Saturday, July 13, 2013

Playing Nice

It’s going to be a rant this week. I gave you something fun last week, so now you must listen to…read my complaints. Although honestly, I think this is something that should be complained about.

In general, people don’t play nice on the internet—see GIFT or the comment section on any YouTube video for further reference. What I’ve never understood is why, why people act like bullying jerks just because they can get away with it. I don’t get why treating someone like total shit is in anyway beneficial.

For example, several months ago I saw a tweet that said something like “If you unfollow me because of what I say, I will block AND report you!” First, let’s get it out of the way:  block and report on Twitter doesn't automatically result in ANYTHING. If you get a Direct Message that says “LOL look at this picture of you I found online” or accidentally mention the word computer and get fifty million replies to buy one, you can click on the options button and select “Block and report for spam” and it keeps the person from tweeting at you again. It does not necessarily suspend them, although having a report can cause sometimes non-spammers to be suspended. Now, f you are being harassed, you can fill out a form to report people, but that’s not what this person threatened to do (not like that would have been right, either).

This person used the block-and-report as a threat. Keep following me (and listening to my unpleasant rants) or I’ll get you in trouble. I had to deal with this crap in middle school. It was why I was happy to get out of there. People told me that things were supposed to get better once I was out of school. Well, they lied.

These days, the internet is freaking middle school, and we’re all students trying to psychologically destroy each other. The teachers are the social networking sites, the YouTubes, the Twitters, the Facebooks, who have these rules and don’t really enforce them because they don’t really care, but might if someone screams loud enough—and that’s usually the bullies. Follow me or I’ll report you.


What did I do about that Tweeter? Blocked her, naturally. One benefit of being bullied for six solid years in school is that I have no interest in giving in. If you act vicious and hateful online (not that any of you would, thankfully), I will stop following you. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

11 comments:

  1. Unfollow me and I will report you? You're right - very childish. Bullying people into submission never works. There's no respect.

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  2. Since I am a counselor in a public middle school, I very much get what you mean about the internet being the place where middle school bullies can thrive. I love it when I can make bullies squirm.
    But this makes me want me to drop the internet from my life :)

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  3. It does come across all too much like middle school, which was no picnic for me. The anonymity of the net certainly doesn't help, and the end result can be a toxic brew at even the best of times.

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  4. I also think people feel emboldened to make bullying comments because they can hide behind their avatars. It's pathetic, really. The nice thing is that they're easy enough to unfollow. Sorry you had to deal with that. Some people never leave middle school.

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  5. I've pondered this one a lot. There are people who live in a different reality from you and me. The lovely thing about the internet is that you can delete them from your social networking sites and never think about them again. At least, until another one pokes its head out of its hidey hole.

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  6. The internet is like middle school. Unfollowing threats? Really?

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  7. Good for you for blocking them. *firm nod*

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  8. LOL. People are funny. They're totally cool with being jerks when in a virtual medium, but face to face? I think we need a new set of standards and decorum taught to the youth these days: internet etiquette.

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  9. I suspect a lot of people posing as adults online are actually unsupervised children ;)

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  10. Give many people a mask (which many see the internet as being) and they will be cruel and bullying. We must be the change we wish to see in the world. Interesting post. Bullies are out there. Like you, we must take a stand.

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  11. Hi J.E. Cyberbullying is HUGE! How can we teach kids at school to play nice when bullying is EVERYWHERE (excuse me shouting!) I totally agree with you. So much nutty stuff happening, yet I love Twitter, am blah about facebook but love blogging and usually bloggers. Bloggers usually take time to write thoughtful posts. Some are afraid to rant, but I did a bit of a total rant about social networking in a recent post. We're all going through the same experiences but most of us just suffer in silence.

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Please validate me.