Offensive | Trench Reynolds

Worldwide Anger Brings MySpace To Their Knees:

I originally posted about BJ McCombs here.

BJ was the victim of a housefire when he was baby and wasn’t expected to live long but lived to be 7 years old. His parents made a tribute page for him on MySpace but his pictures were deleted because MySpace found them to be too graphic.

Not surprisingly this caused an international uproar and MySpace has not only apologized but they also reposted the pictures.

“MySpace’s image review staff has been trained to be sensitive to graphic images uploaded to our site. After working with the McCombs family and determining the context of these pictures, MySpace has made the decision to reinstate them. Our sympathies are with the McCombs family in this difficult time.”

This sounds like the work of an overzealous moderator who is probably now out of a job.

Valley Child’s Pictures Banned From MySpace:

This isn’t about a crime just a crappy thing that MySpace is doing to one of its users.

BJ McCombs was severely burned in a house fire at the age of 18-months. He wasn’t supposed to survive long but he lived to be about almost 7.

His parents created sort of a tribute to him on MySpace with pictures of him. MySpace then said the images of him were too offensive.

Pictures are all BJ’s parents Billy and Karlyn of Sullivan have left. “Because he’s gone we don’t have many pictures left of him from before the fire. Every picture that we have is like gold to us,” said Billy.

Each picture posted on Karlyn’s MySpace page told a story. “This picture here shows him eating. This is his first meal after the fire. The hospital told us he would never be able to eat. So, these pictures are everything to us,” said Karlyn.

Of course this came about because some busybody complained to MySpace. To which I say if you don’t want to look at a burn victim then don’t click on the site.

To make matters worse MySpace is not backing down and is even threatening to delete the profile if BJ’s mom puts the pictures back up.

You can visit BJ’s support page here.