Slashdot Mirror
The Rise of Cyber Bullying
santos_douglas writes "The Detroit Free Press has an article detailing the problems schoolchildren now face in the form of online cyber bullying. As if parents didn't already have enough to worry about! Examples include rumor spreading typically via text messaging, threatening emails, invasive pictures taken with camera phones, and the most extreme - creating entire websites to criticize/threaten/harass another student. The article suggests many tips for combating the problem - chief among them being the establishment of specific school policies. I suppose this is another example of an inevitable downside to the interconnected world. Mandatory Google search for your added reading pleasure."
Does Front Page Express still come free with Windows? I hope not...
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
My modem can beat up your modem!
If I decide to start bullying someone on the ACLU message boards will the ACLU take it down? Wouldn't it violate my speech rights if they do even if it is slander?
I am not taking a position pro or con on the ACLU but it does seem like an interesting situation.
Just as an interesting thing to add, the ACLU does have a student rights forum
some kid had set up a website devoted to hating this teacher, school found out about it and he got excluded. This isn't limited to schools of course, anyone can be the victim of these, but seriously, in real life this would cause you trouble, but on the internet things like this are easily avoided.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for the nerds to get even with the bullies?
Nobody that picked on me had the brains to put up a website! In fact, I didn't gain the respect of the jocks until CompSci class when they would ask me to help with their work. Of course, it was all on Commodore PETS (gawd, I feel old...).
has been bullying me with email for years. "Communicate with the customer or else!", and that type of thing.
i'm totally at a loss for this one. what could suck more!? every embarassing thing i did in 6th-8th grade now only resides in the distant memory of classmates. i'd probably kill myself if it was part of the internet for ever and ever. (hell, i'm still embarassed by dumbass posts i made to usenet in the 90's!)
this is a very interesting side-effect of the 'net. i don't know if this can be remedied, but it does imply that children now have accept the possibility of total transparency in their lives. as hard as it is to swallow, maybe this is how the new culture begins...
i would say i'm glad i'm not her, but this could, in reality, happen to ANYONE. it's just harder to ignore as a child, and it's harder to sue for libel/slander. but still, who to sue?
gah.
the transparent society is gonna suck.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
anyone posting AC here I'm gonna kick your ass, I know who you are and you better have your lunch money with you tomorrow.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I guess we've found yet another use for micropayments.
I got in trouble for bullying when I told a kid I had a trojan on his computer and had more access to it than he did (I was bsing) :)
My little brother's website (which includes photos and comments sections) was spammed pretty bad by a member of a rival football team.
/24.
My the profanities! I'm thinking of making Apache redirect to goatse.cx the next time someone comes back from the offender's
I know ever since camera phones/pdas came out the first thing that came to my mind is taking a picture of every cute girl that walked by :)
:)
You could look all professional on your pda and secretly snapping pictures of her butt. Sure it's not ethical, but when technology makes it so easy...
no comment
They're not getting the shit kicked out of them anymore.
Being bullied is getting pushed down a flight of stairs, not getting an anonymous text message about how dopey your shoes look. Sheesh.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
More savy WWW web knowledgable teachers will get a handle on this. It's just a matter of time. How about a parent just instant messaging the teacher ?
Can someone tell me why old people online are such assholes? My mother got involved in the most crazy group of people from an online Bingo site of all places. Then after awhile she started getting into harder stuff like Yahoo Messenger chats and video. It's fucking crazy what dirty old senior citizens talk about. I thought I stumbled into a teen chat room when I saw what kind of backstabbing dickwads prevail on these places.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with giving schools control over students' lives beyond campus grounds? Why is it that some people are so quick to abdicate control and responsibility of their children to a government beaurocracy? Are today's parents really that bad? Is the government that eager to monitor/regulate every aspect of our lives?
It's time for people to stop blaming the school system and making out kids the taxpayers' problem. If your kid is a fuck-up, be a goddamned parent and put them in their place! Stop automatically run crying to the government!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
until bullies beat our kids up for Paypal passwords.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Technology only provides a comms tool. What's the difference if kids text eachother or pass notes? Write "Tammy is easy" on the boy's room wall or a web page? If anything the computer based comms makes it easier to trace and clamp down on.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
LMAO. I'm usually in warez rooms on IRC. No old people there.
This sort of thing is being done by little geeky kids probably right? Ok, great, get some REAL bullies to track them down and beat the snot out of them. That'll teach 'em!
Seriously though, things like this just prove that in basically any group, you'll have bullies. Even if you take all the geeks and seperate them, bullies will emerge from the geeks.
my post is a grammatical nightmare
Save Sam and Max!
In grade/middle school some people resented me because of my grades/intelligence. You know what I did when I got picked on? I picked back. A witty remark will often slow a bully quite well. Sure, this isn't a very civilized situation, but who ever said that kids were civilized?
At least, there is no physical harm done in cyber-bullying. There's also no reasonable way to stop it. Shall we enact rules for school children that they never say anything that isn't nice on school time or off? Some of the examples amount to slander, and if they get particularly bad, you could bring a suit, but c'mon there are enough lawsuits now without every school child suing every other child for slander.
I realize that being made fun of isn't very pleasant, but that's something that kids have to deal with. Their parents should help put it in perspective.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
I wouldn't get mad, I'd get even, Call the DHS and tell them that you've been terrorized. Have them track who these terrorists are send them off. Where do we send them? I don't care as long as they can't pick on me any more. Go ahead disappear those bullies! I won't miss them. Go ahead; make all the mean people go away.
At first read I found this laughable but after a bit of thought I see a rekindling of an already occurring problem. Children will always be children, they will always be immature, they will always be impressionable. The problem herein is parents. I have a 10yo, and 11yo. They do not go on the internet without permission and they conduct themselves as we dictate. No chat rooms, no e-mails from anyone we dont already know. The parents of all there friends form a network with us via e-mail and the children are aware of this. They also respect it understanding the inherent dangers of the internet. Using yahoo parental controls anyone sending them e-mails with profanities or pre flagged words gets reported to us. If the account they are using is linked to a parental account reporting it to the parent is easy. So before someone starts blaming the internet look to the Parents.
You can block instant messages.
All my bullies either insulted me behind my back or to my face where they could beat the crap out of me and take my stuff afterwards. Everyone was either out to get me or unwilling to interfere, even the teachers.
Since when are Google searches mandatory? Did I miss a memo? Oh wait, I know, I bet in was in that memo with the thing about the TPS report cover sheets. Damn, looks like I'll be working this weekend to retrofit my submissions...
Same tune. Different method. Cyber bullying is no different from physical bullying in the sense of how it should be handled. The serious lack of discipline and the whole "My kid would NEVER do that!" attitude shows how poor parenting is a breeding ground for these activities. Last thing a school should do is add MORE policies. But in the end, rules and laws are created to protect us, right? Give me a break.
And to think nerds once held the internet as a private refuge.
I'm sure I'll get modded Troll for this one but...
Is it really a school's responsibility to deal with this?? Would a school be held accountable if signs of a derogatory nature were put up around town?
The school should do something if the site is created on school property, but I don't know if there is anything they should have to do otherwise.
Still, this sucks. I can't begin to say how glad I am that this was not around when i was in school.
So I assume the standard solution to face to face bullies applies? Ignore them and they will go away.
/. crowd was/is subject to taunting, bullying, name calling what have you..we all seemed to come out fine in the end, and I never once had to fight anyone in the school yard, they never showed.
I'm sure most of the
Apple free since 1990!
For one thing, such e-messages are traceable records; bullying in person is insidious because they're usually careful to make sure that no one actually can prove they did it. Parents and school officials can use these to deal with the bullies promptly.
On the other hand, kids need to be taught how to deal with stuff like that, and probably the tabloid press is a good place to use as an example: show them how some celebrities take it too seriously and waste a lot of time an energy fighting it, while others make fun of it and ignore it.
They can also make use of it to find out who their real friends are. People who believe everything they hear without checking at the source aren't much of a friend in the first place.
it's a double edged sword. I personally do not think the schools have any business moderating events that take place outside of school.
..send threatening texts/emails to Federal officials, put up "i'm going to kill the President" diatribes on their websites, use their computers to h4x0r merchants and steal financial info...come on, this is the *perfect* situation to turn their weapons against them.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The idea of schools having policies about what students can do online (from their homes, not from school) is absurd. Sure, schools don't like it, but there's a much more serious problem of schools imposing jurisdiction outside of school. Schools have responsibility for students when they are on school grounds, participating in school functions, or on school-provided transportation. Other than that, the minute a student steps off school grounds, the school should have no jurisdiction over him.
Granted, if a student posts pictures on a private web site, and those pictures were taken at school in violation of a stated policy, then there could be room for action.
1. I'm sure somewhere a senator/president/judge is figuring out someway to use this to further erode our rights in this country.
;-)
2. Why doesn't the current hate speech laws on the books take care of this sort of thing?
If some kid puts up a site about how I'm a piece of shit and offers to pay anybody 20 dollars to beat me up, don't I have recourse to go to the police?
What's considered a hollow threat and what's considered authentic?
I also stand proudly among the many fellow geeks who were pushed around and told repeatidly that I was going to die either at lunch, in the hall or after school at the hands of [insert random roving band of fucktards].
That's it, my child is going to he homeschooled. I figure the money I save on bulletproof vests and lunch money, I can put towards social interaction classes
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
anybody got links to some actual content? I could use a good laugh!
If a teacher/principal/administrator tries to deal with a cyberbully, s/he will find a knock on their door, courtesy of Ashcroft for the Patriot Act, and/or RIAA/SBA lawyers for violation of the DMCA.
Tattling is Fun *AND* Patriotic!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
When did bully's figure out how to work a computer?
This, and your comments put the "Star Wars Kid" into perspective. And people said he shouldn't complain because he got a free iPod as a result of being an Internet meme.
What ever happened to being stuffed into a locker?
In sweden almost all school students use a site called www.lunarstorm.se and it's not all that rare that people sign up with an account like "person x sucks" and write all kind of stuff there.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
..was horrified to discover an entire site had been created to insult and threaten her.
Why should this surprise anyone? 20 years ago this would have been '..was horrified to discover an entire bathroom wall had been created to insult and threaten her'.
