old is a snot-nosed punk named Jackson who gives Inception a “C” for being “really confusing” that I start to get a funny, nervous twitch neath my bottom eyelid.

[interweber / gawkertv.]