Topic: Cyberbullying

Watched this interview with Monica Lewinsky. Looks powerful, her new film '15 minutes of shame'.

Unfortunately, it happens in online gaming as well. Vets trashing newbs, insults, rage, harassing etc. up to verbal death threats. At least it doesn't affect your real world identity, but it's still really toxic and upsetting for everyone involved.

A worrying trend, I think it's good to get some social debate going.

Unfortunately all I heard were some empty words that were repeated billion of times already.

"Those are human beings!", "Be decent!" etc. Like people do not know what those mean.

And the ultimate question ... how to stop cyberbullying or bullying in general? Well you can't. It is just a part of the human mind that can't be removed. We invented it since the dawn on man.

I like how outraged people are only when something like that happens to them.

The only solution is to not give other people opportunities to bully you. I know it sounds outrageous but I have been bullied at school many years ago. Just do you best at avoiding certain people.

Another issue that I see it that people want to have no consequences for their private choices. There was an issue with a girl that had her private intimate photos distributed to many people. Well that actually happens a lot But if you choose to give someone private photos of you do not cry when they got "leaked".

How to avoid this? Sacrifice some "freedom" and don't do certain things.

This is a huge topic and many other things could be said.

@Zuljaras I don't think victim shaming is the solution to cyber bullying. It's fairly common for cloud accounts to get hacked into and private pictures leaked that way rather than she was asking for it by sending it to someone and even if they shared a pic with their partner who was the one that leaked it's still their fault and not the girl's.

I always prefer the buddy system, you're on a lads night out and you mate is playing up so pull them aside and tell them to cut it out or miss out the next round.

@jump In this day and age people should be more aware of the dangers. It is easy to go and cry who is at fault when the deed is done like it actually matters anymore.

I am all in for catching the offenders but it is not that easy. If it was there would not be so many "leaks" of private information.

Yeah, victim shaming is the laziest but most common response to bullying. I hated every second of Secondary School (high school, for the yanks) despite being told it would be the best years of my life, because I was bullied unrelentingly and still deal with issues to this day as a result of that. I reached out to my school, even got the courage to go to my headteacher about it and he just shrugged his shoulders and said “boys will be boys”. People just seem to rarely ever want to tackle the problem - the bullies - and would rather instead just help the victim “avoid being bullied”. Just utter nonsense.

It sadly doesn’t get any better when you’re an adult, either. Thankfully, I left the worst of my bullying behind when I left secondary school but have had issues with people in workplaces and found out pretty quickly, that generally if that person is well liked or in a higher position, you’ll just cause more problems for yourself if you try to raise concerns through official channels. I think our society is really broken in that regard.

It boils down to this in my mind:

Are words weapons or not?

Some people want to insist words are weapons, that we need tighter controls, more regulation, more accountability, more consequences, less freedom.

I prefer to live with the understanding that words don't hurt me. Words aren't weapons. Words don't mean **** until we start applying our own interpretations to them, so do yourself a favour and start interpreting words as harmless little groupings of letters that they are.

My email address is below. Please send as much hate mail, death threats, rape threats, insults etc to me and see how bothered you can make me. If you're going to insist words are harmful, prove it.

@gcunit That is an excellent take on it! It is our own interpretations and sensitivity that turns words into "weapons".

A nice sentiment but if you try that experiment the other way of yourself going to somewhere like Lambeth and starting saying racial insults, rape threats and other nasty things to random people on the street and then explain words aren't really only harmful I suspect the results would be different to you not caring.

@jump You mean to do something like this?

This would only go one way ... murder But this is not cyberbullying. There is no danger for your physical health when you spew crap online That is why people are doing it. But it goes the other way around as well. There is no danger for you when someone hates you online. Just use the ignore button or whatever function is available and be done with it.

Also have you seen such experiments like the one above? I have not. Also I am pretty sure that if it is a huge gang that spews hateful words on the street like that there won't be anyone to confront them until
they gather an even bigger mob

@jump This thread is about cyber bullying, not about the merits or otherwise of approaching random people on the street in deprived areas to see if they can be provoked or not. That would be getting into the realms of Actions i.e. confronting people in the street and interrupting them going about their private lives.

Wow. I’m not sure the forum has the maturity to handle this topic if this is the kind of responses we are getting.

@Pizzamorg What's wrong?

@Zuljaras The video is unavailable.

@gcunit you can change it to targeting women/non-white/LGBT users online and saying nasty things to them and then tell them it's only words if you want? Words do contain power as it is what allows connection and communication to others and if your words are carrying racism, misogyny attitudes then folk will still feel the effect of it.

Don't get me wrong as I agree with your point and I grew up on South Park's anti-pc and take a joke mentality etc but even South Park had to go yeah some words aren't worth saying.

@jump It was the scene from Die Hard 3 where John was forced to go in Harlem and walk with a sign on his shoulders that was racist

This topic is....interesting. I'll have to give the vids a watch when i can (at work). I'm afraid to admit i'm poorly equipped to respond to cyber bulling. My generation was probably the last to not have the internet as a normal aspect of life. We just had regular bullying. And it sucked. But, in my case at least, that's how I fell in with my group of friends.

@CactusMan Well when someone say it's the victim's fault anyway and they should stop crying about it does feels like a textbook definition of victim shaming.

To me, there is a difference between 'victim blaming' and 'victim educating'.

There's a well used phrase on the internet: Don't feed the trolls. People who throw threats and abuse around online are the trolls, and the people reacting to them and getting bent out of shape about it are feeding them. Now, it's ok if you fed the trolls once, maybe you thought that was what you were meant to do, but don't do it again because all it does is give the trolls energy and ammunition. That's not victim-blaming, that's victim-educating.

@jump As I said, some people want to insist words are weapons, some don't.

There's a vocal proportion of modern society that are the online equivalent of professional footballers on a pitch. A few choice trigger words aimed in their direction and they will metaphorically roll around, writhing in faux pain and agony, before rushing up to the referee and demanding a red card for the offender. And the rest of us are just laughing at them. Replays show the words never touched them.

As someone who has teen/preteen kids navigating middle school and seeing how cruel kids these days can be, it's disheartening to read some of these replies. Words absolutely can have an effect on people. I grew up in a family where constantly "roasting" each other is par for the course and thus have crocodile skin, not everyone is built like that. Kudos to those like myself who can brush off words as just a combination of letters but expecting everyone to be exactly like that and not recognizing there is a pretty large emotional spectrum in humans is pretty silly imo.

I feel like these "get a thicker skin or get off the Internet" type of responses always boil down to "I want the freedom to behave like an *****". You literally have to go out of your way to behave like an *****. Why go through that effort?