Now to invent a cell phone that can give wedgies...
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
aka revenge of the nerds. A website where picked-on kid reports the bullying action and the names of the bullies, to include e-mail address, cell phone number, IM nick, address, etc. Sympathic souls would take up the cause to harass the bully in creative ways. I envision it as the slashdot effect for punks...
The google search and all... but I want links to sample pages. This has to be far too entertaining to see!
The article sux0r5, and so does the author, MIKE WENDLAND!
MIKE WENDLAND, I've got embarrassing pictures of you!
And I know where you work, MIKE WENDLAND!
I'll be watching to see if you write any more of your "columns", MIKE WENDLAND!
Yeah, don't you forget it MIKE WENDLAND. I'll be watching every Monday and Friday, and alternate Tuesdays and Thurdays.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Slander laws are sufficient, why recreate the wheel.
Because the legal system operates with glacier-speed slowness. Half of these kids would graduate before a case ever made its way in front of a judge.
...and release it onto Kazaa, or those picture-rating sites. Sit back and watch what happens.
Blar.
- - Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand. - -
1) Bully hurts nerd 2) Nerd makes website insulting bully 3) Bully hurts nerd worse
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Isn't the rise of cyberbullying inevitable, given the rise of cybersluttery? They're each a symptom of testosterone/estrogen poisoning, transcending the distance of physical bodies with the Internet. In fact, this tandem dynamic shows just how much more advanced feminine wiles have become, with masculine wherewithall catching up. And since "on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog", males and females can now wallow in each other's traditional gender traps.
--
make install -not war
I pulled all sorts of online stunts on people at school and others; it didn't stop me from getting picked on at school but it did help me develop skills that have earned me thousands of dollars to date. I was good enough that I never got fingered as the culprit.
I'll have to point out that what I did mostly included social engineering with a little hacking.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
I could see this story happening another way.....a school invokes a policy where cruely making fun of another student would result in suspension......then a day later, we would have that little mouth taped up fellow icon detailing a story of how some stupid American school was stealing kids' free speach.
Oh, and I'm sure the Bush admin would get blamed somehow too.....
Kiss my shiny metal ass
What's next? School policies dictating that you have to be "friends" with everyone?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
to regulate the conduct of a student outside of the school's authority?
Let's say that on a Saturday little Billy posts a website saying that little Susie (who happens to be little Billy's ex girlfriend) is a slut or a tramp, or has bad feminine hygiene.
The school has no right to punish him for this. Is what he did illegal? If what he says happens to be true, no. The police can't punish him for taking advantage of his free speech rights. No school has the right to usurp authority like that.
Maybe a private shcool could get away with something like that. They provide a service and would have the right to refuse that service to anyone they choose.
Had there been a web when I was in high school, I would have probably done my best to let the world know how much of a whore a certain ex girlfriend of mine(cough, cough, Jamie Manning) was. I don't see why things would be any different for the current generation.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This is easy, if someone speads messages about you, backtrace to the sender. once youve got the email address, you find out who all of his freinds are. next go to goatse.cx, use photoshop and paste the bullys face on the goatse pic, email it to all of his freinds and say hey guys i just wanted to show you my something speacial. than port snif his address and use it to sent a text message to the principal that he/she is bringingt a gun into school to kill them. wala no more cyber bully problem, the bully is thought of as a deranged sexual pervert with violent tendancys and is locked up forever. man oh man oh man i wish they had those kind of devices when i was in school. just think of the kind of, life destroying revenge geeks like us could have done. we would have all the hot chicks ( phone cam blackmail) and all of the jocks and bullies would be in lockup or considered sexual miscreants) you geeks of today have it soooo well. use your powers.
I just love having my own troll... I think it's just so cute! I wanna hug him and take him to the mall with me. I like to daydream about the day I meet my troll and I dress him up and do his hair :P
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Schools need to teach kids math, literacy, and science! It is NOT the job of the school system to substitute for bad parenting! It's this politically-correct approach to public education that's producing more and more dumb kids!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I can't believe it hasn't been solved by now...that was one whole president ago! Here's the old news.
Would I rather be beaten and shoved in a locker or made fun of on the internet. I'll take the internet any day. Then I will h4xx0r their boxes and have my uber-l33t revenge! PWNED! I say again, PWNED! So yeah, on the internet, my chances of fighting back go up slightly.
SAILING MISHAP
Yes this is a problem.
Yes it should be taken care of.
We already have some laws against this (harrassment)
But I have a problem, particularly school justice.
It isn't there. The teachers and administration do what they want, students have few rights, and little recourse.
I know of many people who have been suspended or expelled on accusations that I know aren't true.
The principal of my old high school bragged how he was above the law. He could suspend or expell a student if he felt like it. He didn't need any proof of anything.
If you brought it to the school board, they wouldn't act "We stand behind our principals"
We have a law against smoking on school property, he suspended students smoking "in sight of the school".
This is overstepping yoru bounds, and it is wrong.
The schools overstep their bounds, and are the bigger bullies.
I find it interesting that a lot of the replies here deal with "how nerds can get back at the cyberbullies".
Very few, if any, are assuming that the nerds ARE the cyberbullies.
Bullying is about strength. In the real world, that can be physical or political/social. In the internet, that can be technical prowess. He who hacks better, bullies better.
Seriously, any 'bullies' doing this really do open themselves up to a libel suit (it's libel not slander since it's printed). And though I'm not a parent, if I were and such bullying were happening to my child, I would seriously consider teaching such web-savvy youth that their comments in the public forum carry consquences.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Just kidding, I actually agree with a lot of what the guy is saying. One bone I have to pick, though, is his conclusion:
I don't buy the whole "electronic tether" theory; all the kid has to do is hit the ignore button, or not view the webpage, or reject the e-mail, etc. to avoid harassment. If all else fails, he/she could just turn off the computer.
I've seen a lot of this in online games. Particularlly NWN, where people just let the situation get to their heads and take it too personal. Older player picking on new players and such. I've also seen it in FPS's on some servers.
The thing kids should remember is it's just a game and you can turn off the bully any time you desier just by logging off or going to a differnt server and not mentioning where you go. Another thing is to hide your online presence if that option is availble. Makes it harder for you to get tracked.
As for IM's, block sender and only allow people you authorize to contact you are great options. Websites are a little more difficult, and emails just add em to your blocked list.
The worst thing is to let them get to you. Keep a cool level head and take the necessary steps to deal with the situation in a way that gives them the least amount of attention possible. They'll get bored and move on in most cases.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
otherwise, revenge is stupid and it only continues a cycle of violence. it doesn't matter if you don't have the imagination to eliminate the conflict from your life without violence, it's the violence that is lame.
Fuck that. You didn't live my life. I was there. I know what choices I had. I made the best choice for the situation that I was in. Period.
it may be a foregone conclusion that you view the world in terms of battle.
As opposed to what? A love in?
it doesn't seem to matter to you that your bully (or his friends) just moved on to the next weakest kid.
No, because when I got them off of my back, I looked out for others. Not all, in fact, not most, but I was able to protect some of the other kids.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's all about lack of accountability. Think about it - in Real Life (tm) if you are an ass hat, people stop associating with you. There is accountability. In the On-Line World (tm), if you are an ass hat, you run the risk of alienating an alias. Worst case scenario - people figure out that RockinSenior78 is a jerk and exclude/ignore him. RockinSenior78 creates a new account NiceOldGuy79 and starts over.
"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit." --Oscar Wilde
i agree. The problem is the old christian "turn the other cheek" attitude. Turning the other cheek gets you slapped twice.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I used to get picked on in school, and now 15 years later I thiink about it and laugh, but a part of me would Grand Theft Auto those motherfuckers in a second and not shed a tear.
Sure, some may have 'grown up', but how many people that you know change that much from high school? Chances are, they're using the same techniques to bully their wives, children, co-workers, and others.
I don't wonder at school shootings at all.
As someone who is currently in high school, I believe I have a unique perspective on this. This actually did happen, to a few different people at my school. Sure, it was mean thing to do to those people. However, if was the bully, I would have considered it a success. Why? Because it got one hell of a reaction from the people who were made fun of.
The main reason bullying happens is because it gets a rise out of people. Think about it: who are you most likely to bully?...the kid who you know will run crying and sobbing from the room when made fun of, or the kid who will just kind of shrug and laugh along with it.
Today was a perfect example. My ears sort of stick out and turn red when I laugh. I was with a small group of people, and we were all laughing really hard about something...I was on the verge of tears. One of them pointed out that my ears were quite red, and I just kind of laughed along with them about it. I could of gotten all defensive about it, but all it would do is make me look like a complete weirdo, and would make me an easy target for bullies.
I guess my point is, is it seems that most bullying occurs because of someone's differences. For example, the kid who is short, or has a funny voice, or whatever. However, all humans have a unique trait that makes them a little weird. By laughing along with it, you show people that it doesn't affect you. By getting defensive, all you do is make yourself a target.
Obligatory link...
"HB-Rights.org - Student Off-Campus Web Sites and Computer Use"
More discussion/links than you can shake a stick at.
--Quentin
Ironic that this would show up here on Slashdot because this kind of shit happens here all the time. Note: the vast majority of people here don't abuse this site...I have a small minority of abusers in mind as I write this.
/. journal almost like still having MsGeek.Org, the only diff is that someone else has to worry about security issues and assholes. It's too bad... /. used to be fun a few years ago.
Let's face it, guys, cyberbullying happens here all the time...a few twits calling each other queer, indulging in the cyber equivalent of towel-snapping in the locker room, modding people down as "flamebait," "troll," and "overrated" just because you don't agree with them or they rub you the wrong way...the irony is so thick it's not even funny.
MsGeek.Org closed down because of a group of cyberbullies and their extended attack on the site. Many of the people responsible still post here, and often. The crapflooders never have, and never will, provide anything of value on this site...they just shovel out the same crap, the same disgusting gay porn and disguised links to goatse and tubgirl. Someone needs to hit the entire lot of the crapflooders over their collective heads with a clue by four...it stopped being "cute" or "funny" years ago.
