What's your opinion of the latest awareness of this phenomenon they call 'Cyber Bullying'? Something that primarily happens with kids and young adults on social networks, and the like.

I honestly am not really as understanding of how this is somehow worse than the classic bullying. If somebody is bullying you, you can block them online. If they keep spamming you, I am sure there are ways to report them. IDK, I know it's a problem but the way the media makes it sound, it's worse than the real bullying that can leave kids physically harmed. By comparison, I just don't see cyberbullying as this worse monster.

Most of the cyber bullies are full of hot air. The best thing to do is to ignore them. I had a situation where someone was bullying a girl and I defended her and the bully focused on me but when I stood up to him and challenged him, he backed down real quickly.

That 'Cyber Bullying' has become an issue, period, just goes to show how out of hand the presence/dominance of the Internet has become. When I was a kid, bullies waited for you after school, not for you to sign on.

Chris wrote:

That 'Cyber Bullying' has become an issue, period, just goes to show how out of hand the presence/dominance of the Internet has become. When I was a kid, bullies waited for you after school, not for you to sign on.

In reality what can they do to you unless they can track you down. Ignoring them and reporting them is the best way to deal with them.

Sorry but I just can't take it seriously one bit. When I was coming up I knew some REAL bullies who you crossed the street to avoid. I bet everybody who is being picked on in person wishes they had a "cyber bully".

The internet seems to be like what was said about Las Vegas in the movie 'Psycho', the playground of the world, and like the playground there are a lot of idiots running around it.


This takes me back to the first case we really heard in the news of cyber bullying, that 13 year old girl who hanged herself, and everybody blames the mother who posed as a 16 year old boy online and told her to kill herself. I'm sorry, but this girl had been depressed AND suicidal since she was EIGHT YEARS OLD. When that happens, you KNOW any chance you had at a normal child is gone out of the window, now it's a whole other ball game. This good mother lets her 5 years running suicidal daughter talk to people online, ONLINE, where it is a verbal warzone, where you are going to have people you have never even met saying you need to kill yourself, that the world would be better off without you, that you're fat, you're ugly, you're a slut, etc., and then there's my personal favorite, 'an autistic bitch'. Online chatting is not for the feeble minded, if you can't take what people have to say about you, you have no business going on social networks or chat sites in the first place, and the mother should have known this and forbidden her daughter from chatting online, where the sole reason most people exist IS to be mean to everyone else.

I don't even get how someone can be "cyber"-bullied in the first place. I've been trolled online before, but bullied? I don't think so. Everyone can use their filters, block, report, or worst case scenario cancel that account.

Indeed, if I had a quarter (people usually say nickel, but I'm figuring on how to get something out of it even with the cost of living expenses raised since it was first said) for every time somebody on a message board or in a chat room told me I should kill myself, the world would be better off without me, etc., I wouldn't have to work for a living, and everybody can note I'm still here, much to some people's disappointment.

I think the whole thing is a load of crap, but these days we're all so serious about our social networks & internet and probably interact with more people online than off so i guess its reflective of the times we live in. Dumb as the concept sounds.

Honestly I can see how it's just as bad as IRL bullying, because kids are tuned in 24/7 it seems. If someone is bullying you at school, you get to go home and escape from it for a while, but now, there's no escape. Sure, you could log off, but thats really hard for teenagers I think because of their lifestyle now...They are in constant communication with each other, for better or for worse so even if they block the bully, they will know that there are facebook pages devoted to how ugly and stupid they are or whatever, and people "go along" and they see it.

What would be maybe a bully with two or three minions and a crowd of kids who stand back and watch at school becomes a bully and a hundred minions on FB.

I mean, there was a page on FB devoted to laughing at dead babies, there were leaked crime scene photos of babies who appeared to be murdered, autopsy photos...And tons of people joking about it. It was HORRIFYING to see how many people will jump on a bandwagon like that. Thankfully the group got banned. If there is stuff like THAT though, I would not be surprised by anything that a bully would do to tear someone down online.

There are two kinds of bullying: in-person bullying and cyber-bullying. Both kinds are cruel, no doubt. But what I don't understand is if someone is being harrassed online, why don't they just either the block the person, report them, or erase their account for that particular social networking site altogether? Nobody's forcing them to chat or be on social networking sites or even be on the internet at all.

What's really sick is that it took those smear of suicides to even bring bullying to the eye of the public. That's really sick that this bullying (both kinds) epidemic took this long to be recognized. You'd think the public would've recognized it - Columbine, anyone?

MandyPerfumeGirl wrote:

There are two kinds of bullying: in-person bullying and cyber-bullying. Both kinds are cruel, no doubt. But what I don't understand is if someone is being harrassed online, why don't they just either the block the person, report them, or erase their account for that particular social networking site altogether? Nobody's forcing them to chat or be on social networking sites or even be on the internet at all.

What's really sick is that it took those smear of suicides to even bring bullying to the eye of the public. That's really sick that this bullying (both kinds) epidemic took this long to be recognized. You'd think the public would've recognized it - Columbine, anyone?

I think for teens today, that is basically the same thing as starting to be home schooled to avoid the bully. Yes, it's an option, but it's not desirable to most teenagers because then they're forced to give up all their friends too. Sure they can block the bully but they're still going to hear about it if they keep in contact with their friends.

On a purely logical level, the concept of 'Cyber Bullying' does sound borderline absurd; however, the culture we live in treats cyber living with enough validity that it has become a religion, particularly to young kids and teenagers who can't go ten minutes without checking for the latest status updates. A kid gets clowned on Facebook or Formspring and the following day at school, it's the talk. They text each other messages, send pictures of whoever back and forth, etc. I can see how, in this era, cyber bullying, harassment and mockery could/would be a problem. It's what prank calling was back in 1992.

Of course we forget a lot of how some of this happens is all still to do with CHOICE. Nobody HAS to go on Facebook, a lot of us here live happily and do much online without it, but because it's a big trend and everybody's doing it, suddenly these kids HAVE to go on there and tell their life stories in an area where any nut can find them. I have never gone on Facebook, Myspace, I haven't been on chat rooms for years, I avoid all the big name social networking sites because they are more trouble than they're worth and most people know it and you can't undo something once you've done it online so it's better not to open most of those cans of worms in the first place anyway.

I can't even pretend to sympathize. Just log off.

OLTL appears to be tackling the issue of cyber bullying next.

I don't doubt it's a problem. But I think cyber predators are a much more pressing threat.

femme fatale wrote:

Sorry but I just can't take it seriously one bit. When I was coming up I knew some REAL bullies who you crossed the street to avoid. I bet everybody who is being picked on in person wishes they had a "cyber bully".

Really. Right now there is a kid who routinely gets shoved and stuffed into lockers at school who would love to trade places with a kid being bullied on Twitter. I don't negate that something needs to be done about any and all kinds of harassment, but when it's on a social networking site, the victim has more than a few options to take control back of the situation. Cyber bullies are wimps and are probably the one's being bullied IRL and just taking their aggression out where they know they won't have to back it up: online.

Shale wrote:

Nhaiyel wrote:

On a purely logical level, the concept of 'Cyber Bullying' does sound borderline absurd; however, the culture we live in treats cyber living with enough validity that it has become a religion, particularly to young kids and teenagers who can't go ten minutes without checking for the latest status updates. A kid gets clowned on Facebook or Formspring and the following day at school, it's the talk. They text each other messages, send pictures of whoever back and forth, etc. I can see how, in this era, cyber bullying, harassment and mockery could/would be a problem. It's what prank calling was back in 1992.

Out of all the logical responses here, this is the closest to touching on what is the problem. Teenagers have a different mental function than adults. This has been quantified in the world of MRI, and they actually do lack in logical mind process and do react more on an emotional level. Duh, whoda thot?

That said, as an adult for MANY years, I still get caught up in cyber world myself. I have a MySpace account and a FaceBook in my own name, mainly to keep connected to real friends and family (I found out my half-bro got married by way of FaceBook).

