‘Film school fights and we will pay’

Screengrab of Facebook page for schoolfights.co.za A website and a page on Facebook encouraging South African children to post videos of school fights in exchange for cash. bullies 140514 Picture: Facebook

Screengrab of Facebook page for schoolfights.co.za A website and a page on Facebook encouraging South African children to post videos of school fights in exchange for cash. bullies 140514 Picture: Facebook

Published May 15, 2014

Share

Johannesburg - At first it looks like a sick joke, but then you realise it’s real.

Someone has started a website encouraging South African children to post videos of school fights in exchange for cash.

SchoolFights.co.za started on May 6 as both a website and a page on Facebook - and in just one week has already received 744 likes on Facebook.

It offers a subscriber option. and if you sign up, all new videos will be sent to your e-mail.

”We’re looking for your #fightvideos. Have a video of a fight at school or somewhere else? Inbox us - it might be worth some MONEY,” the website says.

It has posted videos of children and parents beating each other up, with captions underneath like “Rugby. There’s clearly no love lost between these two teams” and “Watch. Two SA schoolboys fight over a cheating girlfriend”.

One video, captioned “watch a schoolboy knock out an older guy. The guy hits the floor like a sack of potatoes”, clearly shows a woman and a schoolboy involved in a fight.

While some of the people who have liked the page on Facebook have expressed delight at what they are seeing, others criticised it.

Izabella Little, author of the Lifetalk books which encourage better behaviour in teenagers and responsible parenting, said hearing about these sites made her blood run cold.

She said they had seen a dramatic increase in school violence over the past year and she felt sites like this would fuel this negative trend.

“This is the opposite of what we need; all it will do is encourage children to fight.”

Related Topics: