Talk:Cyberbullying

This article was nominated for deletion on 6 October 2005. The result of the discussion was Keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Archives
April 2007

Vandalism piece removed -off topic-

This text was removed today from the article "

hi

I'm here to expand ;) I sometime ges bullied in a cyber fashion. It's really sad for me, Sometimes I feel like committing suicide. I guess I probably shouldnt be writing this here, but the kids help phone is busy and I dont know what else to do." Person requires counselling contact numbers on the matter though. --220.239.179.128 (talk) 21:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Preventing and Addressing Cyber-bullying

Is this the place for advice? I think not. If there's no objection, I think I'll delete the above comment in a bit. Max Elstein 21:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Leave it, it is just a potential article modfication posted in 2005...I'll archive it...--Zeraeph 21:55, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

Ok, there was a NPOV tag added to this page... Can you please give your reasoning? I was bold and removed it... but I'll put it back given reasoning. (Signed: J.Smith)

I wasn't the one who added the tag but I have a problem with this line: Another problem is the increasingly common presence of computers in the private environments of adolescent bedrooms. This wrongly states that adolescents having computers and Internet access in their bedrooms is a bad thing and is not NPOV. I'd like to be bold and remove it but I'll wait a little while to see what others think. --WikiSlasher 13:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

There have been no objections and so I have removed the sentence. --WikiSlasher 05:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Summary Section?

First of all the summary section spells through as thru, so I'm fixing it. But second, do we need a summary for this? lwelyk 03:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Origins of cyberbullying

Cyberbullying wasn't invented until 1998??? It's been around since at least 1987. That was when I first saw it happening on a BBS.

I've deleted the entire section, there was no source and I couldn't find anything related to it using Google. --WikiSlasher 11:16, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Move

I propose we move this article back to "Cyberbullying" which is used by vast majority of current academic researchers and is also the most commonly used spelling. --Aybaba 13:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

"hisself ain't a word"

Sure is - south of the mason-dixon line! *chuckles* Whoever you are User:72.147.155.21, at the scrag end of a tense and trying day your apt edit summary had me almost falling off my seat laughing...oh yes, and "mea culpa"...I will never get caught doing THAT one again! --Zeraeph 19:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

i have no idea what you are saying

A saying

Theres an old saying "Sticks and stones will break my bones..." I forget the rest. You people are lame, get a life, "Oh my god, someone said something mean, lets get them in trouble!" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.173.15.10 (talk) 14:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC).

"... but words can only drive me to take my own life" Mbthegreat 17:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Teresa Nielsen Hayden (not a friend of mine, I might add) wrote:

You know the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Not true. It does real damage. Has a PTSD feel to it. Joy is the engine of our spirits, and it takes it all away. You get depressed, and hurt all over. Your own words fail you. The damage can last for years.

That’s the intended effect. It's meant to hurt -- to be so nauseating and dispiriting that the person who's the target shuts down and stops communicating. It's not just a matter of triumphing (albeit by grossly unfair means) in the argument of the moment. The underlying message is: We don't care about what's right, or fair, or accurate. We care about winning. If you stand against us, you will lose, and we will hurt you as much as we can for having fought us. We will wreck your career, and hurt the people around you and the things you care for. If you cry out, we will hurt you for that, too.

-- Davidkevin 00:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you get the point of the rhyme? I'll admit I've been hurt by words very badly (worse than I should have) and I'm sure they will continue to hurt me in the future, but the point is that someone hitting you on the head with a big-ass hammer is going to hurt a lot no matter what you think, but words only hurt as much as you let them.

Sounds like someone has a vendetta. This article sounds the exact same way. Unfortunately, almost everything in this article is combatible by other pre-existing legislation, as well as perfectly legal measures a computer user can take to mask his electronic identification(IP's, DNS, etc.). This entire war comes down to personal constitution, because the internet gives us all freedom of speech and action. The more you readily make yourself available on the internet, the more you're exposing to be attacked, and it's the same way in real life. The more famous you are, the more people are going to hate you. No one is just going to IM you the first day you install AIM and photoshop pictures of you sucking off a dog, things don't work like that. This isn't a matter of cyber-bullying, it's a matter of the internet imitating certain aspects of real life through different means. Essentially, grow a backbone if you want to get around so much on the internet. People are bad, and the more encounter, the higher the chance of meeting a bad person is. This is just common sense, and combatting it at all is laughable. --ZombieG

A vendetta is something done by a bully against a victim. For people to talk about bullying and defense from it is most certainly not a vendetta.

