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Cyberbullying Gains Momentum in US
interglossa writes "Findings from the Pew Internet Project are being reported on the BBC news web site, indicating a rising incidence of cyberbullying among teenagers in the United States. The study showed a slightly higher incidence among those visiting social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Tactics cited include being 'the victim of an aggressive email, IM or text message' and 'having a rumor spread about them online'. While the concept of cyberbully has been around in the US for a while, most coverage of the issue has focused on more extreme examples abroad. It would seem young people in the US are fully adapting to the anonymity of online interactions."
I'm in favor of trying to keep people from bullying of emotionally/physically abusing another person. But the same time there needs to be a strong long drawn; otherwise we'll end up with a generation of people emotionally/psychologically weak.
Cyberbullying has been the norm in usenet ngs for the longest time. It's time the 'poor little college kid' on facebook got hazed as well...
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Maybe these kids need some real bullying to toughen them up if some juvenile words on der intraweb makes them and their parents cry.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Sure, jocks may be bigger and stronger.
But little do they know that those whimpy geeks can use their hack-foo to expose his dirty secrets online.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Yes it's an argument from ignorance, mostly because the people who are so concerned about "cyberbullying" (dumb term imo) have yet to make any rational arguments for why its so bad that I can attempt to refute. All you ever hear about are how badly emotionally scarred people are getting from email and IMs that say mean things about them. It seems like a bunch of panicky fluff designed to garner sympathy so people can push through legislation that criminalizes being mean.
Sure, stalking and death threats ARE bad, but last time I checked there were already laws in place to deal with those. If you ask me, this is just the next front for the politically correct clownshoes to work in their feel good laws that accomplish nothing and ultimately end up turning your average jackass into a criminal, you know, "for the greater good."
Everyone needs thicker skin, as the whole uproar about this is more a symptom of our continued pussification than any problem endemic to the internet.
Eventually, nobody will believe anything about anybody on the interwebtubetruck
Then it will hole no emotional effect on the people of that generation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We see this same tired series of events played out again and again... someone does something that is part of everyday life, but this time they do it "on the Internet", and the media play it up into this big thing. Because, you know, somehow if you do something "on the Internet" it's *different*.
Please, stop the madness.
Just because one or more computers communicating over the Internet is involved, it does not magically change the nature of what's going on. "Cyberbullying" is just like a bullshit marketing term: somebody made it up to make something old sound new.
If you can help a kid deal with school-yard bullies and the high-school rumor mill, they should be able to cope with this.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
We used to be physically bullied. I would gladly have accepted a MySpace page full of personal attacks in place of a schoolyard full of actual ones.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
I learned how to ignore bullies back in high school. But that's in meatspace, where everything is ephemeral. In online forums, comments and rumors about me are all but permanent, and available for any potential employer (or private investigator) to see.
I wonder if/when libel laws will be applied to moronic posts made to Myspace, Facebook and the plethora of phpBB boards out there.
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That'll teach him!
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
All things considered, I'd rather have a nasty text message or two...
than a punch in the face!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In other news, pseudo-sociotechnical words (PSTW) are gaining momentum.
Please help metamoderate.
[RANT MODE ON]
Kids these days are such pussies.
I get a little misty when I recall the times when getting my ass kicked at school for being a dork was just a way of life. It didn't kill me but it made me stronger. I can't imagine being intimidated by some other dork's IM, e-mail, or MySpace post.
I miss the days before we had to have cops patrolling the hallways as if the kids were in prison. I miss the days when kids just got into a little fight and that was that. Now, parents sue each other or even go to jail.
Sure, we could blame it on violence on TV or video games but they are a reflection of our culture--art immitating life. No kids even dreamed of pulling off a school bombing/shooting like Columbine in the 70s or 80s.
What's happened over the last 25-30 years? Maybe kids just need attention because their parents are addicted to the internet, drugs, work, TV, porn, or themselves? Or maybe they just need to get their ass whipped now and then in small doses (vice mass murder)? Maybe we should just pay more attention to them?
Seriously though--cyberbullying? puh-leez!
