How do you feel about cyberbullying?

[Leo656]

On one hand, I do think people in general should have a bit thicker skin and no take things people say so personally, either in person or over the internet. Of course, that's easier said than done, and it's coming from a guy who used to throw hands with anyone who looked at me sideways, so I understand the natural reaction is to sometimes overreact.

But on the other hand, I also think people, in general, need to treat each other better, especially the current "younger" generation (people who are right now between the ages of 10 and 25). I seriously don't know who's raising - or doing a half-assed job attempting to raise - these kids and young adults. I know some people are going to take offense to this, but I don't care: A fairly large number of teenagers are flat-out pieces of sh*t with no respect for anyone. To them, hurting people's feelings or trying to embarrass them is funny, and they get off on it. Now, I may come off as kind of a hypocrite, because in my circle of friends we can be kind of playfully antagonistic. Basically, when I was in high school, anyone who couldn't handle a little good-natured teasing wasn't cool enough to hang out with us and that was that. But if we didn't like someone, or they didn't want to deal with us, we didn't go out of our way to antagonize them, either. I've never, ever understood people who genuinely derive pleasure from making other people feel bad about themselves, and I don't like bullies.

I do think it's stupid that someone would kill themselves, or in some cases shoot up a school or something, because people were mean to them. That's a tremendous overreaction. But at the same time, there absolutely is a cause/effect relationship at work. Having a mild form of paranoid schizophrenia, I can empathize with many of the people who have hurt themselves or others over being "mistreated". I can't condone it, but I understand it, the pressure to "fight back" and "show them all". Actually taking that step is going too far, BUT a common thread in many of those cases is simply, if people had treated someone else the way they wanted to be treated as a human being, this person may not have hung themselves or shot up a school. Yes, the ultimate fault lies with whoever decided to overreact in such a way, but people simply don't do those kinds of things for NO reason.

I feel the internet has only made things worse. It's no longer like it was for most of us, where for example a kid might get caught picking his nose, everyone would make fun of him for a few days and then after the weekend was over it'd be forgotten. Now someone would record it on their phone, upload it to every kid in school's Facebook page, there'd be a dozen memes about the nose-picker kid, and it'd be online forever. In some case the bullied kids even have to move to get away from their tormentors, but it no longer matters because the kids from their old school can just get the kids from the new school to pick up the harassment. It's like a never-ending shame spiral; you do one stupid or embarrassing thing and it follows you forever. Under those circumstances, I absolutely understand things like the teenage girl last year or so who hung herself after nude photos of her surfaced online. It was a stupid thing to do, and killing herself was excessive, but at that point she'd moved and done literally everything that could be done to stop the torment, and it wasn't like those photos were going away. Thanks to the internet, you only make one mistake and your life is "ruined". A lot of people say she should have just "got over it". How, exactly, was she supposed to do that, when moving to an entirely different state, going to a different school etc. only made things worse? I don't think she should have killed herself, but I'm not sure what options she had, either. She was going to be f*cked with her whole life, for ONE mistake, and that isn't fair. So I understand it.

For what it's worth, most people I know say flat-out "anyone stupid enough to kill themselves over being bullied deserves to be dead." I don't really agree. I was bullied as a kid until I was all but forced to beat the sh*t out of everyone I thought was "disrespecting" me, and for a while nobody really wanted to deal with me at all, because I was a "lunatic", BUT at least the bullying stopped. So I guess my perspective on it is a bit different from most people. Things shouldn't have to be that way.

I do agree, most people should be "tougher", but it's SO much different now from when I/we were kids. I just think people everywhere would do well to stop and consider someone else's feelings and situation before passing judgment on them or flat-out treating them like sh*t.