I kicked the WIPO Troll off my site and got his account pulled because he posted hardcore gay porn pics to my board using an IE exploit. He came by it rightly. I specifically started MsGeek.Org to give women in technology a "clean, well-lighted" environment to post on a Slashdot-like forum. The crapflooders ruined that, up to and including running exploits against the board software itself. The security issues got to be so much for the good people at Hosting Matters that we mutually decided it wasn't worth it.
I wish that Taco and Hemos and the rest of the founders here had the cojones to pull the accounts of those who have made posting here uncomfortable for many people. I have no problems dealing with it...I'm a 10-year Usenet veteran with the virtual purple hearts to prove it. But I have gotten emails from women who don't read Slashdot because the crap posts are so disturbing to them.
Anyway, this is why I continue to have comments turned off on my journal. I wanted one place where I couldn't be shouted down by a small minority of obnoxious idiots, and I have it. I am sorry that the stupid yahoo.com address always gets filled up with spam and people can't get email to me there. I intend to find another webmail account with a bit more space so you have some way of contacting me. I might even break down and pay Yahoo for a bigger mailbox. Whatever.
I was going to post this anonymously, but screw it...do your worst. Mod it down to Kingdom Come. I don't care anymore. Karma is worthless at this point anyway...I posted for awhile under an identity I used when posting from work, and it took me a grand total of 2 months to go from newbie to the 50 point cap. W00t. That account could have been used to troll like a mofo...instead, I retired it, Blade Runner stylee. I don't even remember the password on the account anymore, fuck it.
I'll chime in every now and again, but right now the main reason I use this site is to blog. My
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If the school system is going to take a person's child for 8hrs/day, 5 days/week, you can't say that the parent is the only one influencing the child. A lot of kids in middle and high school probably see teachers and friends just as much, if not more, than their parents. It's not like parents WANT that, but in order to get anywhere in society (in most cases) one has to AT LEAST finish high school. In a majority of these cases the parent is probably out working so he/she can make money to keep food on the table, and maybe even pay for the child's education. In the case where the child works that's even less time he/she is at home, and more time to be influenced by others. If the government, and society as whole, is going to place such importance of going to and graduating from school, they better be making up for the time they are taking kids away from their parents.
OK I hereby nominate the parent as the root of a bunch of "yo mama so fat" jokes.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I agree wholeheartedly, I'm 15 and at high school in the UK. Today the latest rules to 'improve discipline and school image' were revealed, they basically consist of forcing girls to remove all make-up (on top of the extremely strict uniform we've already got) and pushing us all to have school IDs which do not, AFAICS, have any purpose at all.
Not only are they wasting their time with pointless rules, they're failing miserably in educating us properly. The fact is that all they are drilling into our heads now is facts to pass exams, not understanding. I generally have a good memory for this type of information and therefore get bored quickly - given the chance I could probably learn a years syllabus in a week and do OK on the exam. IMO the solution would be give the higher ability students the chance to understand the work on a higher level, but not according to the school, all I get is a conversation something along the lines of:
"Why aren't you working?"
"I finished it all."
"Is your shirt button undone?"
"Errr.. yes, sorry"
"Sit in silence for the rest of the lesson, and you've got a detention if that button's undone again"
This is the worse end of the teaching, but it's still a daily occurance.
This was in a movie! Why is this news? Its in both Boston Public & American Pie.
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
"Cyber-bullies have their victims on an electronic tether," Stutzky says. "The kids on the receiving end can't get out of range."
Sure they can. They can just not care.
The single most important advice I ever received as a child about bullies is just ignore them. It's simple advice we all can use.
There is no way school policy can extend into the Internet and the Home. How can the school enforce a policy to ban say websites that make fun of kids and teachers when said website doesn't exist on any of the school's servers and was created in a persons free time? Impossible! (save for libel though.)
With the exception of extreme circumstances (which applies to anything), the best way to deal with bullies is to ignore them. It's not fun making fun of someone if they just don't give a damn. Hell make a website saying how stupid and gay I am. If I don't care, get upset about it or let it affect my life in any way, how long is it going to remain funny to do?
Another middle school girl received text messages about her choice of shoes: "Where did your mommy buy those shoes -- the bargain basement?" Girls tend to be bullied most about their appearance and their choice of clothes, Stutzky notes.
Wow. Words can really hurt. Grow up, just say "Yeah" or simply "No" and move on.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I think the producers of cheaters should start a new show.
BULLIES!!
Parents who have a kid that's being bullied can call up the shows producers. The producer then sends a private investigator with a video camera (and maybe a couple gorilla's in case things go bad) to follow the victum around school and after school with hidden video camera's.
Bully gets caught on tape. Shows producers go to bully's parents and say "Let us use this tape or we give it to the victums parents to SUE YOUR ASS FOR AGGRAVATED ASSAULT!! Bullies parent gladly signs away the rights to avoid civil and possible criminal court time. Bully get's publically humiliated on national TV.
Nothing takes a bully down quicker than public humiliation.
"Have your lunch money in my Pay-Pal account by the end of the school day or else I will tell the RIAA that you are downloading copyrighted music.
With all the -1 posts about Rob taking it up the ass from Kathleen, you'd think our gracious hosts here at Slashdot would be able to provide some unique insight on the subject of being cyber-bullied.
Oh no! The INTERWEB is letting people act in the same replusive manners they always have! Lock up your children! But not in the room with the computer!!
Someone posed as me on a BBS in 1985 and said a whole bunch of really nasty things about a girl who I was friends with. It happened one weekend when my parents forced us to go out of town to visit some loser relative. So, the first I knew about it was when a bunch of people wanted to kick my ass and several girls who I had been friends with wouldn't speak to me. I was never even able to convince these people I didn't do it.
It was on an old Apple II BBS. I suppose there are lots of ways someone could have gotten my password.
Anyway, it was pretty awful. I lived in a very small town (we had just moved there) and all the kids that were into computers hated me after that. So, I got into other things, suffered through 4 years of High School, and got the hell outta there.
Sometimes I wonder why anyone would have done such a mean thing to me for no reason. People can be really vicious.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
One can imagine school kids today afraid to use public restrooms or lockerrooms, wary of legitimate picture-taking (like for the yearbook), and never giving out phone numbers, or email addresses, or IM id's, constantly googling their own names looking for threats or hate-sites about them.
It is very disheartening. But, with the rise of technology, society must learn to adapt. And it will, by closing in on itself. But, I agree with many posters earlier statement regarding parental control.
What this really means is we have to learn to be better parents and teach others how to be better parents, at a time when parenting skills are seemingly at an all-time low.
Before the blogs, etc., there was a clear delineation between personal thoughts and public thoughts. Things you wrote down in a journal weren't meant for public consumption.
But now you can write something in a blog, broadcasting it essentially to the whole freakin' world, and say, "These were my private thoughts! I feel so violated!" That sends my BS meter right off the scale.
Now, I'm the first to say schools should not censor off-campus speech. That just seems like a given to me. It's wrong. At the same time, I say, use some common sense. Remember, when you're writing in a blog, you're talking to the entire world. Don't say anything you don't want everyone to hear. It will be archived and it will come back to haunt you. Welcome to the real world.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
don't look here, look over there. there's nothing happening here.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
It seems that you belive that by stopping your child from seeing profianities in their typed form is protecting them. As if they don't hear worse at school.
And I dissagree with your comments, that children should be taught not to talk to unknown people online. I believe that the ability to converse with people they have never met, and most likely will never meet, is one of the most important things your child can be taught.
Thanks to the Internet, your child can make acquaintances with people from a multitude of countries, beliefs, and religions. They can learn about cultures, differences between societies, and problems or struggles people experience in everyday life. And they can do this safely.
There are still people who would rather deny their child communication with "online strangers" than educate their child about doing so responsibly. There are still parents who know so little about the Internet that they will accept the miconception that all "chat rooms" are undeground grooming places for paedophiles. Five minutes of guidance is enough to make your child understand that joining #12yroldz on AOL and repeatedly asking "wanna cyber?" is a bad idea.
The key is making your child *understand* that people hidden behind a chat room can lie. Simple as that. They need to be taught to keep their online acquaintances seperate from the real world. Make them understand that they WILL meet people who will try to harm them. With a little education, the Internet becomes a "virtual sandbox". Your child will be exposed to people - both good and bad, in a controlled and safe enviroment. There is no better way to teach your child about human nature.
I say this from personal experience. I am presently 18. During my 'childhood' I had always enjoyed the freedom of unrestricted online communication. I belive the results from this are only positive. I have learned so much, from so many...
My lifetime passion has always been programming. While in the 'real world', very few of the people around me shared this interest, online I was able to find a haven. I was able to interact with hundreds of thousands of people who not only shared my interests, but were willing to share their knowledge. I learnt to share my knowlede in return. I could collaborate on projects with people I had never met. It didn't matter that I was 12, noone knew or cared. My age was irrelevant. It was an environment in which skin color, gender, age, and nationallity are all irrelevant. A place where knowledge, contribution, and respect are honoured.
This has changed my approach in the real world. In a society where racism and religious discrimination are commonplace, children learn the negative attitudes from their peers. Having made contacts in practically every country, I didn't give in to the temptation to tag along. I actually knew the societies and people which others would criticise for no other reason than "because they're different".
I don't believe that your child will have their mind warped by pornography or bad language on the internet. If you believe they won't be exposed to these two 'evils' at their schools, you have perhaps lost contact with reality. The difference is that in the online world, attacking people with profanities results in rejection from a community, rather than cheap support from immature peers. The "u wanna fuck?" messages are frowned upon - "I'm sorry, I'd rather not sustain a sexual relationship over a 56k modem link".
I learnt, from first-hand experience, that trust takes years to build, and seconds to break. I learned to respect others, not because it was 'forbidden' to be disrespectful, but because mutual respect is what created the greatest acheivements and communities. I learned how to act when in a position of power, how to diminish rather than fuel dissagreements. Online communities, be they forums, IRC channels, or simply e-mail, have one thing in common; they are environments in which decisions aren't made with fists or knives, but via wit, intellect, and understanding. If children weren't sheided from this "for their own protection", they would grow to become better people.
A couple things to think about in regard to 'children' in schools and 'bullying'.
