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Fun parent or bad influence? Dad laughs at kids slipping on ice

Waiting to pick up your kid from school can be a little boring. So Alan Andersen did what any parent (with a slightly sick sense of humour) would do: he filmed his daughter's schoolmates slipping on the ice.

Student after student fell on the same patch of ice, not warning the kids approaching the same spot after them.

"She's gonna fall," Andersen accurately predicts time and time again.

He found the slip-and-slide adventures so amusing, he filmed the repeated falls for almost six minutes, even after his daughter climbed in his vehicle.

"We're kind of bad people," Andersen's daughter says after joining him in laughing at her friends.

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"At least they're laughing about it," Andersen says, cracking up over the kids' icy misfortunes.

He's not the only one amused by students falling over. His simple video went viral.

"The first rule of comedy: people falling on their asses = funny as hell," one YouTube commenter writes.

However, not everyone is amused by the video. The popularity of the clip sparked an online debate: Is Andersen a good parent or a bad influence?

WQAD posted a poll, asking readers to weigh in: "Is it okay to laugh at someone who falls on the ice?"

The responses were divided.

"This father wouldn’t be laughing if his daughter had fallen and sustained a concussion. He should have called the school immediately to report the ice and have salt or something put down. He is an immature idiot," one commenter writes.

Someone else calls Andersen a "horrible horrible father" and "a bad citizen."

Others believe people should lighten up.

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"Remind me to never live in the quad cities if my neighbours are tightwads who don’t find this humorous. I don’t want my kids exposed to people who make a big deal out of nothing. Lighten up, fun haters," writes one WQAD reader.

"Give this guy a break!!! EVERYONE laughs when someone falls or trips. Even the kids are all laughing at themselves too. No one was hurt," writes another.

The comments at the New York Daily News were just as heated, with some readers outraged by the man's outright lack of compassion and others amused by the good-natured dad's playful relationship with his daughter.

Others were merely concerned that the students were being filmed without their permission.

What do you think? Cool dad or cold-hearted jerk?

Or do you agree with Thought Catalog's assertion that "you’ll think this dad laughing at kids slipping on ice is a jerk until you start laughing too"?