Cyber Bullying

Rant Time (it's like Hammer Time, but it's a rant instead):


Social Networks are also slowly becoming the home of shallow minded nasty individuals, who believe that because they send abuse via a keyboard, it has less meaning and is just harmless banter which doesn't compare to people who verbally bully kids in school or strangers in the street. It's never harmless unless you personally know the person, and they know when you are having banter with them. If you are a random person picking up on a comment a stranger made and you respond with something you deem as 'harmless' you have no idea how your 'harmless' words will effect that person, therefore making you a bully. You may disagree and think the word bully is thrown around too lightly these days, but that's because the internet is making it easier for people to send abuse and hide behind a false username, its cowardice and unfortunately it's only going to get worse.

The most recent example of this is that of Georgia Ford who posed the question on Twitter 'Is Wimbledon always held in London?' now for the closed minded people out there who instantly think that this question is ridiculous, just bare in mind that she's from the North, may never have been to London, may not have any interest in Geography whatsoever and may not follow Tennis at all, maybe she was just naively asking a question expecting a yes or no answer, not hoards of sarcastic/nasty replies and retweets. Georgia has since deleted her Twitter account, so again I stress my point, what you class as harmless banter, may be taken a lot more personally than you intended, therefore whether you like it or not you become tagged as a bully. I have no doubt that many people who do this and get involved without thinking outside the box, don't do it out of malice or cruelty, and just get caught up in the mess along the way. However unfortunately there are more and more people out there who do go out of their way to cause grief and misery to others, and it's those people that this post is mainly aimed at.

The most sickening part to me is that most of the online abuse comes from children, young kids - mainly girls - who think that because they use bad language, wear make up and discuss sex like they've been around the block a few times, think they should be treat like an adult, and therefore have the right to judge and belittle people they've never met or spoke to. I got caught up in a twitter row not so long ago with a child giving death threats to a young girl who she believed was in a relationship with someone famous, I was absolutely disgusted and tried to reason with them but quickly found out that it was a waste of time, shouldn't have got involved at all - then I was spammed with abuse for a few weeks, dear me how - the words this 13 year old used to describe me, oh my, here's me thinking we'd never met! (joke) Luckily I'm thick skinned so I just blocked and moved on, plus it was my fault for getting involved in the first place.

It's sad that something that started off as harmless fun, and a great way for fans to interact with celebs, is being ruined by certain people on a destructive mission, not happy until they've upset someone. What gets me really riled is the people who follow and send abuse to celebs they don't like.....why follow them, you are purposely going out of your way to send messages to some one you don't like, I just don't understand it. If you disagree with something they say then fine, express your opinion, no need to get personal or hurtful, non at all.

I'm quite an opinionated person myself so if I don't agree with something someone says I'll put it out there, but I'm not offensive about it, it's easy to get your point across without getting personal. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and this has been mine.