Children are
Worse, it's up to the victim's parents whether or not to act... leaving those with the worst homelives the most vulnerable... either to bullying or being bullied.
IMHO, if you can legally require the separation of the bully from the victim, you may have really helped one kid.
I also think the comment in the article that "... while these comments may seem silly to people who have matured, they are very devastating to the young people on the receiving end..." ignores the above reality.
It's tough to draw analogies to adult life, but what if you were legally required to show up for work? What if somebody spread a similarly scandalous rumour about you at work? Oh... let's see... while kids might think it cool to grab a peer's breasts, the reverse might just work for adults. So, your coworker starts telling people that you grabbed her breasts, and you're making passes at her all the time. So your coworkers begin to shun you. You can't quit... you're legally required to be there. You can't call the police, they won't do anything because this is just a little bit of workplace bullying. Now your boss... who happens to be 150% of your height, twice your strength and twice your weight, might just believe the person spreading the scandal, so it will be your word against theirs.
Your friends at work no longer want to be seen with you, because anyone can fall victim to such harassment... so you become ostracised... Some even join in to dispel rumours that they too might be perverts. Few people really believe the rumours, but they know you're not a safe person to be around because you... and anyone you're around is a target.
Seeing that you have no allies, people begin to pick on you, steal your office supplies, scratch your car, slash your tires.
So you keep going to work, despite all this, because you're legally forced to.
Now we're getting close except: kids don't get paid, have little control over their homelife and they've never known anything else.
Well, you can always fight back by showing up to school with a a trenchcoat and some semi automatic rifles and just take out the people that are bothering you....oh wait.
Ultimately it's the child that has to deal with the problem. Once he starts standing up for himself, bullies quickly lose interest and look for weaker prey. The most useful thing a parent can do for his child is to teach him to fight back at all costs. Attempting any other solution would be useless.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, I use it to make my Slashdot posts.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
None of the suggestions for schools (or parents) involve actually doling out punishments to the bullies. Very typical to tell the victim to "ignore it" or "chin up" while not punishing the bully.
If schools would actually punish bullies (for actions committed on school grounds or using school equipment), it would help greatly. And it would reduce the need for victims to need to learn to fight back in self defense. (Self-defense is seen as a negative by many of the same authorities that refuse to punish the offenders--ref. the giant subthread above on the good and bad of self defense.)
In 7th-grade (1991) I had to fight tooth and nail to get two bullies suspended for one day each. It involved my parents, their parents, 2-3 teachers, and 2-3 principals. That was a slap on the wrist punishment, but it kept those two away from me permanently.
We could actually deter bullies if real punishments (long suspensions resulting in class failure, expulsions, small claims judgements for out-of-school offenses) were doled out for serious offenses.
I'll just submit this for general consumption.
The fundamental problem with most teachers/administrator's is that they've gone and collected at least one BA/BS and at least one post graduate degree (typicaly in education, meaningless as that is).
The result is they've been away from the setting they're trying to control for an absolute minimum of 7 years (typicaly more).
Most of these people have forgotten what it's like to be between the ages of 11 and 18. They've lost track of how insanely vicious, cruel, and downright rabbid kids can be at this age.
When they do try to fix it the result is a half wited program that sounds like a cross between Disney and Soviet propaganda. It insults the intelegence of the students, takes five times longer than it needs to take, and general just pisses people off.
Most students leave the auditorium thinking how great it would be to kick the shit out of that punk ass little bastard who took notes on his palm pilot.
Wana solve these problems? Hire younger teachers. Get people fresh out of college who are closer to the students age wise.
Of course, No Child Left Behind is just going to make this worse, not better... but that's another rant for another day.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
The very last thing a teenage girl needs, is for the bullying webpage to let the world know that she grew a pair.
I'm afraid it is you who are wrong. First, the simple brute fact is that, so long as we insist on letting the school system be in charge of kids for 30 hours a week, the school system must work to instill values in kids. Otherwise, they're in school just long enough to unlearn everything.
Next, there's the fact that bullying, cheating, and whatnot do not just present moral issues; left unchecked, they represent a huge impediment to learning. Schools have to teach that these things are inappropriate anyhow, so we may as well just make it an official part of the curriculum.
Finally, you're taking far too narrow a view of the role of schools. If the job of the education system is merely to teach "math, literacy, and science," then why not take the next logical step and simply turn them into glorified trade schools? After all, 95% of people won't go into science, or need anything beyond simple algebra.
The reason this is wrongheaded is because schools have a much broader purpose: To socialize children, and turn them into adults. This goes beyond merely being good workers, or even scientifically and culturally literate. It also includes being an informed citizen, a skeptical consumer, and an honest and principled individual.
We can argue over whether public schools succeed in these goals, and whether these goals would actually be helped by formal classroom instruction on respect, tolerance, and ethics. But these are the goals of the education system, and they are appropriate ones.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Why are they making more strict rules for the students? Because it helps them pretend that they themselves aren't the problem.
Isn't this the offense? Posting lies and threats against another person in written form is illegal, and can be prosecuted.
I'm a bit confused why there hasn't been any mention of legal action against these kids if, in fact, they are posting libelous content. I'm sure that the threat of legal action would do more to deter this type of behavior than any school policies could.
Any lawyers care to comment? Non-lawyers?
Just as I would imagine was the _alot_ of guys here, I too got picked on when I was in Junior High. For years..Got randomly spit on, punched, kicked, you name it..by a group of about 3 or 4 of em, all older than me. It was a real blast, lemmie tell ya.
Then one day, I decided I about had enough, picked up a desk, and sent it crashing straight down ontop of one of them. Crushed his larynx. He couldn't talk for months, and even when he regained his speech, he sounded like Popeye. Karma works in mysterious ways.
Anyway, back to the story. I got taken by no less than three teachers down to the Principal's office, where I was given a "5 day out-of-school suspension".. One notch below formal expulsion back in those days. Interestingly, my folks backed me up, and essentially told the school to fuck off, since I had no prior record of doing anything even remotely like that, the school knew this kid was a bully, and never bothered to do anything about him. Bottom line, I was back in school within a day...And even more interestingly, I never had a problem with any of the other bullies after that. Didn't hear a single peep.
Thats not to say I advocate violence. I don't. But if you're dealing with what amounts to a juvenille sociopath who's parents can't control him, and a school who won't protect your kid, then that's what you have to do.
I really, really don't understand how we, as a culture, arrived at the idea that we should expect our kids to "just ignore them", or "talk it out" with a bully. That has never, and will never solve anything. At the end of the day, you have a God-given right to defend yourself and your dignity. End of story.
I'm going to be a father myself, pretty soon..And if theres anything i'd want my kid to learn from my experience, it would be that if ever gets bullied, and decides to beat the snot out of some kid to reclaim a portion of his dignity, Mom & Dad will back him up on it. Ultimately, he has to learn how to handle confrontations in life. Somewhere along the line, they're going to have to learn what "nobody walks all over you without your permission" means.
It just seems my whole generation was brought up to think that "ball your fist up and teach the asshole a lesson" isn't an option.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I was about 16 then, trying in vain to sound like a lawyer. Anyway those kids posted pictures a blurred out scanned picture of me from the yearbook, and posted some false information about me, and went to an online game I played and spread the link.. slight damage was done, but whatever, after I sent that email the site was gone within 24 hours, and they replied saying that had been taken care of.
Then again, if those kids knew how to set up a personal server.... DDoS time.
Please direct all bug reports to
It will be the geeks that steriotypically pick on the Jocks Mwahahaha
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I remember back in the 80s, "terrorist" meant "someone who hijacks a plane with guns and bomb threats" or "someone who straps explosives on and blows self up in a crowd" or "sets up a (toxic gas) bomb in a crowded place". It roughly equated to "criminal mad with anger or self-righteousness" to me.
terrorize, v
1: coerce by violence or with threats
2: fill with terror; frighten greatly [syn: terrify]
Somehow I doubt threatening to tell everyone your shirt looks dorky qualifies. Pray you never learn what terror really feels like.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Anyone else have some regrets about going to college? Maybe the bullies and dropouts outsmarted the rest of us. My teachers always told us that college is practically the sole path to success. I bought into it for better or worse.
I am a college student in Florida. I feel both optimistic and pessimistic simulataneously. I am studying Electrical Engineering, and hope to make 45-50k upon graduation. Good money, no doubt about it. But had I spent the last 3 years getting experience in real estate, I could be making 45 by now, and who knows what in the next few years! Meaning I have to make up 60k in lost potetial to make sure my engineering career is "worth it". Not to mention the stress engineering students have to go through (25 hours a week of studying, about 80 a week when lots of tests come). Plus, I don't get the satisfaction of working for myself or the benefits of private practice (such as tax writeoffs)
Unfortunately, I will never be rich if my sole source of income is as an EE. Unfortunately, if I decide to get into a more entrepreneurial occupation after graduation (which is what my parents want me to do) I have lost 4 years of my life. All that is not including the debt I'll rack up while getting this degree!
Moreover after graduation, I will likely be salaried meaning you get no overtime and whats more, less time to pursue money making ventures (fixing up houses, becoming a landlord, starting a side business etc)
Fortunately, I am still young. Fortunately, I live in a country of opportunity where I can still build wealth and use my degree as a jump start. Fortunately, I have more of a guarantee making a good salary in an ee occupation than going it alone.
Who would think that being optimistic and pessimistic at the same time was even possible!
--Joey
I must be reading something other than what everyone else is.
It IS the responsibility of the school to provide an environment where learning can take place. Bullying, cyber or otherwise, is contradictory to this goal. This bullying is not just taking place off-campus. Its happening on the school grounds and is sometimes aided by school equipment! Schools DO need to have policies to address this No camera phones in the locker room, rules on what is appropriate on school sponsored web sites, what can be done with school equipment, do you allow instant messaging in classrooms if at all on campus...
How did we get from an article about cyber bullying to rants about parents not doing their job?
this is on topic and absolutely perfect.. not sure why some whiney baby modded it Troll. It never ceases to amaze me how much pain some dork says he was caused by individuals he will refer to as idiots. If some dumbass meathead says you wear dorky clothes or that you have a little baby weewee, why do you care? Do you feel bad when a random dog barks or growls at you? Oh no, the dog doesn't like me!!?? why?!! I feel so bad. Note: this is in response to all the people who insist verbal abuse is as bad as or worse than physical abuse.
