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Classroom Bullies On The Internet
peter303 writes "Oldtimers are familiar with sociopaths in usenet newsgroups and chat rooms. The NY Times has an article about grade school kids who bully on the Internet. These include message bombing and slanderous web pages. The web allows one to extend bad manners from real life."
When I was in high school everyone used ICQ. There was a program that would let you put in the person's IP address and port number for ICQ and you could spoof messages and get the reply but the user thought they were talking to someone else. I would send messages to two people that they each liked the other. It made for some fun times and akward moments.
I think bullying sucks, but does this expansion of the definition do us any good? I also wonder about this cyberstalking crap. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.
Granted, things will have probably changed by the time I have a child old enough to be dealing with anything like this (there seems to be a long history of 'geeks' in my family, my father was an electrician, my grandfather was a chemist, etc), but if I were a parent now, here's what I would probably do:
Find the offending username/ip.
Move them off of whatever IM client they're using now.
Put them on something a bit more intelligent, my weapon of choice would be centericq, but anything that will allow you to do some scripting will work.
Set up an auto-reply to that user. Auto-block that user. Heck, grab the IP address, nmap, and script-kiddie a shutdown of that IP. Doesn't matter, but you ARE empowered as a parent to stop this sort of thing.
Granted, not all parents are as geeky as we are. There should be a basic 'block username' and 'block from IP address' function in an IM client, no?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
This reminds me of my early mudding days, you eventually learned there was safety in numbers and banded with other players. I was pkilled and a friend was also harrassed by the same player, but because I told him about the meanie, he was prepared.
My nephew, years later, who was a blue belt in Tae Kwon Do and a reasonably bright lad, met with similar disappointments in Ultima Online. Nothing kills player enthusiasm for a game like pkillers who prey on newbies.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, rather than live their lives they want (which is what a free person can do) they must live their lives according to how someone else, you wants? That's what a slave does: Live a life as dictated by another.
16% of 11 to 19 year olds shouldn't even HAVE cell phones. What the fuck? I'm a 30 year old adult and don't have much of a need for one (hence, I dont' have one). There is definitely no reason for an 11 year old to have one. What, it's too much to give a kid a quarter and tell them to find a payphone to call from? I can understand an 18 or 19 year old. They're adults. But what the fuck!?
You know, business people these days are scared to do anything at all controversial, because the belief is that "being sued" equals certain bankruptcy.
I wonder why school bullies think their actions will bring anything except violent death?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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According to this article from the BBC bullying also occurs via SMS messages, with 16% of 11 to 19 year-olds admitting receiving threatening text messages.
That's worse than IM harrasment since most phones don't provide an easy way to block an individual sending you SMS messages plus most cellular companies allow you to send an SMS message to one of their subscribers from their website.As this was from October 03 it wouldn't surprise me if this figure had risen
Add in many plans have SMS messages costing you a few cents a message (or only so many free then they charge) and you have a major problem. On the bright side the kids sending the threatening messages will likely be violating several laws, local, state, and federal.
Can you imagine a bully in reform school telling his new peers that he was put in there for sending threatening messages? He'd be labeled a geek/nerd and learn what bullying felt like from the victim's side quickly.
Of course that would be poetic justice. :)
On a related note, kids seem to have really lost all common sense. We had an incident in the county I live in where the upperclassmen football players decided to haze the freshman (hazing is both against school policy and against state law here). How'd they decide to go about this? Oh they filled plastic baseball bats full of sand and beat the freshman with them. Some had to be put in the hospital. Most of the kids won't tell who did it because they're scared of retaliation. The parents are livid and the punishment the offenders received didn't help. They were given ten days of in school suspension and forced to set out half of one game.
Frankly I know that every generation will say things weren't as bad when they were kids but even in high school I (and my peers) were smart enough to know beating someone with a heavy blunt object wasn't a good idea.
What you say is true, but I think there is legitimage reason for concern. Consider the multiplying power of the computer.
Back in the old days, bullying had to be one on one, or the by the people the bully talked to. With text messaging and the Internet, you have broadcast and publishing capabilities in the hands of the bully. In the "real world", that's when things like libel laws come into play.
While I'm not in favor of bringing lawyers into grade schools, this kind of difference has to be considered. As a parallel, consider how much damage a disaffected teen can do alone, vs. how much a disaffected scriptkiddy can do.
i think there was a case recently where a girl got arrested for sending child porn. she had in fact been sending nude pics of herself to someone..can't remember the details and i'm too lazy to look it up, but happy to give an uncorroborated example. :)
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
"When you say things over the Internet, it feels like you are spewing into your diary,"
Um, not really. I've never felt like anything posted online has been secret in any way at all; even your average Barnes & Noble journal/diary isn't safe from prying eyes if someone has any idea that it exists. It's more like you think that if you believe it's hidden well enough, no one will find it. I've made the mistake of believing that my family wasn't tech-savvy enough to google me and that my boss didn't read my site and as a consequence, I've lost a job, a cousin browsing webcam sites found pictures of me back in my camwhoring days, and my father hasn't spoken to me in over two years.
