On Cyber-Bullying and common misconceptions.

_{Notice: The information and text contained within this blog entry are opinions, not facts and designed to spark debate and intelligent conversation. It is not written to make fun of anyone or to generate hard feelings. Please read it with maturity and respond with the same maturity.}

A lot of the information given in this journal may be identical or similar to the information and opinions presented in this news article, and this has been noted. Also, it may echo a youtube rant from a one "2, the Ranting Gryphon", which puts all of this in a faster, funnier, and more eloquent way. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_ZiRT…

A commonly used and often misconstrued new-media buzzword, "Cyber Bullying" is often used by those who are not cognizant of it's meaning or it's ramifications. In fact, it would be a safe bet to assume that a great number of deviants see the word thrown around to describe flame wars and trolling, which are as common online as weeds in an unkept garden or trash on the side of highways and roads, and just as incorrect a usage as a group of religious nutcases claiming that the death of a child in a tragic accident is God's will [external link], or that rape victims are all prostitutes and they got what was coming to them, so they should have to deliver a rape-baby instead of abort [link].

After an in-depth discussion with someone I live with, it came to my attention what actual, In Real Life bullying actually is. Bullying, harassment, and similar instances are situations where the creation of an inescapable physical situation that adversely affects your life (either at school, at home, at friends, work, etc.). The keywords here are "Inescapable" and "affects your life". If, hypothetically, you are a 9th-grade student at a local High School, and Bevis McDoucheface calls you names, throws rocks at you, and threatens you every day on your way to school, at lunch, and on your way back home when you walk to school, this creates an inescapable situation. Even if you got your parents to drive you, Bevis would still be at your school, waiting to call you fatso in the hallways and take your lunch money. Transferring schools is out, and Mr. McDoucheface promises that if you go to the administration, he will "tear you a new ass", which is totally not gay. This also adversely affects your life, as school is now an unsafe environment that you are being forced into against your will, every day. Kewords here are "unsafe" and "forced into" and "every day (or repeated, repetitive)".

To qualify as bullying, someone would have to do something online that fit all of the key words. It would have to be inescapable, affect your life (outside of this glowy box-thing that displays web pages), make you feel unsafe, you would have to be forced into the situation, and it would have to happen repeatedly. Sadly, if some twat on the internet calls named xxxhornyxtwat666x you a faggot, it is not "Bullying", nor is it "Cyber Bullying." It's called, as "2, The Ranting Gryphon" said, a "get the fuck over it and move on." No, but in all seriousness, it's not creating a situation anything like Bevis McDoucheface's daily assaults. Xxxhornyxtwat666x's situation is completely avoidable, especially on a site like this. Even if xxxhornyxtwat666x got his personal army of "Cyber-Bulliez" out and xxxhornyxtwat666x, 1mad0uche, fagmasterr and cockNballz1991 continually harass you, it can be rectified. Enter "BLOCKMAN AND HIS HAMMER OF BLOCKSTICE". Go to your settings panel, block them, and now the situation is avoided.

First of all, usually situations like this can be diffused long before they start. If you didn't reply to these fuckers to get a rise out of you, they'd have gone somewhere else. It's not like they're sitting there refreshing your page constantly waiting for you to say something stupid, you continued conversation with them in the first place and partially caused the shitstorm. Second of all, it's not like these people even know you in real life, the only thing they affect is your 'online reputation', which is about as valuable as that stack of soda cans on your desk. Or, in the case of my personal stack, about 55 cents, as they can all be refunded for 5 cents a piece in California. Even if they've damaged your reputation so badly online that you can't go anywhere on the internet without some idiot saying "ololol xxxhornyxtwat666x calld u a faget", you're not limited. You want to know something cool? Hit alt+f4. Did you see that? The browser closed. Problem solved.

Some twat online turns from an annoyance to a "Cyber Bully" when xxxhornyxtwat666x decides that he's going to get you, and decides to hack your facebook or myspace where people who actually do know you in real life will see his slanderous remarks, when he changes your sexual orientation to gay and posts naked pictures of you online. Spreading rumors about you to your school does count as bullying, because it fits all five of those keywords.

Another case of "Cyber Bullying", is when Bevis McDoucheface decides to start using the internet as another platform to terrorize you, spreading text message spam and trolling your facebook. Obviously, this makes an already bad and inescapable situation even worse. This is probably the "True Form" of Cyber Bullying, usually when it's thrown around on the news, the bully knew the victim and bullied the victim in real life. Your petty name-calling is not the same as the torment some schoolchild with a hatred towards the universe because his stepfather touched him inappropriately pours down upon completely innocent people daily.

Real bullying does contribute to suicide, because these kids think they don't have a way out. Speaking realistically, some of them don't. You shit on the headstone of every single one of them when you call "Cyber Bullying" because someone disagrees with you.

Anywhere you go online, you're going to have idiots that disagree with you. Anywhere. There's no website called www.rainbows-and-unicorns-and-everyone-is-nice-to-each-other.com. Sometimes, you can even minimize annoyances by doing something magical. It's called "Not feeding the trolls." If you don't feed the source with your replies, they'll leave you alone. It's something amazing that most of you fuckers have yet to discover.

In almost every case of alleged "Cyber Bullying", the "Victim" has done something to try to bring it on himself. Making call out "Troll List" journals, whining on his myspace, talking shit right back to the trolls, and even going to lengths as to threaten calling the cops or killing oneself publicly. Hell, sometimes you idiots even give these people your personal information so they can harass you in real life, just so you can sit back with your victim complex and feel worse about yourself. When xxxhornyxtwat666x tells you that he's "gonna tear you a new ass" (still totally not gay) and you say "o yeah well my address is 1234 fucktard street, dickless New Jersey", you kind of deserve the shit you'll get for it. No offense, but you're actually handing this dude ammo. Yeah, he's breaking the law if he uses the information, but would you tell Bevis McDoucheface to come to your house and beat your ass? Fuck no.

Yeah, they're pretty much the same people, but as a user you have options that don't exist in real life. Blocking, avoiding the site, even getting off the internet for a while and waiting for your brain to grow a few more neurons are all options you have. In real life, you can't just skip school. If these fuckers are so bad, just turn off the damn PC. They'll get bored and go bother some other asshole that's stupid enough to feed them. Why can't you see that you have the goddamn upper hand? xxxhornyxtwat666x can't hurt you, he's in some undisclosed location, cowering behind a computer screen just like you are. Grow some thicker skin, or grab your nuts if you got 'em (females too!) and be the bigger person, which is a more civil way of saying "Grow the fuck up."

There are assholes everywhere, in real life and on the internet, and you'll have a much better life if your skin isn't paper thin. If you let yourself get depressed and butthurt because some loser called you a faggot on the internet, you will never, ever survive in the real world. Bad shit happens to good people who deserved absolutely none of it because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Over Twenty Thousand children die all over the world every day from starvation because nobody gives a shit about them either. Even if this asshole called you a faggot 20,000 times, it's still a minor annoyance and pales in comparison to the tragedy struck daily to innocent people.

If you commit suicide because of some lonely bastard on the internet who called you a name, you deserve to be remembered the way 4chan will plaster image macros of your name all over the internet. Congratulations, pussy, you too can become an unfunny, overused meme.

Seriously.
Quantization.

Opinions from this group that say the same thing, in shorter and sweeter increments. Dare I say, bite sized?

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