I grew up around idiots in a small town, and I was keenly aware of their idiocy. If you're 7 years old I might feel bad for you, but once you hit middle school.. stop being such a pathetic crybaby. People crying about this shit are born betas. They can't even imagine how to live their lives without some "mean" alphajock keeping them down.
p
Heck, if the kid wants to get rid of the website, they should put a link to it on /. I'd give the servers ten minutes.
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
Wouldn't it violate my speech rights if they do even if it is slander?
No, you don't have "speech rights" on somebody's messageboard.
Let the bullies step on up cyber-style.
I couldn't get away from them during gym class....but now they are fighting on my turf!
And I know my network kung-fu is better than theirs. Bring the noise.
But seriously, kids just gotta deal. Bullied on the net, bullied in class, it doesn't matter. There will always be bullies; and it is a right of passage for us nerdy types.
Now, I guess we should teach our kids how to run tracerts, do ping attacks on the bully's IP, or sneak a little trojan into the ole IM...
Kid: "Hey, dad, Billy called me a faggot."
Dad: "What did you do?"
Kid: "I deleted Billy's term paper from his hard drive."
Dad: "That's my kid!" (proudly)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
For example, how about getting rid of this BS that a student can have a cell phone in the school. I'm sorry, there is no reason for a student in high school or younger to have a cell phone with them during class or lunch (it is fine if the kid has it out in their car, but inside the building...no reason for it). This would eliminate kids taking pictures of each other in compromising times like when using the bathroom. (To someone who might say, "Well the kid will hide it"...trust me, kids don't hide things as well as they think. Most of them would probably forgetfully bust it out in places where it could be viewed by a teacher or administrator)
The second biggest problem that needs to be remedied is to teach them to respect adults! So many people fail to realize that many students today (especially in high school) refuse to respect their teachers at all unless the principal is around. If we can get these students to realize that they need to grow up and make something of themselves (something that doesn't involve acting like a damn reject of society), that may help the situation.
The bullies in my school happened to be the jock/prep/student government clique. They put together a 10 year reunion website to organize and collect contact info. Unfortunately the guy who put it up had no clue how to run a site. After snagging all of the contact info for spam fodder I simply redirected pages to a google cache article of a news story on the girl who drugged a teacher our senior year.
After they "fixed" that and chastised the "hacker" for being childish (which I fully admit I was) I then had all traffic redirected to goatse.cx. Yum. Let that imagine burn in your mind forever, chums.
Speak truth to power.
You all suck nener nener nener! :p
I even made a webpage to show my how much you suck!
Your Gay!
me karma am bad
Seriously, good point. You're spot-on.
You have an opportunity to file a criminal complaint against those who exploited the security of your system in order to wrongfully damage your property or service. This was very likely a federal felony and deserves an investigation with both local police and the FBI. In addition you also have grounds for a civil suit; should you gain a criminal conviction winning a civil suit is almost assured. I hope you saved your logs.
Want to teach those assholes a lesson? Let them explain their behavior to the police, district attorney, and finally - a judge.
Best,
--Maynard
That reminds me of a time in High School, I'll spare the story but in short, in involved a dynamicly created page using the subdomain, example:
http://you.isgay.com/
Where 'you' could be anything like
http://john.doe.isgay.com/
Very amusing to the techno-savvy. Eventually the creator got so many emails he made it more obvious it was a trick.
I KNEW there was a legal case here! FInally I can get you linux guru's to answer my questions promptly and politely in IRC without getting snubbed and ignored.
It's a lot easier to change your E-mail address or turn off your instant messenger programs than it is to hide on the playground. Sure, bullying is a big problem, but I don't think cyber-bullying is as big of a deal as the media wants to make it seem.
While in general I agree, sometimes it is necessary to speak to someone in their own language. Sadly, there are some people in this world who can only understand a punch in the face.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Come on. I read through the whole article and didn't see a single thing that didn't happen when I went to school, pre-Internet. Or, for that matter, I didn't read anything that I didn't hear from my parents' stories about when they went to school.
The article spent four fifths of its copy trying to make out that teasing and gossip-spreading were something novel and Internet-age. Yeah, sure. Before text-messages, kids just had no way of insulting or passing information to each other. Certainly, no schoolgirl has ever been teased about her clothes, or boy about his sexuality, before the age of the Dark, Nasty Internet.
Children are vicious. They learn the need to establish a social hierarchy long before they learn empathy. Paul Graham covers this phenomenon quite effectively in one of his essays.
Sure, the "instant-on" thing is new, but really, kids will do exactly what adults do when they want to get away from unwanted IMs: go invisible, or register a second screen-name that only their friends know.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, but it's not a new problem. I abhor lazy journalism that finds sensationalism in dressing up something as old as time (pornography, bullying, copying music) in Internet clothes, just because it's easier to scare people that way.
Charles Miller
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
Had problems of this sort. Apparently some guy from school whom she shot down devoted a section of his blog to badmouthing her. I don't know what happened in the end, if she got him to take down the ugly blog site or if it just faded into antiquity.
Alternative to that, I've always been amusing by sending simpleminded people http://firstname.lastname.isgay.com, which prints out amusing articles about the person in the URL header.
The main issue is self-confidence. Most kids and many younger adults just don't have the self-confidence to stand up for themselves; be it physical or verbal, our even by complete indifference. You also have to understand that many of these bullies are dangling from the finest thread of self-confidence imaginable. All it takes sometimes is one line in the sand to shatter that confidence and gain your peace.
I recall my stands, and I was generaly left alone after that.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I would like to say that this will be the best thing ever to happen to geeks. Why? Well, when I was a kid bullys beat me up and stuff. God help the bully who would have tried to go techy on my ass!!! My children will grow up in a world where bullys get their websites DDOSed etc...
I can see it now (Bully site)"TImmy is gay"
E-Mail to Bully site I admin from Timmy "I own your website and I got your moms credit card. If you do not leave me alone I will buy lots of gay porn under your name with her card. Also, look at your site. Do you like that picture I think it does you justice and Elton John never looked so young...I really like the Gimp it works well. Would you like to call truce?
From my own high school experience, chick fights were nasty. Men went into fights in high school looking to knock the other guy down in front of his friends more than anything else-- fighting wasn't rampant, but it was far from unheard of. People got bloody, maybe a broken nose here or there, but overall no debilitating injuries. By the time a couple girls got pissed enough to fight, though, they were going for the jugular. Seriously, it's scary.
The reason this is wrongheaded is because schools have a much broader purpose: To socialize children, and turn them into adults.
If that is the case, then why don't we remove every child from their parent's custody and put them into "school" until they're 18?
Black and grey are both shades of white.
This should be modded better than that.
Wow im a cyber bully and didn't even know it, Ive been posting a web blog with my coworker Camerons shortcomings for the last month. cammsav.blogspot.com I even have t-shirts available thanks to cafepress.com
Trust me, I took hits from both ends of the spectrum. The only thing worse than being the guy harrassed by other guys is when you're also demeaned by the females. Of course, things suddenly improved near the end of high school... sometimes all it takes is a change in environment. I don't know exactly what brought upon the change, except for remarks such as "you know, you're almost cool when you're really drunk," indicated I must have done something pretty out-of-character. A little self-confidence now and I'm capable of dealing with either gender, though sometimes still a little internally squeemish when around the jock-types.
When these boys grow up, they'll probably turn into these guys who blackmail companies into paying "protection money" to avoid getting DOSed. The advent of digital communication has made all kinds of behaviors more anonymous, including these two. Now you don't even have to confront your victim personally. If the addage that "bullies are the real cowards" is true, then they now have the opportunity to be even more cowardly still.
People are so scared of the geeks because of stupid sh!t like columbine (perpetrated by kids who weren't even very intelligent) that this is exactly what will happen, with the nerd getting slammed by anti-terrorism laws...
Looking at the submission (disclaimer, I didn't RTFA), you'd think this was prime JonKatz material! I could see a Hellmouth-ism coming from this one.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
You mean this isn't about the DMCA?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I once made a web site devoted to making fun of my hated junior high school nemesis. This was like 8 years ago. Is cyber bullying finally catching up to my middle school shenannigans?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
From the perspective of a victim, your comment is the equivalent of blaming the woman for getting raped. Yes, it's that bad.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
Learning self-defence Vs offence is not a bad trait. Yes, you don't want your kids to become the next GB and invade some foreign country, but neither would you want them to sit around and let themselves be abused of their lives (be the ones invaded). The fact of life is, there are people of all ages who will try to abuse you. Some on an emotional level, some physical, some on a profession, and some on all. You have to teach your kids to defend themselves on all levels.
Mediation doesn't always work, and some people just don't learn... it's really that they're too simple to understand anything but fists, which is why they learn quick when they get their own asses kicked.
Teach your kids that violence isn't a good way of dealing with things, teach them to try alternatives, but for godsake also teach them that if nothing else works, they have a right to defend themselves, and physically if possible and/or probable.
It's not about teaching your kids that violence is the best route, it's about teaching them what is appropriate when, and not letting them be punching bags.
Oh, and for the record, as a former punching-bag in high-school, I don't advocate violence by default, but grinding an aggressor's head into the snow and putting a few others in headlocks did give me a lot of space from physical abuse afterwards (you can do a lot to show your strength without actually hitting somebody).
Ok, explain to me how you can just receive physical pain from a bully without any pstchological pain. The whole point of them hurting you is psychological. They are demonstraiting that you are so weak and pathetic that you don't even control your own body. That's why bullies particulary enjoy things like grabbing your arm and forcing you to punch your own face while saying "quit hitting yourself", or pinning your arms to the ground under thier legs and using one finger to poke you in the chest repeatedly. It's ALL psychological, the physical aspects are just to prove their assertions of your inferiority in a way that you can't deny or ignore.
Cameras on cell phones can be used while hidden in locker rooms to take ultimately emberassing and highly illegal images.
