Does cyberbullying exist, and is technology to blame?
source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/does-cyberbullying-exist-and-is-technology-to-blame/64...
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- Radical_Centrist
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We, as well as our younger siblings the Generation Z, should also be remembered for ‘cyberbullying, where people are abused, taunted and pushed to suicide through the means of technology that offers instant and multiple points of contact and anonymity.
But a recent blog post by Anil Dash critically analyses whether ‘cyberbullying’ exists, and whether technology is the root cause or just a conduit to inevitability.
High profile cases of cyberbullying have been reported in the media over the last few weeks. More recently with the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University who had a very personal and private moment broadcast by his fellow roommate on the web.
One of the most prolific cases of cyberbullying was the suicide of 13 year old Megan Meier who was teased and taunted by an adult neighbour posing as a teenage boy of a similar age on MySpace. This led to a conviction of Lori Drew but was subsequently overturned, because US law in this area is sketchy at best.
The two students involved in the Clementi case have since been charged with invasion of privacy which could result in a 5 year prison sentence.
Different states have varied laws in regards to cyberbullying. Massachusettes state legislation was passed in light of one student suicide caused by online bullying, but many areas of the United States and indeed the world do not have laws in place which specifically target online harassment. Many of those involved in perpetrating acts of bullying online have been caught out by various different laws instead, though these are often in relation to the cause as opposed to being a direct influencer of the fact.
But cyberbullying continues and is endemic in the modern online culture. Anonymity has caused great difficulty around bringing those responsible to justice, and those who suffer in relatively controlled environments such as Facebook or Twitter can feel as though they are screaming into the wind.
Dash argues that cyberbullying does not exist, in that bullying of any kind is still bullying. Whether you use a pen to write a hateful note, a phone call to call someone horrible names, or a computer to send hurtful messages, it is all the same thing. Technology is being misused for the convenience of essentially lazy bullies.
He concludes:
“The truth of it is, calling the cruelty that kids show to one another, based on race or gender identity or class or any other imaginary difference, by a name like ‘cyberbullying’ is a cop-out. It’s a group of parents, school administrators and lazy reporters working together to shirk their own responsibility for the meanspirited, hateful, incomprehensible things their own kids do.”
Technology is a neutral concept, and it is the people who decide the means and uses for it. Technology isn’t the enemy here, and neither is Facebook or text messaging. It’s the people behind them which send the messages.
I am inclined to very much agree with him, but what do you think?
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http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/does-cyberbullying-exist-and-is-technology...
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npacione
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I've actually written a book about this and will be doing a video soon enough, and the video enclosed in this is my experience with a recent cyberbully. The cyberbully I am getting on here and on Failbook calls himself Nickolaus_Pacione (uses this handle on here) and uses the e-mail address nickypacione [at] gmail [dot] com. I managed to get his IP – and he’s out of a server that’s videotron.ca. I am going to be doing more looking into this one.
I will include my book in the link here to show that I've been dealing with this for while. I think cyberbullying does exist and it goes for adults too in terms of the bullying. I've dealt with it all my late adult life when I became a publisher and a published writer.
The endless wars with them caused me to lose a few short timers, but my family and I are working together to get this one where it hurts. I will have the videos that were taken down here posted on my new youtube channel called "Nick Rants."
I am going after the trolls who harassed would be publishers out of publishing my work. I saw this happen a few times before and this troll that came on and flagged my video because I got him where it counts. I am going to use youtube for these hardcore videos where I am telling them off.
I saw this one pop up on facebook.com trying to say that I am some kind of flaming homosexual when I am a heterosexual. Some of them would sometimes come on trying to say I am some kind of person who is not attracted to the opposite sex. These kind of bastards would go around appearing with the things on there offering up doctored pictures of someone else's body with my head.
Often they would do this in ponorgraphic situations and they got me banned from more than one message board all within a matter of two months. They are the worst when they're posting on ning.com because a few of them actually got the admins wrapped around their fingers and got me suspended from a website. I did a video on another site where these trolls have no honor when they go accusing me of beating my son or beating my ex-wife-to-be. What's sick about it is they'd actually collaborate with the damned ex-fiance.
The fight I had with cyberbullies online took a toll on some short timers that were on my facebook. I caught this one who is posting as Nickolaus_Pacione on here going around flagging my videos that were telling the truth so I am going to post them on the channel which will be home of “Nick Rants” via my new YouTube channel where I will be addressing these issues head on because cyberbullying also goes hand in hand with plagiarism and copyright infringement.
Gossip bloggers go around cyberbullying publishers to get someone to drop a story. I’ve written horror stories about the subject, and one of them is going to be published some time in March. But for right now I can’t release the full details because I don’t want the cyberbully bloggers going around harassing the publisher into dropping the story such as the one called “AngryInIllinois” pulled on an board for a dead publisher called Lame Goat Press.
The ones who cyberbully me also harass me via the mail too and I am trying to crack down on them too, especially when they’re doing across international waters. I’ve covered the bullying subject all too well in my memoir and also with a collection I am putting together of all my nonfictional articles.
I have to add this, straight people get bullied by gays and then some people wonder why when we shove back they go tossing up the damned “hate crime” card. The bottom line is this, people are bastards in nature.
- 1 year ago
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npacione
