When Siblings Go Very, Very Wrong

Just on the heels of my wish that my children would grow up with equal treatment and therefore become better friends and allies, a wonderful example of what can happen when they are not (from Nerve via DadWagon friend Steven E.):

“A girl named Katie found a twelve-pack of beer in her teenage brother’s room and ratted him out to their parents. This is not news in any way, but what young Chris, the brother, did in retaliation after being grounded for three months is funny as hell… and so, so wrong… Not only did he rummage through Katie’s things and find her “hookup list” (aka “blow-jobs-to-hand-out list”), but he published it on his Facebook page… and tagged all of the intended recipients.”

Check out the full vitriolic comment thread between the pwnd older sister and the smug younger brother to witness the end of whatever relationship they might have had.

Of course, I don’t know that this is actually for real. I couldn’t find it on Snopes. Assuming it is real, it leaves us a few questions, namely, what the hell does “v-card” or “bibby bang” mean?

And then it leads us into the murky world of sibling rivalry, which is so rich with meaning that Slate’s Emily Yoffe needed a Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship to unpack it all for Slate. In it, she interviews people with job titles like Evolutionary Behaviorist and Evolutionary Psychologist, positions which qualified them to state that siblings are very competitive.

The Facebook siblings here seem to be operating on theory of negative competition. That is, they’re not trying to beat each other for some prize; they’re trying to rat each other out to avoid the ridiculous sanctions of their parents (three months’ grounding for hiding some beer in your room? Really?). A good reminder: the crazier the parent, the more psychotic the sibling conflict…