This kind of doublespeak equates justified defense with unjustified attack. They are not the same thing. -- Davidkevin (talk) 17:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I 'm with Zombie. Trying to criminalize trolling and flaming is rediculous and idiotic. Just as in real life, the internet is filled with morons. If you can't handle morons on the internet, use more traditional means of communication. To make this a big moral panic and to tie it in a bow of unfortunate events is sad and in the end, will look shameful. --RoyalB

Anonymous Coward, ZombieG, RoyalB talk: I would suspect you speak from ignorance or, possibly, in defense of your own behavior -- I don't know one way or the other on that. Nonetheless, if it happens to you, you won't speak so callously then. It's extremely common for people to downplay it until they themselves have been victimized. -- Davidkevin (talk) 16:50, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I have had my email account spammed to death by bullys in high school. I've been harassed via IM and yes, me and others have been been chat trolled. All this before 2000. The difference between you or me though is that I didn't sit in the corner and cry for an hour then call the police. I took responsibility for making my contact information availible to the public and then adapted to the situation. I cleared out the spam everyday until they stopped after a week. I never accepted anyone onto my IM unless I knew personally or via email the contact handle of that person I wished to conversate with and yes, me and others had a little fun with the troll until we reported it to the site running the chat.

Again, the world's full of morons and bullys and some of them will be armed with the highest of the high tech gadgets. But if all they can produce with wasted time and effort is spam and empty words on an IM screen, then it's pretty much ok to laugh it off and get on with life.

And again, Cyber-bullying is moral panic over flamers and trollers created by the PTA, sensationalistic local media and other groups who have no grasp of internet culture. Once they legislate the imprisonment and/or the litigation of trolls, who do you go after next? The Haters?--RoyalB

You go after the adults who drove their neighbor's teen-age daughter to suicide.

"The difference between you or me though is that I didn't sit in the corner and cry for an hour then call the police."

The difference between you and me is that I gave you the benefit of the doubt above, and I didn't put words into your mouth you didn't say and ascribe actions to you which in fact I wouldn't know if you did or not. The difference between you and me is that you appear from that statement to be just another common troll who thinks that through "makin' shit up" he can hurt a stranger to make himself feel superior.

There's are words to describe that sort of bad behavior: narcissism and sociopathy. -- Davidkevin (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like to gently remind my fellow editors that this is not a general discussion forum but the discussion page for an encyclopedia article. Please consider taking the conversation somewhere more appropriate or redirecting to discussing this article. -- ElKevbo (talk) 20:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Point taken. I'm done with Mr. It's-Okay-to-Drive-Teens-to-Suicide anyway. -- Davidkevin (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Can Chat Rooms Really Be Used for Bullying?

How can chat rooms be used to bully people? You can quite simply leave the chat room or change your ID. The idea that you can bully someone makes very little sense.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.131.199 (talk • contribs)

I suppose you could say the same about anything. EG "If you are bullied at school you can bleach your hair or change school" - but real life doesn't work that way.

You leave the chat room, the bully can follow you, you can change your ID but you can't change your personality, it still shows enough to recognise, and BESIDES, the very fact that you are forced to try leaving the chat room, or changing your ID is already an invasion of your rights and freedoms.

--Zeraeph 12:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. You cannot change schools easily etc: I accept that, but in a chat room, all you are is a name on the page, which 99% of the time is fake. There is no information there that a bully can use to trace you (except perhaps email adresses on some, but not always, and you can always put up fake adresses-whenever I have to register for anything, I have a special account just for that so they can't spam me/send me hate mail). If you don't make any more posts etc, then what else can they do? While having to do so may be an "inavsion" of your rights, it all boils down to little more than an annoyance. Think about it: the bully is just a name on a screen, which can only cause you problems if you let it. All it really means is that some random guy on some random page does not like you. it's not as if they can bash you up or do anything like that. I guess what I'm saying is while it may be an annoyance, it's never going to be as damaging and traumatic as normal bulliyng can be.

P.S. The heading of this should have been "used", not "sued". That's my typing for you.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.131.199 (talk • contribs)

It just isn't that simple. For one thing it depends on why you are posting in the chat-room in the first place. If it's just for entertainment and fun then yes, it is easy to walk away. But supposing it is important to your business or education? Then leaving could cause you a LOT of problems. A lot of Cyber-bullying takes place in the world on online support, where people have terrible problems, of various kinds, like bereavement, terminal cancer, domestic violence, and nowhere else to turn.

