Teen Shares Video Of Bullies Coming To His Home To Harass Him — Says He’s 'Sick Of Being Silent'
He's putting an end to his bullying.
After years of being called anti-gay slurs and enduring almost constant homophobic bullying, 18-year-old high school senior Landon Jones is tired of staying silent.
Being an openly gay high school student, Jones feels targeted with “negative attention” from classmates that he’s never even met or spoken to before.
“They choose that, and hang on it”, Jones says about his sexual identity, “which they think is so funny.”
In a now-viral TikTok video, Jones finally exposes his homophobic bullies and the anti-gay incidents that pushed him to come forward.
Featuring his classmates at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California, the first clip of the TikTok shows a group of boys hovering around a parked car in a Starbucks parking lot.
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“My sister and I were going to Starbucks…we were apparently followed there,” Jones says in the video, “a whole group of boys called me f****t and called me slurs, wouldn’t let me leave my parking spot, made threats to me.”
In a true act of empathy and kindness, Jones explains that he didn’t feel school discipline was necessary: “You know what they’re dumb, they're immature, they’re little boys. I’m not gonna let their lives be affected by this — because they can be and they will be.”
The intensity of the anti-gay bullying that Jones was facing quickly turned from immature to threatening.
Bullies came to the teen's home to harass him.
“At about 10:30 last night,” Jones continues, “a group of boys came to my house.”
A boy got out of the car, knocked on the door, and a video camera outside their house caught the conversation between him and Jones’ dad.
“Does Landon live here?”, the boy said. His dad responded, “Yes, why?”
“Someone said to come up here,” the boy said quietly before screaming, “because he’s a f****t!”
“These are hate crimes, this is harassment,” Jones says as if speaking to his homophobic classmates, “this is bullying.”
“I’m fed up with it. I’m done. I’ve been called f****t countless amounts of times at school. It doesn’t bother me, but them coming to my house does," he continues.
"There will be consequences for these people — we know who they are. I hope you guys had a really good laugh and found it funny attacking me like this. But, it's over."
Jones’ tragic story is one that highlights the ever-prevalent anti-gay rhetoric and bullying that continues to happen in the U.S. today.
LGBTQ+ TikToker, Josh Helfgott, shares his support in the comments along with thousands of other viewers: “If there’s one thing I got from this video, it’s how STRONG you are & how weak they are. I’m so sorry this is happening. Keep shining, Landon.”
“One of the last things that I had expected was the amount of support from the community that I would have gotten,” Jones told NBC News.
With an investigation ongoing at El Toro High School, Jones clearly has an incredible amount of support online from millions of viewers.
He is not fighting this battle against homophobic bullying by himself, as TikTok seems to make clear, but many students and queer youth are. Anti-LGBTQ+ bullying is peaking for younger students in early education today, in comparison to a decade ago.
Fighting anti-LGBTQ+ bullying and harassment has to be dealt with on more than just a case-by-case basis to make real change, and Jones’ story proves that it’s not going to go away on its own.
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Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango. They cover topics ranging from pop culture analysis to human interest stories. They are currently based in East Lansing, MI. Catch up with them on their Instagram or TikTok.