We keep putting up all these little rules to keep terrorists from blowing us up; or to keep kids from shooting up their schools; or to keep other bad random things from happening again. How about we look at the root cause for all the violence? I suppose the government (local, state, or federal) will magnanamously step in and declare cyberbullying a terroristic threat but that won't deal with the real issue: people in this country, including our kids, feel angry, frustrated, and violent about something.
When I was a kid, we felt scared all the time because of the Cold War--the Russians were going to bomb us any damn day. Today, we live in constant fear of everything--getting blown up by terrorist, shot by a crack head car jacker, mowed down by a drunk driver, run off the road by a road-raged commuter, crazy-ass snipers firing from the trunk of the car, drive-by shootings, attacked by stalkers, etc., etc., etc....
Now we have to fear intimitading electronic communications? Seriously--WTF?
I am at a total loss for what is wrong with us--as a society. Maybe we need to legalize marijuana--at least for a couple of weeks, and get everyone to just chill the f**k out and quit preying upon each other? I've never smoked but my friends who do/have are the least likely people to do ANYTHING much less commit an act of violence--unless you consider fighting over a bag of Cheetos "violent."
OK, maybe declaring a national Green Day (redefining "Green Peace") isn't a solution, but our whole country is edgy and willing to kill. Something is wrong.
Cyberbullying is the LEAST of our freaking problems.
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I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I would say that any mature adult that has frequented any kind of MMORPG is more than keenly aware of the hordes (no WoW pun intended) of emotionally unbalanced, immature, socially irresponsible teenagers running around the place, many of which that, protected under the cover of anonimity, find pleasure and boost their egos by trying to ruin other people's games.
...
The anonimity of the Internet removes some of the greatest shackels on action (retribution, public shaming, public shunning) for those which feel empowered and have their egos boosted by harassing others (typically, but not exclusively, the above mentioned immature teenagers).
This has been going on ever since the Internet has been opened to people beyond the confines of academia (probably even before).
Personally i would like adults only servers for most MMORPGs to avoid wasting any of my precious 3h/day of playing because of some griefing kid, but that's a different story
Given the large audience of Slashdot, this gives me the change to become the biggest cyberbully on the continent:
you're all morons!!
There is a general problem with people in North America today (I'll use Canada as example, that's where I live.) People are considered to be helpless children until the age of 12. They are grown to believe that they are completely untrustworthy and helpless before that age. You can't leave them alone anywhere for a minute, someone will call social services. You can't send them to go to a local store to pick up some food and maybe a bottle of Rum, I don't know why it's against the law here. By 6 y.o. I would already go to a food store to buy a few things, among other things a bottle of vodka and a pack of siggarettes too. Not a big deal, I brought that stuff back home, I was happy to help and didn't take any of the remaining change either. But that was Ukraine in the early eighties. Also I knew what the expectations were and I understood the consequences for misbehaviour. So I mostly didn't. If not everything was respect, then some of it was a dose of fear not to get into trouble, since the consequences were real.
Today in Canada on the on the hand, noone will send their kids anywhere until they are 12 (Canada is not the rest of the world, but they do believe here that they've got it right.) There is no chance in hell a kid could buy a bottle of alcohol and a pack of sigarrettes for his father. What the hell, why the hell not? Well, because the kids cannot be trusted here. Why is that? Well because they have no real consequences, no fear and no respect at all. Is it the kids' problem or the parents'? You can decide on your own about this one. But when you have kids with no respect for anyone, you'll have kids who will not understand reason and will be extremely selfish and will cause unnecessary difficulties and harm to others because they have no respect. Obviously the parents don't know what to do at all with kids like that, even worse, the parents will do everything in their powers to prevent their kids from facing any kind of consequences. When was the last time that a parent punished a kid for misbehaving at school, how about punishing the kid when they are rude to their teachers? The parents will prefer to side with the kid and even will attack the teacher and the school, maybe even will threaten with legal actions.
Why are parents afraid and unwilling to teach their kids good manners and respect to others? Maybe they are afraid of the kids themselves, scared of being accused by the legal system that they are abusing the kids? Proably this is part of the problem. Whatever it is, the conclusion is this: parents are not teaching their kids good behaviour, kids are not picking up any kind of good behaviour anywhere else either, kids become spoiled and even dangerous, since they don't have respect for others.