To be driven away from a vital support lifeline or business connection is MUCH worse than an "annoyance". A lot of Cyber-bullies are very clever. They try to get close to you, and find out your location and identity before they start bullying. Then they can cause a lot of distress and fear.--Zeraeph 01:10, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Guess you're right there. Depends on what you're doing on the site. I guess the only trick is not to something stupid like reveal your real ID or location until you're certain of who the person is. How many times have we all been told the first rule: never trust anyone you meet in a chat room. That's partly why people make aliases for this in the first place.

Oh, by the way, I've never heard of a chat room related to business connection. Not that I'm saying that to pay you out, just I've never thought of that before. But if it was something serious like that, surely there'd be other more secure ways to communicate with people other than a chat room, wouldn't there? (Example- use a secure private network between the person you're talinkg to, or find an alternate means of contacting them). Or if it was serious enough, then there'd probably be administrators to stop any bullies etc by removing them. Education? Same thing, and there's still the possibiltiy of moving to an alternate forum on the same topic.

As for online support, I guess you can hope for mediators/administrators etc to expel people who behave in such a way. (probably something you might find in that sort of thing), or you could perhaps go to a different forum on the same thing (although I won't deny that being forced to do so in that situation would be less than beneficial, at least).

Still, there are some things normal bullying can do that cyber-bulliyng can't. One other tactic (obviously depending on the format of the chat room in question) is simply don't click on messages by the bully. In some chat rooms, that works (you might have to click on the message before you read it). Remember, even though it may be a problem to be forced to leave, once you have done so, then the bully cannot do anything else (provided you haven't given them your address), whereas in traditional bullying, that can be a lot harder. Remember, for traditional bullying to work, you have to be near the bully (such as at the same school or workplace), which can cause a lot of fear and distress, especially if the bully spreads ruours etc. In a chat-room setting, the bully can be on the other side of the planet and know nothing about you except what you tell them. You can in fact ascertain their origin quite easily by tracking their IP address in some forums. And they can't exactly do things like spread insulting or false rumours, physically bully you, blackmail you, or anything like that. And even if they do get yor real ID, they would need a LOT of information on you to do anything else (even if they lived close to yourself, which is exceptionally unlikely). Unless you give them your address and/or telephone number, or an image of you, it will be very difficult for them to do anything else to you. The chances of them being close enough are very small: they would have to live, at the very least, in the same state as you (even then that probably wouldn't be enough- they would probably have to live in the same city, or part of the city as you). Even if you gave them all that, then the bully may still not do anything with it. Although it could be rather traumatic at first, the fear would probably subside as you eventually realised the "threat" wasn't real. The only way they could be a probelm if they weren't clsoe to you would be if you gave them some really important information like your credit card number or something like that, which is just downright stupid. The same thing goes with stuff like your phone number. Unless you do that, they're just words on a page.

Essentially, cyber bulliyng in this scenario has the limitation that you have to actually give the bully the information first. But yes, I will admit, it can still be a problem.

What the hell is this about your 'rights' to a chat room? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.143.128.95 (talk) 01:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Further more, why doesn't the user just ignore said comments in this chat room? What other alternatives are there? They could leave, yes. They could fight back, yes. Or they could just continue on with their business. In fact, how many chats allow a user to filter who you can and can not be blocked? Sure -- removing all the comments of a loud member will stick you out of context from the rest of the room if they decide not block this person. But what are we trying to prevent here -- our hero from receiving a bruise to the ego? Should this risk of personal wounding, should our hero decide to endure this 'torture' becomes something they subject themselves to, once the option of ignoring it becomes available. Worst case: the flamer convinces someone of an untrue belittling fact -- which is untrue, and so should be irrelevant once cleared up. Or would it be worse for this person to demolish our hero by exploiting negative history based on fact? Well hell -- now we are looking at the issue of having a finger shaken at us for doing something that, while perhaps demeaning, is still essentially true. But that's reality, for you.

A great deal of things which are said can have lasting effect on self confidence.Barbara Shack (talk) 20:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Can MMORPG be used for bullying?

If you have a durable character in an MMORPG that you don't want to abandon, can bullying occur?

• It most certainly can. Any method of communication can potentially be used for bullying. Interestingly, at a school one of my relatives teaches at (please excuse the anecdotal info; just rying to answer your question), there was a big issue with runescape- there were actually fights over it outside the game-people were hackign into each other's accounts.

However, I'd say that MMORPG-based bullying is probably relatively rare-I'd reckon most people wouldn't be all that attached to a character, probably not enough for it to be particularly traumatic.