I first had a MySpace account for Shale, and really had fun flirting with all the cute, bare chested boys (connected with a couple IRL actually)



But MySpace fucked up and it is impossible to navigate any more like it once was and the fun was gone, so I deleted Shale's space.

But I have developed friendships online that are every bit as valid as those IRL, particularly a young man from Wales who almost died. I cried about it - even wrote a verse about that phenomenon. We still keep in touch with the changes in his life, as I do with a young woman I knew since she was 19 - who is now 23 and has a kid. These ppl I actually consider cyberfamily - even tho we have never met IRL.

So, there is a whole 'real' world in cyberspace, even for some of us with better logic. Couple teens sharing stuff in cyberspace with ppl they know IRL, it could be quite more traumatic. They can block or delete, but all their friends will still know.

Besides, I have been bullied on another forum board. I have the potential to respond in kind, but the mods should have taken this guy to task for his crudeness. "Eat shit and die" directed at you personally is usually considered hostile messaging. I left that board along with another liberal leaning former hippie type. The young woman I mentioned was on that board and the only one who had the energy to challenge that guy. Ah, youthful fortitude. While I can enjoy debate and disagreement, I still want my visits to a forum to be pleasant and feel a sense of friendship with the names & pics on my monitor. So I have a very low tolerance of being attacked. And, I am as defensive of Shale as if it were really me. In Cyberspace it is me.

I think this is why I feel compassion for people who are cyber bullied and don't think it is as easy as "just log off"...I have friends online that I'm far closer with than my IRL friends. In fact, I had a REALLY bad last quarter of last year (my husband was hurt at work, our car was totaled, my grandfather passed away, I had to have hand surgery and like 100 other things went wrong...every day it was 10 more things...) and my FB and BG friends were there for me in ways that my IRL friends weren't. I didn't get any phone calls from people in my real life, but I got a 50 dollar grocery gift card from an online friend in the mail, a 100 dollar check that my friends online pooled their resources for and sent to me, 25 dollars from a friend who asked me to go get a pedicure, a friend offered to fix all my cloth diapers for free (long story but that saved me hundreds of dollars), and another friend that I met online brought me 50 dollars worth of groceries...

The thing is though, it's not like the money was the helpful thing (even though it was), it was the fact that these people cared enough about me to think of me in my hard time and take action, even though most of them had never met me face to face. They really restored my faith in humanity at a time when I was really down.

The flip side of that though, is that these relationships DO mean something to me and if I were forced to "just log off" because someone was stalking or harassing me, I would REALLY feel that loss, and I'm 31 years old.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/advocate/20110121/ts_advocate/report_teen_commits_suicide_after_facebook_taunts

Quote :

Report: Teen Commits Suicide After Facebook Taunts
By Advocate.com Editors Advocate.com Editors – Fri Jan 21, 6:18 am ET

Los Angeles – Kameron Jacobsen, a 14-year-old from Orange County, New York, took his own life because of Facebook taunts about his perceived sexual orientation, according to sources.

Fox 5 News reports on the loss of Jacobsen, a freshman at Monroe Woodbury High School in the northern edges of the New York metropolitan area. His death follows another suicide of a junior on the football team less than two weeks ago.

Facebook issued a statement about the incidents, according to Fox 5 News.

"We are deeply saddened by the tragic deaths of these students, and our hearts go out to their family and friends,” said Facebook. “These cases serve as a painful reminder of how people can help others who are either bullied or show signs of distress on Facebook. We encourage them to notify us, and we work with third party support groups including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to reach out to people who may need help. Our Safety Center also contains resources on how to help people who are in danger of harming themselves. These deaths are a loss to many, and it's critical that we all work together to give hope to teens who may be feeling similarly."

femme fatale wrote:

Sorry but I just can't take it seriously one bit. When I was coming up I knew some REAL bullies who you crossed the street to avoid. I bet everybody who is being picked on in person wishes they had a "cyber bully".

"Cyber bulling" is a little too easy to get away from for me to feel that much sympathy over.

Setting aside why bullies bully (their own low self esteem, blah, blah, blah), it seems to me they usually only pick on someone who can't or won't defend themselves so it's difficult for me to put myself in the victim's position.