I do believe you'd get your ass kicked for having a bumper sticker like that.
Maybe or maybe not. There are already bumper stickers that say "My kid beat up your honors student," or "As a matter of fact I DO own the whole damn road," or the ever-popular "Eat my shorts."
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
What goes around, comes around.
Also, see.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What's even more insteresting is that the girl in question is both the victim and the first offender. She made the video, she was the first to distribute it.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
> I think it's mostly that people don't have to deal
> with real-world consequences. You can say things
> in text to people that would get your face beaten
> in if you said them in person.
We can learn from this. If you could beat up rude people in real life, there would be a lot fewer of them. Sleazy newspaper reporters, lying used car salesmen, and dishonest politicians will disappear practically overnight if one were to abolish the first amendment for everybody. These days the first amendment is abolished only for honest people who are not allowed to talk about dangerous subjects at work or protest peacefully on the grass in New York
Thus, we are raising children who stay indoors to watch TV and play video games so they don't get hurt.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
I was reading slashdot, and he left a message for me.
Give me all your money - I know who you are. ps. I accept paypal
So I clicked away as fast as I could and started reading fark - but he was one step ahead.
If you don't give me all your money I'll disable your SETI@home account!
I was terrified. This guy was good. So I thought I'd try something else, I went to google news - how was he doing this? There in the headlines:
iraqWarDeathToll++;
Stem Cells blocked by extremists citing Satan - Christopher Reeve unavailable for comment.
I Said Send Me Your Money.
jobsAvailable--;
I'd had enough, I turned off my computer and ran to a newspaper.
95% of the money in the world controlled by 5% of the population, 50% controlled by 1%.
Economic middle-class taxes and expenses rising - wages stagnant.
Super-rich get tax break on overseas investements.
Incumbent campaigns to convince citizens that they will be rich - fights for lower taxes.
And I realized there wasn't anyone stalking me. The messages weren't directed at me alone, but at me as a member of the economic middle-class. I thought I was a bully's target, and I guess in a way I am. I'm personally affected by every corrupt policy, every writ of habeas corpus, every war, every genocide.
VOTE, if you care.
And it doesn't end as you enter adulthood, not if you really look at things. People are the same approval seeking, filthy conformist fuckers from the time their baby brains become fully wired until the day they die. Nothing changes. The only reason most stop pulling bullshit after age 18 is because their asses can be sued or arrested.
Just look at Bush and Kerry, two alleged pinnacles of achievement (presidential candidates). A couple bullies slinging mud and trailing a wake of sycophants behind them. Just like high school. Nothing changes. Nothing matures. The only advancements in civilization are technological improvements and once in a while someone gets and idea that manages to stick (like a Constitution).
--- Ban humanity.
While in highschool back in 1995 a kid was spoofing my account and abusing some root exploits, it was a VT100 console, by that time every computer at the lab had an static IP address that matched a number written on sticker in the screen. Got his IP address, took a look at who was at the computer, and literaly I walk towards him, grabbed him from the neck and kicked his ass out of the lab.
I was prohibited to enter the lab for the rest of the term, but he was kicked out of school.
I have a better answer for the abuse, if it gets bad enough to be affecting your child that strongly. Find out the screen names/IM handles in question. Ask your child to find out who they are in real life. Print out the offending messages on real paper. Mail them to the parents of the children in question. Sure, you'll find some parents who won't care, but the vast majority of people will respond to this by confronting their kids with the evidence. These kids will back off fast when they realize that the stuff they say online can find its way back to mom and dad.
Virg
In one model - there are 4 groups in the *bully/victim* scenario:
1. *Bullies* - who repeatedly make some sort of attack on someone who is (for some reason or another) unable to defend against it (an *asymmetric* relationship).
2. *Passive victims* - who usually don't provoke the bully, they might just be different - or weak - or handicapped - or smart - or not something...
3. *Active Victims* - who tend to be very good at getting under someone's skin - either by the way they say things (perhaps they have a great way to humiliate someone verbally) - but they usually end up seen as the ultimate victim. If you trace things back, active victims look a lot like bullies, but in a different way. They often blame others with a type of rapid revisionist history of events.
4. *Bystanders* - they tend to *normalize* what is accepted in the social setting - so what might be considered bullying by one group, might be considered *normal* by another - which is one reason why you can talk to a teenager all day about not bullying, and they have one view of what that means and sending a *mean IM* probably isn't going to be it, unless that child identifies themselves themselves as the victim.