I am sure some creeps have thought of this tactic before. I remember our locker room in Jr high was a big room with lockers on the outside. The shower room was seperate and about 10 to 50 feet walk depending on where your locker was. Plenty of space for somone to snap pictures with a cell phone and get in real trouble.
jason
chief among them being the establishment of specific school policies
Nothing makes kids (or adults) behave better like more rules : /
Let's face it, guys, cyberbullying happens here all the time...a few twits calling each other queer, indulging in the cyber equivalent of towel-snapping in the locker room, modding people down as "flamebait," "troll," and "overrated" just because you don't agree with them or they rub you the wrong way...
Porn & obscene insults are bullying. Being modded down (to +1 or +2) is not - it's not even unfair. If you read at +3, you will never see any of the former. You will, however, see plenty of worthless posts. You know, the posts that you modded up just because you agreed with them, or they rubbed you the right way, regardless of how poorly they expressed their thoughts. People who mod overrated posts as "overrated" are doing valuable work, as valuable as other mods.
There are plenty of posts that are completely unobjectionable yet are fairly rated at +1: by definition, the vast majority.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Oh Great, cyber bullying? I can picture that little Billy is being harrassed:
U R teh ghey. U suXX0rz 4t Quake.
If this is the kind of crap going on they deserve it. Turn off the computer already!!!
Seriously...the way to deal with a bully is to give back with more force than you received. If you are unable to match the bully with your bare hands, use tools. We aren't monkeys.
Blar.
I'm really surprised no one commented on this (at least that I could find, maybe they got modded down). This is definitely an example that is well beyond bullying. We'll never know for sure, but if the girl hadn't inadvertantly found out about the site, and the school officials (and others) alerted, she might be dead by now.
The article is slim on details, but I would hope some charges were filed against the site's creator. Before anyone starts yelling about they're just kids, we're talking 15yos here, and they certainly know that death is permanent. They should be held accountable.
with all due respect, the childrens mom worked in social services for many years dealing with abused children. my friend if you had any idea the lenths a pedifile will go to, to talk to and get to know your minor yo uwould be surprised. Me well i've been using the net since the days or prodigy bulliten boards. I know the trash that is out there. In this case I am not being nieve i'm being knowledgable. If I wont allow my children to tal to strangers on the street how is the internet any differnt.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I'm thinking: me, you, and a scientifically-proven magic petrification ray, you hot little bitch!
In support of OP and because time just took my last two modpoints, he's spot on.
If you're going to teach your kid one thing, teach them empathy.
OP made a few excellent points, give him some mod.
to send an email.
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chief among them being the establishment of specific school policies
to do what? say its against the rules to bully? is txt message bullying somehow not covered under the policy "be nice to people", sounds like the ranting of a lazy management "erm yes lets have a meeting and create some more policies"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I go to what a private school, and we have a very strict code and (publicly percieved) strong academics. However, my experience of 6 years has been that the teachers who care less about the little things are often those that can teach the best and care the least about the stupid memorization stuff.
However, one of the things that allows my school to have these teachers that teach so well is that we are not bound to standardized testing for our funding. Thus, since they do not need to make sure that all of us do well on the testing, they can teach at a more conceptual level. Many of these teachers who care less for rules would often get fired quickly from a public school where they have to follow strict curricula where they have no imput, since they would just not follow it.
skeeter
~skeeter
I had a very similar experience all throughout school -- unfortunately, the only thing worse than being the person everyone loves to pick on is being the extremely shy person everyone loves to pick on, so I was never able to stand up for myself the way many other people posting in this thread have. I agree that kids need to be taught how to defend themselves, but at the same time I think parents need to teach them that the things they say can have very real and lasting effects on people. I really envy the people who have found some sort of closure for all the anger that builds up after years of bullying, and I think it's tragic that so many people are graduating high school feeling like they've just escaped from a POW camp. Bullying is something that urgently needs more attention, because I don't remember any of the "zero tolerance" policies being enforced to any sort of degree while I was in school. My 2c, please excuse the rant :)
--
Amaris
This gets lots of laughs, and gives liqudsin the attention he craves. The net effect is to discourage outward signs of intelligence by belittling the "nerds." Ha Ha Ha. You sure are cool.
God forbid anybody is smart in this dumbed-down society.
Pathetic.
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cyber bullying also happens in online communities, where people will join communities, and use various forms on pressure to get the weak minded to do whatever they want, or people who pointlessly troll and spam others, to a psychotic degree (emails, website attacks, hacking, character deflamation.. etc) luckily they cant hurt you physically. and you can change names online and go elsewhere, in reality, you cant, well you can, but it's not as easy, and that's only after bullying gets to the point of stalking and death threats.. when it becomes a pure obsession on the bully's part. that's when you set up a sting on the bastard.
I was once harassed online and offline by someone, he didnt directly atack me, but he had his friends pass messages to me, and online, he'd go to chatrooms and spam...
well, I eventually found the bastard, was some little nerdy (as in, a loser without a life, and not that intelligent, but wants to be) final fantasy fanboy, he tried to run, tripped, then I beat his ass up.
my problems went away quickly.
I have a high temper threshold, but if someone manages to break it, say a bully, I cant garauntee their safety, since when I do his my threshold, I just snap.
other than that, yeah, I could go on about all the things they missed in that report, since cyber bullying goes farther than that, hell, bullying in general goes farther than that, a lot of true cyber bullies (Ones that plague communities) were probably brought up in a shitty situation, then got the shit beaten out of them at school, so they take it online..
they're usually the losers, most peopel online arent bothered by them, some are, especially when they get obsessive.. I've seen it, and have seen it firsthand. hell, one asshole actually wants me dead, and his followers have vowed to kill me in his name, you know.. shit like that.. that's how sad the internet gets, folks.
doubt any of them can leave their chairs anyways.
Spare me the talk of "call the police." The police can't or won't do anything in these cases. Where I went to school (suburb outside large metro area) the bullies weren't "jocks." Kicking their ass is the LAST thing you should (or will) do. Playing (key phrase) friendly is often the best bet - even in cases like mine. In 3rd-5th grade => fight back. Maybe. pre/high school => don't fight - run, unless you're a Charles Bronsen wannabe...
No esta aqui!
Not sure how easy it'd be in England to sue over this since that's where the incident took place, but here in the US I imagine a lawsuit would soon follow, and the fact that everything's online would make evidence oh-so-easy, and with the recent school shooting in the US I don't think a judge would be too nice to the bullies. Police might be interested too.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I am surprised that no one has cited this article yet: Why Nerds are Unpopular.
Paul raises several ideas which are interesting...
Like a politician who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, a group of kids from higher in the hierarchy create bonds between themselves: attacking an outsider makes them all insiders. This is why the worst cases of bullying happen with groups. Ask any nerd: you get much worse treatment from a group of kids than from any individual bully, however sadistic.
It's like those snotty twin girls on the Simpsons!
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So basically the problem is that people are spreading rumours using the internet? I, for one, am astounded! Who would ever think to malign the internet so?
Ok, so yes, bullying is a problem and the schools sure as hell aren't doing anything to help with it when kids are there (I think the Onion put it best with "Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying"), but this really isn't anything especially new. It's like claiming the school needs to do something about kids writing notes to each other spreading rumours, or prevent them from phoning each other to spread them.
It doesn't seem that things have quite reached the level of extortion and serious crime and I'm not saying that it's acceptable, but this is something that's going to go on regardles of the medium being used. This is little more than a vague link to the internet used for the hell of it. I expected this crap back in '97 but not now. I mean, really, "Cyber-bullying"? Who in their right mind would ever use that?
... only geeks that get bullied anyways.. why do the /. crowd care about that? :)
Post bad things about me below here --->
Solution to bullying: Teach your kid how to defend him/herself, and how to put up a website of thier own of course ; }
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
The solution to this is more Columbines, albeit better directed at the offenders. No, seriously, think about it. (I'm not saying it's the IDEAL solution, mind you.)
After enough picked-on kids get pissed off and beat to death, shoot, publically humiliate, etc., the bullies, it will stop.
The root of the problem is that the schools back the bullies up, not the victims. If a kid defends himself, *he* is expelled or suspended half the time. The end result is that we have fewer fucking juvenile sociopaths out there.
Fuck the bullies. Fuck the education system.
Am I seriously the only damn person who reads slashdot that was never bullied in school. Jesus. I hang out with a bunch of geeks. I'm outta here . . .
I just applied for a /. account specifically to answer this post with a resounding DAMN YES. The British school system is locked rigid with a mixture of oversyllabising, avoidance of responsibility and just plain incompetence. Even the teachers with something to say get beaten down into echoes of the system.
I've just got out of the UK secondary school system and I've never been happier. No more stupid rules. No more getting shouted at cos I know all the stuff they're teaching and have thus fallen asleep.
Don't get me wrong, some of the teachers were nice, even if they didn't add much to the sum of my knowledge. But some were blatantly just there because they couldn't get jobs in the real world. Example: the admin server, with all the teachers' pay details and kids' reports on, had the Unicode DT bug. The IT dept actively ignored the pleas of a friend and mine to patch it. Eventually, we just went round to the admin dept and fixed it ourselves. This was the same IT department that doesn't let us play flash games cos of the risk of viruses.
There is life beyond A-levels though. I'm at Cambridge Uni now and loving every minute. The lecturers and supervisors don't just have a clue; they practically ARE the clue. Next year I am gonna be supervised by Dr Kelly, the guy who designed one of the key internet routing algorithms.
My advice: jump through the hoops and do it with style. Ignore all the stuff the teacher's spouting and just get on with the work. When you've finished a module, take the textbook for the next one out of the library and study that in lessons instead. Treat homework as a useful revision exercise for that stuff you learned months ago. Then, once you've applied to Cambridge or (heaven forfend) Oxford, I'll put in a good word for you :)
No kidding, you sound like Cambridge material
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I wouldnt think that suspension would be any deterent for a bully. What would work much better is humiliation.
Eg, being forced to wear a sandwich board with the word "loser" in bright orange letters.
