Of trolls and cyberbullying

Required reading:

1) The Princess and the Trolls: The Heartrending Legend of Adalia Rose, the Most Reviled Six-Year-Old Girl on the Internet (Gawker)


I was particularly struck by the profile of one of Adalia Rose's trolls:

Sherburne used to believe in God, back when he lived with his grandmother, who raised him in the 700-person town of Grantsville, Maryland. "I talk to my dad on occasion, I don't care to talk to my mom," he told me late one Friday afternoon when I reached him over Skype, where an avatar of his round face showed up above the username "Some Faggot Named Carl." He went to high school in a place called Accident. "I hated it there," he said of North Garrett High School, where he was expelled at the beginning of his junior year. "Someone started a rumor that I had a hit list and a gun. They took me to a mental institution, took me to get evaluated, found out that nothing was wrong with me." Did he have a hit list? This is how he answers: "I was a little wannabe goth kid, I sat in the corner and cried a lot. There was nothing intimidating about me and they still kicked me out."

This newfound freedom allowed him time to care for his grandmother—his grandfather passed away in 2005 and confusingly left all the money to his previous wife; Sherburne's suicide attempt came in the aftermath—and to get a full-time job at a local McDonald's, where he worked until this past January, when he quit after almost six years. It also left him time for the Internet.

On June 2 last year, he uploaded to his YouTube channel a Beavis-and-Butthead-style reaction video of him and a friend drinking beer and watching "1 Lunatic, 1 Icepick," gory footage of the now-indicted murder suspect Luka Magnotta allegedly decapitating a man, then feeding the body to a dog, while a New Order song played. The New York Observer's tech blog Betabeat ran a screenshot of them watching the snuff film. Sherburne was thrilled, later writing online, "That was an exciting experience knowing that I hit the news and I was proud of it, I won't lie."

2) It happens. And it shouldn't. (Forty Deuce)

An excerpt:

The thing is, it's all well and good to tell the victims of online abuse to suck it up, grow thicker skin, and ignore the vitriol from complete and utter strangers. But the bottom line is that we're all fragile people and I'm thankful for the fact that at the time of this incident I was in a pretty good headspace. It was easy then to dismiss what was being said. But had I been in a different headspace, had I been in a depressive state or if it was a time of my life when I was genuinely questioning myself, my self worth, and my self-esteem, things could have turned out differently. 

Because that's the thing. You never know where the target of your anger, meanness, or viscious comments is at the moment they read your shit. What can be, at least to you, a critical but mild comment, could be the thing that sets someone off. It could be, in that moment, the absolute worst thing that person could hear. We can say "oh, you're being oversensitive" and "toughen up", but isn't that basically victim-blaming? I can't think that's the solution here. 

 ...

All in all, the topic of cyberbullying and its effects have been discussed quite a bit in my circle of friends.  We've come to the conclusion that it's just so easy to do and the only thing that stops people from engaging in it are (1) you don't have a "bully" personality, (2) you have better things to do with your life, and (3) you simply refuse to engage in internet meanness.

It's really surprising how much of a kick some people can get by creating a fake account online and using it to spread false and malicious information about other people. It's simply wrong and, sadly, even politicians and companies knowingly engage in trolling just to get ahead and ruin the reputation of their rivals. I just hope that people would be more discerning when reading things that are posted online instead of just jumping into conclusions and engaging in a herd mentality to unjustly bring another person or company down.