I was there before we had social media and mostly I think that we were all better off when our lives weren't a constant game of "show and tell" and you didn't need to worry every time you go out in public whether or not you were going to be on the receiving end of some sort of prank that you didn't know you were about to become involved in.
Some people go to great lengths in their attempts to get internet fame and establish themselves as an "influencer" but one teen has gone way too far and could have killed people in the process.
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This may or may not be the actual photo of the crash but I am sure you can imagine what a train derailment looks like. Apparently no one was seriously hurt and the cars remained mostly upright but one of them crashed into an empty coal train car and it caused $350,000 in damages. This makes me wonder what the hell train cars are made out of that that much damage could possibly happen.
The teen is not named because we have a rule in the States where minors are protected even if they are seriously in the wrong but sometimes this gets waived because everyone has heard of a few minors that have been arrested such as Kyle Rittenhouse. In this case though the identity of the teen has been hidden which I think is a good thing so that he will not get any sort of internet fame for having done this.
The incident happened in rural Nebraska on a line whose only function is to supply coal to a power plant. These trains are never terribly huge but as you might expect, they weigh an awful lot. According to the conductor of the train, he could tell that there was a problem up ahead but there wasn't enough time for him to stop the train. Trains are very difficult things to stop once they get moving, apparently. This is especially true when you consider the rather antiquated nature of the trains in the United States compared to much of the rest of the developed world. Why do we not use this more efficiently? I'll save that for another day, perhaps.
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I suppose it is kind of relatable why a teen might try to do something so outrageous because there are a lot of people that are quite famous for nothing other than doing really stupid crap and having a lot of people quite enjoy it. I don't keep up with who is famous and who isn't as far as YouTube and especially not TikTok, but there are many people who have gone on to get widespread fame and tons of money simply by getting noticed. Some jagoff that calls himself "Icy Wyatt" comes to mind but that clown is currently in prison for taking it too far.
I'll give a bit of credit to the teen though: After he caused the derailment he called rescue and police to the scene and admitted to having been involved. That's probably pretty smart on his part because if they had to go and find him they probably would have been a lot more vigorous in prosecuting him. At the moment he is charged with two counts of "criminal mischief" which are both felonies, so he is not out the hot water just yet.
I don't know a great deal about Nebraska other than the fact that it is considered a "flyover" state in that nobody ever really goes there but I do know that the people that live there other than Warren Buffet, tend to not be wealthy enough to just cough up several hundred thousand dollars for the damages that their kid caused. I don't know what happens in this situation, the kid clearly can't pay up so this will likely be something that just goes to insurance.
The reason why I classify this as "dumb" is because of what our world has become. At the risk of sounding like an old man on the porch I will say that back in my day we would never even consider doing something like this and we certainly wouldn't have done it in the hopes of becoming famous for it. This is the society that social media and influencers have created and now we have to deal with the consequences. I believe the saying goes "stop making stupid people famous!" and well, we haven't stopped doing that. The pursuit of fame is strong, even in middle of nowhere Nebraska.