The truth is that children will be mean when they can be, they are basically mean animals until they become human (if it ever happens.) Thus there is bullying. But as someone else said, bullying always existed but it used to be real, not cyber. Maybe the answer to everything will be a completely disconnected cybersociety where people don't have to communicate with each other in reality?
You can't handle the truth.
What makes you think only kids behave that way? I know a few grandparents who get their kicks being asses in online games.
The problem is people behave that way under the veil of anonymity (see the Penny-Arcade raving internet fuckwad theory). It isn't limited to any age group, nationality, race, etc. There must be a limiting factor, maybe sense of humor or intelligence, that prevents everyone on the internet from behaving that way. Or so I hope.
Why would authority really want to eliminate bullying? Generally speaking, that is the class that most all future business and political leaders come from! Example with the same age group, look at the number one top team sport in the US, football. The bullies win, and the conniving and more clever bullies win easier. It's the biggest deal in the public high schools,certainly not the chess club for a counter example, and your team has to physically and with much aggression "beat" the other team, and the team stars are the heroes, pushed by the same authority system that says they are anti bully.
Don't believe what they say, look to what they and society *do* and who gets rewarded or not for successful early childhood indoctrination. Look at the top class of Cxxs and political leaders, what do you see mostly? Aggressive alpha male and female bullies for the most part. They have to "win" all the time, the biz leaders have to "effin kill" the competition, their team (political party) has to win no matter what. The stockholders *demand* it, nore, more, MORE profits no matter what it takes, the grassroots political activist shock troops *demand* it, they have to destroy the competition,swift boat them for example, and exalt their own pack leaders, even to the point of ignoring or excusing blatant illegal or unethical behavior. Bullies get rewarded in our society if they adjust their bullying to the approved methods of the older adult bullies, so I don't believe they are really anti bully, although they make make noises about it.
"Cyberbullying is only dangerous insofar as it leads to physical assault."
I don't know. To use my previous example, if some teen girl blogs about how she saw my daughter in a liplock with another girl at the mall, and my girl was home at the time, why is that not libel? Or if my son starts getting "anonymous" emails about how he's going to get his ass kicked Wed. after school, is that not assault (the threat, as opposed to battery, which is the act)? Even aside from the fact that it probably won't happen?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
One thing we've learned since Columbine, is that while it's an extreme example, it was not unique. I suppose, if we're willing to accept a school massacre every few years and dozens of individual killings, and thousands of student suicides, I suppose we don't really have to make an effort to teach our children that bullying is wrong.
The problem is that a lot of Americans don't really think bullying is wrong. We like it when we see a bully on TV, as seen by the popularity of people like Ann Coulter and Michael Savage. A bully in government, like Dick Cheney, is idolized by those on the Right who feel more comfortable when living under an authoritarian. Bullies in Abu Ghraib are considered macho by the Laura Ingrahams and Michelle Malkins of the world. Even in the unreal world of MMORPGs, what's the first thing a lot of players want to do? - Gank some noobs.
No, until bullying goes out of style, there will still be Columbines, and Virginia Techs. Its the price we have to pay for remaining an immature, atavistic culture. It's no surprise that, as we saw in New Orleans after Katrina, the least of our people are treated the worst, and no surprise that the divide between rich and poor continues to widen. One wonders how this can happen in a nation that prides itself on being "Christian". Somehow, the part of Christianity that dwells on humility, service and love got replaced with the desire to stick a boot up your neighbor's ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
the fucking internet is the only place where these shitting teenagers can use cunting naughty words without their bitch parents hearing, (please, note the sarcasm)
the LOUDER and more frequently they say these words, the more adult-like they feel.
Maybe that explains this curious wording:
I've seen people complain in an online forum that someone's objections to an ideology constituted a personal attack against its adherents, then turn around and declare "open season" on those who espouse the alleged bully's competing ideology.Then they pat each other on the back for being so much more civil than the 'troll' they've just dispatched.
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