I'm glad that worked for you. Please understand that it doesn't work in every case. It certainly didn't work for me; clever put-downs, withering looks, abuse in kind, aggression, physical violence, ignoring it, walking away, suffering in silence, looking for help... nothing worked. Nothing. I never found a way to stop it. Arriving at uni and finding that life wasn't always like that was a complete revelation to me.
At least, there is no physical harm done in cyber-bullying.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can wound deeper still, can obliterate self-respect, build psychological walls, destroy personality, make life almost unbearable. Believe me. With verbal abuse there's no effective way to fight back, no evidence to show anyone, nothing for people to take seriously. It can go on constantly, under the noses of teachers or other adults, takes no effort on the part of the abusers, and can be dismissed as oversensitivity or immaturity. It's precisely because there's no physical harm that it can be so pervasive, and so overlooked.
It's hard to explain just how it affected me. I probably suffered very little compared to some - I'm no martyr, and it didn't stop me having a fairly normal childhood, with no obvious lasting damage. I can recall very few actual incidents. But it was always there, always with me, a constant faint background of hatred and cruelty, grinding me down, making me weary and miserable. It started because of my height (I was the shortest kid in the school two years running, though I caught up later), but once it got started there was no way to stop it - and believe me, I tried. I rarely thought "I'm being picked on", because at some level I just assumed that's how life was.
No doubt I was immature and annoying, and probably deserved some of it. No doubt some of it wasn't meant too seriously, and I should have just shrugged it off; and no doubt if many of the kids had realised just how much it hurt, they wouldn't have done so. I don't hold any grudges now (though I came a long way before I could say that). But I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Even now, when I occasionally visit the school building (on unrelated business, and with no kids present) I still find it difficult. It still reminds me of how things were, of how I was - and it's something I really don't want to be reminded of. Even writing this post has been more difficult and painful than I expected.
I'm not suggesting laws or rules or bureaucracy or lawsuits or whatever. You can't stop people talking, you can't stop them laughing, you can't change their attitudes. But please don't dismiss non-physical abuse. I hope none of you knows just how much it can hurt.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I agree that this is a far-from-perfect world, and that violence - as a last resort - may solve some problems. But there are many that it won't solve.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
One of the most important parts of growing up is learning how to deal with violence. In particular, learning when to use violence, and when not to use violence. Learning when and how to escalate or deescalate a violent encounter. Violence is a part of society and of human existence. It is inescapable. As long as we have fists and teeth there will be bullying, robbery, rape and war, and the need to defend oneself from these. Violence is neither right nor wrong in and of itself. It is a merely a tool.
For example, if a thief snatched a purse from an old woman and three guys jumped the thief and beat him up, they would be heroes and their action would be morally right. If three guys jump a random guy on the street and thrash him, they would be criminals and morally wrong. If you are threatened with a gun and you shoot back with your own gun, your use of violence would be justified. If someone called you names and you shot him, you would be wrong.
A child needs to learn these things and more. If he is male in many societies, he will be expected to be the defender of his family and his nation. He may have to mercilessly kill and maim as a soldier if his nation is under attack, the ultimate shame and the ultimate honor. He must come to terms with that.
How a child responds to bullying and whether or not he bullies others is part of the process of learning about violence. It will determine whether he eventually becomes a felon, a bully, a coward, a doormat, or simply a well-adjusted member of society. I feel that many children aren't learning the right lessons. The whole topic has somehow become taboo in public discourse, like sex education was in the past.
If a child is forbidden to fight back, even after all reasonable peaceful methods of resolving the issue have been exhausted, then he will learn to be walked on. He will never learn when and how much violence is right or wrong and develop a healthy spectrum of responses to violence. These are the people who will silently be bullied one day, then kill everyone with SMGs the next, since they know of nothing between total submission and total war. Conversely, if a child is allowed to bully others, or to escalate to violence before peaceful means are exhausted, then he is on his way to jail if nothing is done.
There is some happy medium between psychopath and pacifist, between bully and victim. It is enshrined in a society's laws and culture, and transmitted through media and family. A child needs to discover it. He needs to learn how to respond to an insult, a malicious rumor, a threat, a punch, a gun and a war. It's just part of growing up.
Never start a fight, but always end one. Violence must be avoided as far as possible, but no further. Violence is always wrong, but sometimes it is also right.
Let me get this straight: I believe that schools have a role in socializing children. Therefore, I must be in favor of having the state usurp all parental rights, including the right to raise said children.
You, sir, have proven my point. It really does take a village to raise an idiot.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Agreed ... on the copying music front, the other day I came across an article from the Manchester Guardian entitled "Music piracy in Liverpool" (or perhaps it was Leeds). The year was 1913, and the mode of piracy was unauthorised reprinting of sheet music!
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
You didn't state that they had a role in socialising children, you stated that their broader purpose was to socialise them. Quite a difference. If you meant the former, you should have stated it.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Cyber bullying...What? It's the same thing that has been happening from the dawn of time, just modernized. The spreading of half-truths and outright lies, teasing, bullying, etc is, in mind, good for kids. A kid needs to learn how to deal with unfavorable situations.
I was a nerd growing up and got picked on for it. It made me a stronger person and prepared me for life where everything isn't a rosy picture. The kids today are being raised as wimps so that they don't get their feelings hurt. Everyone's a winner! There are no losers!
I am glad I'm not a kid now.
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Instead of making up restrictive laws, let's loosen the laws up, allow everybody to buy guns, swords, and other weapons, and bring back the duel. In other words, if some jerk says something behind your back, you go up, slap him with a white glove, challenge him to a duel, and then take witnesses with you to the prescribed time and place. As long as both parties consent to the duel, you CANNOT be punished for maiming or killing the other person.
That would lead to a very reasonable system of law, where everybody would respect everybody, or be shot.
Survival of the fittest.
When I was a freshman in highschool there were two kids who would bother the shit out of me in gym class. they were both juniors and scared the shit out of me. This went on for months.
One time (no not at band camp) I was taking abuse in front of a girl that I really liked. I snapped. Without time to give it a second thought I swung and connected. The guy bent over grabbing his nose and I full on place kicked him in the face. Breaking his nose and knocking out teeth...
In the next 3 and a half years, no one said or did shit to me. Today I am married to that girl.
Things are a little different today. if my son was being bullied I'm not sure I'd give him the same advice.. Kids these days are crazy.. I'd track the kid down myself and throw him a beating.
Cycles of violence are usually stopped by violence. Bullies don't understand compassion or logic. A good full on beatin usually gives this lesser lifeform pause to think next time.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Parent is hardly a troll, its my opinion from growing up. I'm 21 now and I know what it is like to be targeted at a school or in the community by other children.
No, this is
One time (no not at band camp) I was taking abuse in front of a girl that I really liked. I snapped. Without time to give it a second thought I swung and connected. The guy bent over grabbing his nose and I full on place kicked him in the face. Breaking his nose and knocking out teeth.
Yes!
In the next 3 and a half years, no one said or did shit to me. Today I am married to that girl.
Fuck Yes!!!!
Things are a little different today. if my son was being bullied I'm not sure I'd give him the same advice.
I concede that they're not "mine" per se, but I love my GF's kids as much as I would my own. I tell them all of the time that they have to stand up for themselves.
Your mother and I can't fight your battles for you. Walk away if you can, if you can't give it your best.
It's the best any of us can do.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Regular people just want to live their lives. They do not want to live in constant, shell-shocked fear of some false-bravado asshole waving a gun in their face at some percieved insult to their ego-impaired machismo.
This is an incredibly stupid idea which never fails to be trucked out by some short-sighted armchair logic nitwit. Move to a lawless country where this idiot idea is reality, or shut the hell up. --Or better yet, join a street gang where lack of respect is also punishable by death, because that system certainly works to keep people civilized and whining bullets out of school yards which are filled with everybody else who isn't a fucking moron.
-FL
Well, you just said something weird and awkward, dude. Nobody likes feeling uncomfortable and will support anyone who helps them feel better, even if they are a tosser.
liquidsin's comment wasn't funny because he put down ebh, but because he parodied the above situation.
Bullying is part of human nature. You can't eliminate it in schools, and if you did, you'd only be depriving kids of a chance to learn how to deal with it in the real world.
Chronically-bullied kids need to be taught skills to deal with these situations. Martial arts (to deal with confrontation), humour (to get everyone on your side) & game theory (understanding the basic psychology of situations) all helped me.
That is the same bullshit logic that dictatorships use, and the same logic behind the MPAA sponsored law against having pre release movies. 3 years is a totally excessive punishment for a having a digital copy of something. The theory is, of course, make the punishment so harsh that noone wants to break the law. Well that is just wrong in so many ways. It's wrong on the slippery slope that leads to executions for minor crimes (after all, we don't want people doing them). It's wrong in that everyone fucks up and little fuckups shouldn't carry big punishments. But mostly it's wrong because it isn't fair and is EXPLICITLY forbidden by the constituion. Ammendment 8 forbids cruel and unusal punishments and excessive fines. This is more generally construed that the punishment must fit the crime.
Then we also have a concept that minors aren't as responsible for their actions. Any deceant psychologist will tell you that children (with very few exceptions) do NOT think like adults do. Along those lines, children are cruel without knowing better. Now, we do need to train them to become functioning adult citizens but throwing them in jail and kicking them out of school is NOT the way to do that.
Think what you are saying: For harassing someone, something almost everyone did at one time or another, they should be denied further public education and thrown in with REAL criminals. How bloody silly is that? Do shit like that, and you'll be turning kids into criminals. If they get no education except for that in jail they'll end up on the wrong side of life REAL quick.
However, maybe you are just an authoritarian on the scale that makes Ashcroft seem weak. If so, I suggest you do some research on an ultra authoritarian country. Singapore would be a good choice. You'll find that it DOES have benefits, but that the cost is amazingly high to the guilty and the innocent alike. If it appeals to you, perhaps consider moving, because this country was founded on freedom, and on giving people the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway a couple of points. First, we still call it senior school, not high school, right? No need to translate British English into American.
Secondly, I wholeheartedly agree, I remember sitting a three hour exam for which I had answered all the questions in an hour. The teacher who was supervising wouldn't let me leave, and so I had to endure two hours sitting doing nothing. Couldn't even read a book. I got 95% in the exam, but the supervisor didn't believe I had finished after an hour. Bitch. Punishment for being good at something - I could have written a harder exam myself but in my class were a bunch of dropouts that the teacher had to cater for.
