Being young, smart and beautiful isn't always enough.
Discontented souls search for more, and, when they don't find it inside themselves, they go looking for it in a world that is often cruel.
That may have been the case for 19-year-old Alyssa Funke , a straight-A freshman college student in Wisconsin who, for reasons unknown, decided to appear in a pornographic film.
It didn't take long for her former high school classmates in Minnesota to find out. As might be expected, their Twitter and Facebook comments weren't kind.
Two weeks after the film appeared online, Funke purchased a 12-gauge shotgun and killed herself on a "picturesque boat landing."
Funke's family and classmates believe the online taunts led to her suicide, but police say nothing they found on social media constitute criminal harassment.
Joy Friedman, who works with Breaking Free, a non-profit that tries to help women quit the porn industry, told Fox News the man who filmed Funke acted like a pimp.
"He talked her up, made her feel special, the same thing pimps used to say to me," said Friedman.
Porn is a $10 billion industry, as much as the NFL by some accounts. With the advent of the internet, porn is much more accessible and children are exposed to it at an early age and become desensitized, said Friedman.
Alyssa Funke is gone, but the video remains. The producer of the film has not responded to interview requests.
The creator of an RIP Alyssa Facebook page has to keep deleting rude comments.
An online fund created by Funke's family raised only $165.
It's rough out there.
More news on a Thursday:
- High school students running amateur porn site
- Porn stars say law requiring condoms violates right to free speech
- D.C. said it would recycle old trash bins, sends 53 millions tons of plastic to landfill
- Virus infecting Floridians with terrible flu, arthritis symptoms
- Obama's transition team told VA was misreporting medical wait times
- Scientists tell Congress there's a 100 percent chance of microbial life in space
- Facebook can use phone's microphones to spy on your surroundings
- After 25 years in prison, man cleared of murder (where prosecutors withheld key evidence)
- N.Y. man kills wife for cooking vegetarian meal, says it's not murder because men beat wives where he's from
- Google dethrones Apple to become world's most valuable brand
- Air Force fails nuclear missile security test
- Man gets home detention for raping sleeping, drugged wife
- House passes curbs on NSA surveillance
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