Jimmy Kimmel‘s long-running segment in which he gets celebrities to read “Mean Tweets” about themselves came to its apex this week when President Barack Obama read some of his own Twitter criticism aloud on the late night show.
Now, a group from Toronto called the Canadian Safe School Network has produced its own take-off on the popular series. But instead of celebrities, the video features regular teenagers reading some seriously awful Twitter comments from their peers. It’s all part of a crowd-funding initiative on Indiegogo that aims to raise awareness about cyberbullying.
The group writes:
There are few things worse than being bullied. And for kids today, bullying doesn’t stop at the playground. It’s non-stop, hitting them wherever they are through their phone and numerous social networks, 24 hours a day.
Watching celebrities’ read the mean things people say about them online is meant to be funny, but it’s a very different story when it happens to kids. And unfortunately, over 50% of adolescents have admitted to being a victim of cyberbullying. So we made a video to remind the world that cyberbullying is no joke.
They are currently just over 10% of the way to their goal of raising $10,000 to get the video out to 10 million people.
