Teen Sets Self On Fire To Imitate YouTube Clip

A news item, and an interesting insight into our dumbed down society.

www.wesh.com...

DELTONA, Fla. -- A Deltona teenager was hospitalized on Wednesday after suffering multiple burns while imitating a video posted on YouTube.

Russell Gortzig, 13, said his friend siphoned gasoline from a riding lawnmower and poured it on Gortzig. The teen said he held the lighter away from him, but a combination of the spark and fumes caught his shorts on fire.

"Skin missing all the way down to his ankle on the front and the back," mother Linda McCrea said.

McCrea said the boys were trying to copy a stunt they saw on the video sharing Web site, YouTube, where a man in a banana suit lights himself on fire. She warned other parents to closely monitor the online activities of their children and wants YouTube to tighten its user guidelines. She believes YouTube is partially to blame for her son' pain.

The part I find most interesting is the way the mother blames YouTube, at least partially for causing her son's injuries.

We now seem to be firmly entrenched in a world where everything is someone elses fault, and we have to engineer everything for the lowest common denominator, i.e. morons.

At 13 I was in no doubt that gasoline burns, and that if I poured it onto myself, I would burn too. But apparently poor little Russell needs to be protected from himself.

What is with these kids.

Drinking gas.....

I know kids are stupid by nature, but are they actually getting more stupid or are we just better informed about it???

reply to post by Retseh


When I was 12, my dad was cooking something on the stove. He finished cooking it and turned the stove off. I said "I bet I can touch the stove without burning myself". I placed my hand on the stove. My hand was completely burnt, skin missing from my entire palm.

He called me a dumbass before helping me. Nothing else was to blame but my own stupidity.

Since the mother wants to blame other people, let's all send her hand written greeting cards that congratulate her on raising a dumbass.

Here's the video he was imitating. It didn't even work out well for the first idiot so god knows why anyone would want to copy him!

WARNING! WARNING! DON’T TRY THIS YOURSELF!

www.youtube.com...

Natural Selection is a cruel reality!

Hopefully he won't be able to breed, and his mother is too old to have more kids!

I was in an explosion and suffered "full-thickness" burns over 25% of my body, so I know it is painful and the recovery is very long. My prayers are with this kid, but it is hard to have sympathy for someone that lets their friend pour gasoline all over them and then lights it?!?!?

I'm sure YouTube will pay something to the family and enact some new censorship and all of our lives will be adversely affected by the actions of one idiot!

To quote Niven and Pournelle... "Think of it as evolution in action."

I mean, really.

Partly youtubes fault? hate to say it,but the kid was just acting like a bloody idiot.Sad he has bad injuries from his little stunt,but as usual with alot of cases parents try to coverup the fact their children acted stupidly and irresponsibly.Probably along with peer pressure from whoever was around him.

Yeah.... When I was 12 we were draining petrol from a fuel tank so we could paint it. We kept the fuel in a glass jar. I dipped a screw inside and set it alight, waving it around I waved it back over the top of the jar... about 6 inches above. The jar caught fire in quite an impressive manner...
So I kicked it over, to make sure it went out.
About half of the garage floor was ablaze.

So I can't say anything about how stupid this little kid is, he just the same as me when I was 12

Not a Darwin Award candidate.

Too bad.

Maybe he'll have better 'success' next time.

Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

I had some outrageously stupid friends growing up. I couldnt imagine how many funerals I would have had to attend if they stupid, impressionable and wasting their time on the internet.

It's not YouTube's fault her kids a moron. Blaming anything other than the moron just emboldens moron behavior.

I wonder if she plans on suing YouTube?

She could win too, everyone remember the lady who won the lawsuit against McDonalds because she ordered hot coffee and ended up burning herself. She said she didn't know the coffee was hot.

That is why all coffee lids say contents are hot now.

I'm going to find a stupid video and imitate it and hurt myself, sue them and claim I didn't know it was dangerous as it didn't come with a disclaimer. Then I'm going to by out ATS and rule this site with an iron fist.

I think she did not saw the YouTube video (or is expecting that nobody will), if she had she would know that it was just a stupid action of her kid and his friend, the video shows that this was not a laughing case.

Thanks, Mike_A, for the video that shows that being stupid is just not a question of age.

reply to post by Retseh


Lol.. the mother blamed youtube...

Someone needs to tell her that her son is stupid. Or dumb.. or retarded.. any one of those would work.

I was kinda hoping that the kid at least had the decency to video tape himself being an idiot so the rest of us could get a good laugh.. no consideration..