Plagiarism

This entire article can be found at the following website: [[1]] I read through the first couple sections and it matches word for word --67.172.225.189 09:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

That's because Reference.com is a Wikipedia mirror site and clearly states the article comes from here. --Zeraeph 12:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

made up term?

is it called flaming or cyber bullying?! because is it just me or is this a term made up by PTA mothers?

Yes. "Cyber-Bullying" is a made up word to generalize ignorant behavior that can easily be ignore on the internet. The term was created to whip up moral panic.--RoyalB

Flaming is insulting people over the net in an argument etc. Cyberbullying is differnet; it involves using the net etc to threaten people, amongst other things. It also involves publishing defamatory material online, using hpones ot bully, etc. It is usually more traumatic than flaming too. Some types of flaming can also be called cyber bullying. The term is new and doesn't seem to have a precide definition.

Think of them as domestic terrorists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.143.128.95 (talk) 01:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The Comic Book Universe Battles

There were several claims in this paragraph that were clearly the POV of whoever wrote it. While I, too, find this forum to be disgusting, Wikipedia exists to present facts - NOT opinions. I have removed or reworded these sentences to fit the NPOV guidelines. 72.185.43.62 04:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, after reviewing the paragraph as a whole, I don't feel it really belongs in this article. Users of The Comic Book Universe Battles know what they are getting into when going there, and in fact visit that site for that specific reason; it differs from real cyber-bullying in that they are arguing about comic book characters, and it occasionally gets personal - again, the users know what they are in for before they visit. The whole basis of this paragraph seemed to be that "the poor innocent children" who stumble on the site might see "vulgar" language, and that the use of copyrighted characters is immoral. Children seeing profanity is not cyber-bullying. And while I suppose that using copyrighted material COULD, in certain circumstances, be considered cyber-bullying, it is not in this case. I have removed the entire paragraph and believe it should remain gone until someone can justify why it belongs in this article at all. 72.185.43.62 05:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Nasty piece of stereotyping

"Additionally, cyber-bullies do not have to be larger and stronger than their victims, as had been the case in traditional bullying. Instead of a victim being several years younger and/or drastically weaker than his bully..."

As someone who is very tall, I object to the insinuation that larger people are bullies. I've never bullied anyone, but I have been bullied by others, especially people of average or shorter height - I think they do that as they want to be conspicuously dominant, and curiously enough popular - they want to be seen as a hero who attacks an outgroup. Even outside the cyberworld, plenty of bullying can be done verbally and by false reporting, neither of which require size. So I've deleted the passage. 80.2.199.14 (talk) 22:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh Lord. "Bullies are usually large[r than their victims]" is not at all the same thing as "Large people are usually bullies." Use some common sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.132.218.4 (talk) 00:13, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, what the hell is this about bullies being larger and stronger? You want to see some real bullying by the stereotypically 'dominant' partner? ...Let me introduce you to your typical (-----) whipped boy friend!

I have a problem with the fact that someone wrote that cyber bullying is something only teens and pre-teens do, anyone can cyberbully and it is not limited to children! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.220.138.245 (talk) 02:44, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Identifying Cyber-bullies

I can't make heads or tails of what this section is trying to say. I believe it to be mentioning something profound about the difficulty in identifying a cyberbully without violating privacy policies, but I'm not entirely sure. It appears to be just plain babble. Kuronue | Talk 20:12, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't either, and I'm not sure if this article talks about what to do if you end up being a victim of cyber-bullying.--69.234.183.233 (talk) 02:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not really the purpose of an encyclopedia, though. The purpose is merely to document the phenomenon. Kuronue | Talk 03:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Then perhaps WikiHow has something to say about it?--69.234.192.143 (talk) 16:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

There should be links in the article to anti-bullying websites.Barbara Shack (talk) 08:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Liberapedia

I and others developing Liberapedia have endured any amount of bullying. People who disagree with Liberapedia aims log in. They vandalize. They sometimes add humiliating material. They abuse any Liberapedians who are logged into the site when they are there. For Liberapedians abandoning the wiki to them is not an option. I feel uncomfortable about one thing I typed impulsively into my computer during a bullying attack by some American Nazis. I acted under intense provocation. I can't tell you what I typed because I don't want to advise readers how to undermine other people but I feel even a Nazi did not deserve what I tried to do. How are such things viewed? Barbara Shack (talk) 20:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't see how this relates to this encyclopedia article. --ElKevbo (talk) 21:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)