On a related note - however kids define bullying, more than half say they have been both victims and bullies in different situations, and like all models - the *4 groups* listed above is just a handy way to help some get a handle on the way many situations play out.
Some say that online life is a mask people can wear to be someone else. I'm more inclined to believe it's a magnifying glass which can amplify the worst qualities in someone.
Read Lord of the Flies, and you'll see how a mask does both.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practive they are not.
.....
The implementation problem is that the frontal lobes don't really mature until late adolescence. I've often wondered, however, if this is a recent change in human developmental trajectories. Did kids in the 1700's, for example, exhibit judgement as poor as kids today? What was the timeline for frontal lobe development like long ago? Alternately, if survival depended on making good decisions would frontal lobe development be accelerated and earlier? Nature? Nurture? sigh
A weird but sensible juxtaposition in Stephenson's book, The Diamond Age, was the resurgent dominance of Victorian-era tropes in the upper classes. The society emphasized self-discipline, a strict code of manners and interaction, and the importance of constant vigilance toward one's appearance in public and private alike.
The reason for this throwback was in part that survelliance technology had miniturized and infiltrated to the point that any given surface could house cameras and transmitters that could not be traced if they were even noticed. Therefore, keeping a strict code of bahavior was neccesary at all times to deny the possibility of a smear campaign, blackmail, or other possible stigma.
The online bullies scenario brings Stephenson's vision to my mind. Maybe it's time to recognize that anything recorded will probably get around at some point. And it's easier to record than you think.
Kids, pay attention: Maybe it's a stupid idea to masturbate into your webcam and then email the movie to anybody. Email gets around. It's the new STD: Sexual Transmission Disease.
Either that or open up and make accessable DRM techniques to the public.
You know, it's strange. I really can say that everyone I've "met" over the Internet is exactly the same in real life. And I'm one of those people who is always careful to talk about "cyber-friends" and put quotes around "know" when talking about someone I've never met in real life. I definitely make a distinction, and yet, everyone I end up meeting always ends up being exactly the same. Hell, one of them got me my current job. No shit. We played Counter-Strike together, and later Urban Terror; I mentioned I was looking for a job, he got me one. Sight unseen. The first time I met him was when I flew a thousand miles for an interview. Got the job, and for five grand more a year than I was asking.
I wonder. Is it outspoken people who gravitate toward the Internet, or does the Internet make us more outspoken? It unquestionably had the latter effect on me. It's a little embarrassing to admit, but John S. Novak III has had the greatest effect on my "style" of everyone, real life or no. I'm far more assertive, and far less defensive, as a direct result of him. (A simple Google search, especially Google Groups, should turn up the right JSN.) And I've never met the damn guy. Something he wrote just really hit me and changed my life.
There, I admitted it. Now I look forward to some Slashdot troll spending a couple hours trying to figure out who it was.
There was actually a legal case close to me (Pittsburgh) where an underage girl was arrested and charged with distributing child pornography after posting naked pictures of herself.
I believe the charges were dropped but I'm not certain.
This leads to a while (off topic) ugly serious of questions. Cases like the above were obviously not how child pornography laws were intended. My understanding is that the intention is to protect children from sexual predators exploiting them. How does the inscreasing ability of children to "publish" on their own, combined with earlier sexual activity affect this?
While it's idiotic, I certianly don't think that a 14 y/o should be criminally liable for a picture/video another 14 y/o sends him.
Thoughts?
I worked as a technician at a secondary school a few years ago, and ran into this a few times. One time, I remember being called into the vice-principal's office and meeting with a police officer, who actually asked me how to proceed (obviously, this person didn't have any experience with internet investigations - when my experience was that the only group that *can* do anything is the police).
In any case, I think they knew who it was but were just looking for a way to connect this person to the site, especially when a geocities site can be created anonymously. My knowledge was limited to attempting to get the various logs and tracing through them, and I'm not sure if the police had any internal resources for this type of investigation.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
A little twist here...
I was prohibited to enter the lab for the rest of the term, but he was kicked out of school.
Basically, the kid doing the hacking got no punshment but the violence (you) was dealt with harshly.