I would encourage you, however, to get a bit more into the subjects you really like. Saying that you can do enough to pass an exam in five minutes is great, but the free time that you have available to you as a result really should be spent profiting as much as possible intellectually. You will not believe how hard it gets, year on year, from now on. I used to read other course textbooks, novels, plays, science stuff... at least in lessons I had already understood, and I generally got away with it. The computer network was also a source of fun in lessons where there were computers, but then that was a network of BBC Micro B computers and not really too interesting after about two weeks.
You can blame the system all you like, but once you're out of it you will have to live up to your own harsh realities. Try to help those who are trying to help you, by thinking outside of the box and maybe even improving relationships with teachers - no harm in catching them after lessons if you're interested in the subject. I ended up doing some cool weather satellite tracking with our physics teacher instead of lessons I had already mastered. It was 13 years ago too, so imagine how much more amazing that was - recording a signal overnight and decoding it slowly on a machine that had 32Kb of main RAM.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Bully get's publically humiliated on national TV.
Not only should they show the bully bullying the kid, they should then bring in Mr. T who will proceed to beat the crap out of the little $#*@#&#, or at least give him a wedgie.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
How long will it be until someone says "These cyber-bullies are terrorists waiting to happen -- they need to be jailed now!"
Patriot Act my ass -- it allows that sort of thing to happen.
I was bullied as a kid, but I turned out just fine, and when I visit my hometown, the bullies are still there, but now they pump that sweet sweet Iraqi gasoline into my American-Made Ford Mustang. I never smelled a sweeter victory than that.
Moral of the story: life is a series of ups and downs, and you can't really appreciate the ups without experiencing the downs.I wouldn't have the massive pleasure of the gas pumping now, if they hadn't bullied me then.
We are Neo, they are Smith, and Karma balances out the equation.
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
I recall a documentary on prison life some years ago where the inmate being interviewed explained that assaults and murders took place because something had to finally give.
The inmates in conflict had to face each other day in and day out for the next many years, with no way of avoiding each other. Conflict was unavoidable. Someone eventually had to be taken down a notch or 6.
This is much like school, as well described by the parent post above. I really wonder if the escalation of violence in schools is due to inescapable, required attendance.
If its Fight or Flight, and flight is not an option, what else could occur?!
"You have liberated me from thought."
While students are in school, it is of course reasonable for the school to enforce a certain code of conduct. However once a student leaves campus grounds, the school's (and by proxy the taxpayers') responsibility ends.
And as a side, I believe that kids shouldn't be forced, by law, to go to school, however if they don't go to school, they should automatically be disqualified for any taxpayer-funded financial aid.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
For me, being the computer geek was caused a bit of bullying, but that stopped quickly when I joined the wrestling team, and quickly took a gold medal for the heavyweight category in a regional tournement.
Some bullies continue on into the adult life. You have street gangs, obnoxious neighbors, CEOs and presidental cabinets, to name a few.
The trouble with fighting back is that if you do it ineffectively, you get clobbered, and if you do it effectively, you go to jail for assault and battery. You need legal advice before beating up a bully today. You can't seriously damage them when they're not directly attacking you.
That is so old-school - and the reason why bullying still exists today. Violence should never be ignored. It forces the victim to be silent and suffer alone as if they deserved it or did something to cause it (never true), and allows the bullying to continue until it escalates out of control - this is when someone gets hurt - usually the victim again. Trust me, if you have a kid getting bullied in school or on the streets - the very last thing you want to tell them is to ignore it. Hell no. Violence, sexual harrassement, phone stalking, threating emails are all against the law in most states, and if not they are sure to be breaking some type of policy. If the school won't fix it, you can sue the school because schools are federally mandated to provided a SAFE educational environment. Also the police can be called. No - we do not ignore what in reality is a violent crime.
I was bullied greatly in hs and told to ignore it - can you tell?
So true. There is so much children are allowed to do to each other that when they get older they'd be criminally prosecuted for. No, I am not talking about saying someone's shoes look funny. But ambushing someone outside the school, forcing their pants down, getting everyone to point and laugh, these are all (sexual) assult crimes as adults! A child at school has to either learn to "fight back" or learn to "get along" or "ignore" it. If someone were to do that outside my place of employment do you think people would just tell me to "deal with it" without looking absolutely stupid? It would be an absolute embarrassment to admit that you let someone get away with that in an adult setting. Yet, as a child, you just have to shrug your shoulders, say "oh well life sucks" and happily carry on in the same environment the next day with your abusers AND learn the material you're sent to school to learn?
:)
I am so glad to be an adult, and I now see why children are often in a great hurry to grow up
So imagine I said that the purpose of a car was to transport people. Would I need to state, just to make it perfectly clear, that I was in no way opposed to the use of buses, planes, and inline skates to accomplish the same purpose?
Of course not. If I meant to say that parents are not competent to raise children, and that children would be better off being raised by the government, I would have said as much. You jumped to a totally unwarranted conclusion, and made yourself look like a fool in doing so.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
"Bulling only gets worst when parents get involved. Just tell kids to ignore it, and the bullies will move on to someone else after awhile."
My son is in accellerated learning courses (7th grade, doing 10th grade Science & Math, and 11th grade English), so can be construed as a reasonably intelligent young man.
Last year, one of his fellow students decided to bully & pester him incessantly.
My son did what I felt was an appropriate escalation of response:
1) Attempted to talk to the young man, trying to get to the root of WHY the bullying was happening
2) Told his teacher that the young man was bothering him & asked for either the bully to be moved or offered to move himself to another section of the classroom
3) Complained to his Student Counselor about the bully.
NONE of these actions stopped the bully. NO ONE made ANY attempt to punish the little thug.
So, when one day during a test, my son noticed the bully trying to cheat off him, my son curled his arm around his test paper in such a way as to prevent the peaking. The bully reached out, grabbed my son's arm, and moved it saying "Don't do that, I can't see when you do that."
My son snapped, and promptly stabbed his Number 2 pencil through the little twits sweater nailing his arm to the desk yelling "LEAVE ME ALONE, DAMN IT!"
They tried to suspend my son for being physically violent, yet when the fact that the bully had been pestering my son for nearly six months unchecked came to light, I offered to press charges against the school for allowing the situation to continue in the first place.
("Let me get this straight. You've known that this boy has been bullying my son for six months and never bothered to tell anyone about it? My son has reported to you that [the bully] followed him home saying he was going to kick [my son's] ass, and you didn't bother to contact ME? I've got news for you, folks, there isn't a lawyer on the planet that wouldn't drool like a Pavlovian dog over the level of fsck-up on your part, and the amounts of money THEY could make prosecuting you into a very deep hole. Yes, what my son did was wrong, but against the actions of the bully and YOU, they so pale in comparison as to be meaningless.")
Both my son and I accepted the fact that his actions were wrong, stabbing someone isn't right unless it's in defense of your life, but we accepted it ONLY on the condition that the School accept the fact that they shirked their duties in maintaining a protected atmosphere condusive to learning. (Their words, not mine, in their "Parent Teacher Agreement" forms we had to sign upon registering him for school in the first place.)
In the end, they expelled the bully, set him AND his parents to counseling, and suspended my son for *one day* ("to reflect on what he'd done").
Since then, my son has improved his ability to deal with idiots, his grades have gotten better, and he's MUCH more likely to become a well-adjusted adult knowing that he doesn't have to "take it" from idiots who deserve to have their asses handed to them.
Martial arts classes have helped him remain calm, focused, and in control of his anger, as well as giving him the knowledge of body mechanics to do more "acceptable" methods of showing someone that he's not interested in being picked upon. (There's nothing like having him offer his hand to shake, and suddenly finding yourself lying in a heap a few feet away, on your back, cartoon stars twirling about your head, and the chirping of birds filling your ears as you realize that an *eleven year old* just flipped you like a rag dool. heheheh)
So parental intervention is sometimes a VERY good way to keep matters from escalating into acts of violence (ESPECIALLY if the school isn't doing it's job in the first place) between students.
Granted, not in EVERY case, but I'd be willing to bet more often than not.
otherwise, revenge is stupid and it only continues a cycle of violence.
Says someone who was never picked on in school!
Normally, I don't resort to name-calling on this forum, but I honestly can't help it this time, you self-righteous jackass.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
Talk shows have been doing this for years: "Boot Camp"
Well, I was being facetious when I suggested Mr. T beat these kids up. I hadn't thought of the "boot camp" thing. Actually, the "boot camp" thing disgusts me. I wonder why the kids in it don't just sit there or go limp or whatever. I suppose non-violent resistance doesn't occure to bullies.
I guess I was thinking of the Silver Spoons episode. Rather silly. Whatever.
Maybe I should at least have been more 90s and suggested Mr. Hat. Whatever.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
"What? You got a problem with that? You chicken, McFly?! Draw!"
The only difference between this and highschool, (where the duel has basically been in practice since the first school bell ever rang), is that now there'd be a legal body count, the psychotic rush a bully gets from the transfer of power starts at a dangerously high level, and everybody gets to walk around with an extra fear in their gut.
In any case, I know adults who will roll up their sleeves and beat the shit out of each other to solve conflicts. (I live in a very rural area). No laws are broken, and its quite rare that lives are lost. Why involve lethality just to proove machismo? --And it would certainly come to that! With a 'legal dueling age,' young men eager to proove their masculinity and to justify all the practice they put into gun and sword training, would seek out idiot duels.
Feudal Japan once more? The Wild West once again? These days I can speak my mind to anybody I choose with the reasonable assurance that I won't be challenged to life or death combat over a political difference or for looking at some bozo's girlfriend. I do not think a return to the days of fear are a step toward a more civilized society. Those sorts of societies ALWAYS favor war-lords. Kings were abandoned in favor of democracy for a reason.
-FL
Just because you're still bitter doesn't mean I'm self-righteous. Your assumptions blind you.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
The exception doesn't prove the rule, buddy. The fact that you would elect to beat a child up speaks volumes about how lame your reasoning is. Good luck, hockey-dad.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.