Cyberbullying

[muggiwhplar]

I had a long reply typed out, but when i re-read it i found that it made little sense.Basically, I think it's unfair to put all the blame on her. It's not fair to blame her being bullied on herself and her lifestyle. No one should have to be bullied because of their (stupid) choices. And i don't think it's fair calling her family and friends ignorant either. Not unless you personally know them and know how they operate as a family/friends-circle.

 

This seems to make little sense too, to be honest :s

 

Of course she's not the only one to blame.

 

I feel sympathy for her in the sense that people are judging her for things that she really shouldn't be judged for in the first place. I don't know anyone personally involved, but it is safe to say that their beliefs and expectations are what's amplifying the drama.

 

Ultimately, however, I don't feel sympathy for her because she is accountable for her own actions. Regardless of if the negative feedback she's getting is justified or not, we both know damn well that she understood how other people would react if they ever found out. But that didn't stop her.

[Zierro]

Yes but what you're referring to seems to be more pointing towards physical face-to-face bullying and not cyberbullying. Although the two can be very similar, it is not always the case. I posted an example yesterday (which got removed because it was a bit too explicit an graphic). It was basically about an ex-friend of mine. Some guy wrote a 1000 word essay about her. How loose she is, and how big of a [bleep] she is. He sent it to her, her entire family and all of her friends and fellow students using an anonymous Facebook account. My ex-friend threatened to take it to the police, but she really couldn't do anything about it. Had she taken it to the police chances were that all parties involved (her, the author and any person with whom she has sexual relations with) would have gotten caught up in a nasty court case of which the result might have been a mass deportation. Clearly the author kept this in mind when he decided to send it. There was also no way of a face-to-face confrontation because quite simply she had no idea who it was. She lost a lot of friends because of this, her parents don't look at her the way they used too. She's alone and depressed and she doesn't even know who did this to her.

Even if she tried to ignore it, there are close to 300 people who would not ignore it. And trust me, this country is small. By the next day 300 more people will know about it and before the end of the next day 300 more. By the end of the week anyone who knows anyone is going to know about it and wherever she goes people will look, point and stare. It's not easy to ignore something like that. And theres no way of standing up against it.

 

I know this isn't exactly something that happens every day, but i've seen it happen a lot not only in Qatar but in other countries too. So this tells me that it happens often enough to be used as a valid example. I should also add that this happened to an 18 year old, although not fully an adult i don't think you can put her under the classification of "kid". So this would be a perfect example of being bullied and not being able to do anything about it.

 

I think that's the difference between being bullied and being harassed.

 

EDIT: Wait...

 

She lost friends because after the letter her friends found out that she had slept with their boyfriends. Although she is only partly at fault, she still could have said no. She betrayed her friends. Would you still want to call a person like this your friend?

Her parents always thought they raised the perfect little girl. If you knew her you would know how good she was at actually hiding her true self from her parents. Her parents were well known within their own community and now had to carry the shame of their daughter. A lot of parents found out about this and a lot of them voiced their opinions about my ex-friend towards her parents. She caused her parents a lot of inconvenience because of her behavior.

And sadly the content of the letter was true. At least 90% of it at least.

 

Then sounds like that "bully" was doing a service to the neighborhood by pointing out all the [bleep]ed up things she was hiding from her close friends.

 

When I think of "bullies", I think of kids ganging up on (usually smaller) kids and teasing them about all their shortcomings. Harassment is when someone systematically wants to cause you as much misery as they can, which has more of a sadistic connotation to it. The instance that you mentioned just sounds like a case of "What comes around, goes around".

[Nomrombom]

When I think of "bullies", I think of kids ganging up on (usually smaller) kids and teasing them about all their shortcomings. Harassment is when someone systematically wants to cause you as much misery as they can, which has more of a sadistic connotation to it. The instance that you mentioned just sounds like a case of "What comes around, goes around".

 

This

[aeternitatis]

The only time I see anything near cyber bullying is either little Facebook fights, which are usually between two dumb broads aged 14-18, or on MMOs.

The FB crap rarely (<1%?) escalates to anything irl and "bullying" on MMOs means nothing because the e-thug is hiding behind anonymity and usually making false-claims about the victim's age, race, parents, etc.

[Fallen_GIGO]

Personally i think cyberbullying is serious but only when the victim feels messed up from the bullying otherwise,

the bully may not know their bullying the victim and may just be trying to get their attention, and really

im sick to death of everyone online taking everything serious