I see the same exact thing with my kids in school. My kids get picked on (as do many other kids). Some examples.. some kids forcably took my sons MP3 player from him and would not give it back, eventually they did but the headphones were broke. They took his shoe and pulled the laces out, stuck gum in his hair etc... For a 12 year old, that type of abuse is hard to handle. He refused to get up in the morning, did not want to go to school, claimed he was sick etc.. After numerous attempts of my trying to deal with the situation in a logical and mature manner by dealing with the guidance office abd principal, absolutely nothing had changed. Finally at a conference with the prinicipal and my son, I told my son to get out of his seat from the bus, calmly walk up to the offender and punch the SOB right in the face as hard as he could and if the kid got up, do it again in the stomache or in the nuts by any means possible. I had to resort to barbaric fighting to solve my sons emotional stress. The principal bluntly stated that he was going to put that in his record that I stated that and if anything like that happened, my son would be immediately expelled and charged. Funny how the school can allow and do nothing about any amount of mental abuse but physical abuse is dealt with immediately. I do not really know how they can deal with mental abuse issues but neither did they. After attempting to resolve the situation I finally provided my own a method that I know would work. The confidence he gained from that talk and further talks about the subject allowed him to stand up to the groups of kids without actually having to "fight" it out.
I'm sure many here will never agree to fighting and honestly I do not either but I can tell you the mental abuse a picked on child and their parents have to deal with is 1000x worse then a bully with a bloody nose. It is far better to snap early and use fists then to wait and bottle up the pain until they do something far worse. Too bad the school system does not think that way and could not provide any guidance.
it's happened more than once that someone I recognize cuts me off or drives rudely around me - then they recognize me and their face changes.
Might I direct your attention to the greater Internet Fuckwad theory?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
As I understand it, Everquest has a considerably more expensive server you can play on, like $60 a month or something? Does anybody know if that is actually effective in making it a better play environment through the idea that your common harassing player won't dish out that much? I'm sure a common reaction would be that only tools would pay that much and thus it could be even worse, but if you really are an avid player playing 3-6 hours a night, it would seem that an extra $50 a month would be worth if it made those 90-180 hours significantly better. I wonder if this real world parallel of trying to price out people who can't or just don't care enough to pay more will catch on in terms of online communities.
This was my theory on why driving was so much worse in South Korea (when I was there in 1994) than in the US. Koreans have an extremely strong cultural hierarchy, older being higher, and men above women. In person, the younger (or female) always deferred politely to the older person. But once they get in a car, they automatically assume they have more rank than the next guy, because they can't see his face! and proceed to drive crazily like all others should make way for the King.
Despite all the race/sex problems in America we really do have a cultural expectation of equality. When we come to a 4-way stop, Americans across the country expects to get their turn regardless of race or sex. My two cents, anyway.
...and you watch a video of another minor stripping, that's a felony? But if that same minor watches the other consensually strip for him in person that's legal? This boggles the mind: an analog copy - illegal, the real act - legal.
What if a minor records themself masturbating, are they then guilty of possessing child porn? What if they then watch the video of themselves as adults, are they guilty of viewing child porn? Is it possible to commit a crime against oneself?
OK, so a girl get's picked on by a bunch of other schoolgirls via IM. What the hell was she doing giving out her IM addy's, whether it be AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, or whatnot, to begin with in school? That's just as bad as giving out your phone number to all the kid's in school, so one smartass or several smartasses can do prank call's all night long.
One would think that, just as e-mail addresses, you only give it to people you trust, and certainly not to random people. Also makes me wonder if they even knew about the block or ignore feature in several IM clients...
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
No offence, but you're a girl. I know that sounds pretty sexist, and (depending on your definition of sexism) could well be. But it's not my intent to offend.
This is all based around primary-high school situations, as later in life the rules change a bit and their aren't as many bullies.
The more you let a bully go the more he/she continues. The worse it gets. Because the gratification they got remains with each bullying, and there are no reasons for them to stop. Their peer group obviously accepts it - either from fear of getting bullied themselves or amusement.
So what are your options?
1) Let them continue
2) Verbally assult them back
3) inflict physical pain
#1
I strongly subscribe to the idea that your body is listening to everything. I've done neural net theory at university, and if neurons work the way we think, every single event in your life is embedded within you. With this in mind, if you let them continue you are subjecting yourself to abuse that is destined to manifest itself in later life. If you heard something enough times you start to believe it. You say you were an unashamed nerd. That's good but it shows you already had a good sense of self-esteem. You were unashamed. Some people are ashamed of what they can't change.
#2
You can try and get your 14 yo son to verbally abuse them back. Call them names. But if the bully has been a bully for any length of time, they are well versed at insults. PLUS they think they have the peer group on their side, which gives them more power in their abuse. Generally this just makes the bully madder, and gives them more of a challenge.
#3
You can hurt them physically. This sends a direct message to their pain receptors. I am yet to see an example of when this technique didn't work. It also (and arguably more importantly) Boosts the confidence of the person being bullied. It's a primal instinct. I'm not condoning weapons use. I'm generally not even an advocate for violence. But if someone is a bully, they aren't someone who can be reasoned with. Their insinct to bully is primal, and the way to deal with it is equally so.
Have a good day!