Recently I went to a meeting at the Board of Education to discuss bullying.
As they were discussing a recent survey, the most interesting concept came to light... Cyber Bullying...
What?
The Internet can beat you up? OK, check your Junk E-Mail folder and see how much SPAM you get and then answer...
When I was in school (stay tuned to the part where I tell you to get off of my lawn) we didn't have the fancy Internet, so the bullys just beat you up with their fists. Sure there was a level of witty banter that belied the massive intellect under that mean exterior, oh who am I kidding! The geeks got beat up by the jocks.
Sure we had Revenge of the Nerds movies, but the Nerds still got beat up, the pretty girls just thought it made them cuter, so that was the Revenge.
Now we have Cyber-Bullying. Loosely defined, if a child/ student uses technology to harrass another child/student it is Cyber-Bullying. As adults, there are better classifications of Cyber-Harrassment and Cyber-Stalking which are crimes.
This is a real thing people! Kids are setting up Facebook or MySpace pages (seems like they are torturing themselves working on MySpace) AS other kids. So imagine if I set up a page with your name on it, then I put all sorts of bad stuff on your wall. I made you a homosexual anti-Semite with bad acne and a proclivity to collect Star Wars action figures that I've decided you like to pose in "odd" positions. Do you think that is going to make you more or less popular at school? Now likely you aren't going to get all those put together, but they are just some of the wonderful uses of just one of the medias in this bullying.
So in that I-don't-think-its-"cool"-but-if-there-could-be-something-sort-of-cool-in-this-bad-thing (man that was a lot of dashes, which i don't like nearly as much as parentheses or ellipsis's) Cyber-Bullying can be anonymous and can be put on the big guys by the little guys. The geeks can "beat up" the jocks. As I said though, this isn't cool and the victim goes through hell. I know, it happened to someone I know.
Makes me wish they'd just punch me and be done.
Get off my lawn
As Uncle Ben sorta said in Spider-Man (yes, I am a nerd, but I am a nerd who will beat you up in real life. See, I can cyber-bully, too! Just don't call me on that, or I might have to run home...) With great technology comes great responsibility. As adults, we simply shrug off the infantile abuse that weaker people throw (and those who cyber Bully are weak people), but kids, who crave acceptance by their peers, have a tougher time. I am glad that I'm not in school now, because when I was a kid, I had next to no self confidence, and fewer friends, and probably would have cracked and ended up in a padded room if I was the target.
ReplyDeleteNow, I couldn't care less about what losers might say about me. After all, if they say it to my face, I'd either walk away or beat them senseless...