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It is obviously very upsetting that a girl has ended her life as a result of vile comments about her on some social site. What I can't understand is why, once anyone has been subjected to this unpleasantness, they go back to the site read more?
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It is compulsive - look a Paris Jackson - life of amazing privilege but abuse on internet broke her because most teens strive to be liked, even famous ones.
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The expert interviewed about this on Today this morning described it in terms of self-harm, another thing many of us who haven't been there (me included) find hard to understand. Once the damage to a vulnerable young person's self-esteem has been done, the temptation is to keep going back and making it worse. Children can be truly vile to one another.
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>> obviously very upsetting that a girl has ended her life
Worse than upsetting, heartbreaking. That some poor nipper, loved by their parents probably, can be so lonely and so naive that they gambol puppyishly into the internet for company and then take this coarse, thoughtless abuse at face value and are cut to the heart by it. These cases, and there are lots of them, bring tears to my eyes.
I often talk heartlessly about the human comedy, but there are poignant little tragedies everywhere all the time, when you focus on them.
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The companies that make millions out of it could easily do more to prevent this.
If I was truly vile to someone else on here, one of the volunteer Mods would step in..and if I was bad enough I'd be banned.
Why can't Facebook and Twitter etc do likewise?
I'd hazard a guess that they are greedy (enter expletive) who couldn't give a (enter an expletive).
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"If I was truly vile to someone else on here, one of the volunteer Mods would step in..and if I was bad enough I'd be banned."
And then (if you were really bad) you would create a new account with a different e-mail address.
"Why can't Facebook and Twitter etc do likewise?"
See above.
These organisations need to be prepared to trace the perpetrators - it can be done.
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This has absolutely nothing to do with the internet, nor do the social networking sites have any responsibility towards this girl, nor any culpability with those who did the "abusing"
This kind of thing went on long before the internet developed into social media. In the early pre internet days it was gossip, group exclusion, physical bullying, then notes being passed around, and then txt messages.
Were the pencil makers culpable? paper makers? mobile phone companies? make them responsible?
No of course not. Attacking the likes of Facebook or twitter is merely throwing blame at an easy target rather than those really responsible.
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Yes back a few years bullying often ended swiftly with a sharp punch splitting the bullies nose.
Such just remedies not so easy to administer now.
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'This has absolutely nothing to do with the internet, nor do the social networking sites have any responsibility towards this girl, nor any culpability with those who did the "abusing".'
I take your point - up to a point. However, what the internet does is to allow almost complete anonymity. It is one thing to have someone insult you to your face and quite another when it comes from who knows who. And, with the internet, it can happen on a much larger scale.
The only parallel in a pre-internet age is the anonymous letter, stereotypically composed of cut-out text, which involves a fair amount of effort on the part of the sender, or the silent phone call. Those sorts of communication tended to be far less explicit than the sort of stuff we've seen recently on social media. It's so easy to do.
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Tue 6 Aug 13 at 20:37
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The note passed around class was usually anonymous. The frog or dead bird dropped in the school bag likewise. There has been no change in society here.
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"The note passed around class was usually anonymous. The frog or dead bird dropped in the school bag likewise. There has been no change in society here."
The note came from one out of maybe thirty; the frog or bird (unpleasant, but not very explicit in its message) could have come from many more, but the abuse on social media is more threatening because of its near-complete anonymity and its explicitness. It is a matter of scale rather than anything.
Of course people have been nasty to each other for ever and of course the issue is people's morality, or lack of it; however, nowadays it's just a whole lot easier, and less risky, for more people be nasty, and in the most explicit way.
And, by the way, the examples of notes in class and stuff put in someone's school bag suggest it's just kids mucking about. We know it's also adults who do it - supposedly mature individuals who should know better.
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>> I take your point - up to a point. However, what the internet does is
>> to allow almost complete anonymity. It is one thing to have someone insult you to
>> your face and quite another when it comes from who knows who.
This has always been my view. Very few of the insults posted online would ever be delivered face to face. Few of these so called "trolls" would be anything like as brave without the anonymity and protection of the internet. They are cowards who clearly are missing something fundamental from their real lives. It's sad.
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>> This kind of thing went on long before the internet developed into social media.
Absolutely, spot on, and even before the existence of the internet, in the school playground.
>> Attacking the likes of Facebook or twitter is merely throwing blame at an easy target rather than those really responsible.
There I must disagree, a bit. The easy unsupervised access to internet social media makes it possible for dreamy, vague adolescents to come up without warning against some ferocious heartless polemicist unknown to them but capable of making hurtful remarks to a vulnerable child. It can happen in their bedrooms late at night and become a tragedy in the small hours.
That may sound a bit dramatic. But it's not that wide of the mark, in a small scattering of cases.
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>> What I can't understand is why,
>> once anyone has been subjected to this unpleasantness, they go back to the site read
>> more?
>>
I often wonder why I keep coming back here!
;-)
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>> I often wonder why I keep coming back here!
>> ;-)
I hope you DO keep coming back, L'es. We need every ingredient in the ridiculous potpourri of car4play.
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>> It is obviously very upsetting that a girl has ended her life as a result
>> of vile comments about her on some social site.
Who are we talking about?
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Hannah Smith, 14, from Lutterworth, Leicestershire, was found hanged on Friday at the home she shared with her parents after receiving a series of abusive messages – which told her to “drink bleach”, “go get cancer” and “go die” – on the social-networking website Ask.fm. She is the latest British teenager to have taken her own life following severe bullying on the site.
Should have gone to Google? :<{)
Last edited by: Meldrew on Wed 7 Aug 13 at 08:37
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An unfortunate strand in the bullying process I remember from school was that boys who were bullied quite often drifted into the role where they almost connived with their oppressors.
They didn't exactly want to be bullied, but in a world where everyone needed a distinguishing part (clever, athletic, rebellious, funny, ugly, etc) there was a niche for the bullied too, and to a significant extent some boys selected themselves for that role.
Some managed to come through it and re-form themselves as a kind of tolerated fool or jester, others crumpled.
A sad and not very palatable aspect of human nature.
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The same in any community/institution - Seen it in my old profession a lot. It's sexy to talk about racism, agism or sexism - but bullying with not attached "ism" is just as bad.
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Internet Trolling and Cyber Bullying - Stuu
