DEAR CYBER-BULLIERS: YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE
- Giang Trieu
- Sep 23, 2015
- 3 min read
Yesterday, you were scrolling your Facebook news feed as usual, you saw a shitload of Facebookers left nasty comments under an avatar of a girl just because she was black and not very pretty. Today, you see a boy who is called gay by his online friends just because he looks skinny and pale. Tomorrow, you see the ask.fm of a hot girl in your high school is full of messages blaming that she is a bitch and should go cut herself. Yes! you are witnessing cyber-bullying causing by online abusers. They love hiding themselves behind their computer screens and saying things that they would not dare to say in front of their victims in the real world.
Image credit: World Pulse
The psychology behind these online bulliers is demonstrated in a research paper of American Professor of Psychology, John Suler, in 2005. He argued that the online environment did have power to unleash people’s inner demons, which they usually didn’t reveal in front of others in the offline world. This phenomenon is called online disinhibition effects.
A brief of Suler’s idea is that cyberspace provides people with the ability to hide their identities. They can do whatever they want to do by fake accounts and do not have to bear responsibilities for their online selves. In the real world, abusers can receive immediate responses from their victims – facial expression ’s change, tone of voice ’s change, body language, maybe even profaned reactions. However, these deterrents are absolutely absent or delayed in the virtual world, which leads to the problem that bulliers see their victims as faceless, non-existent and unworthy of empathy.
You might think that anonymous online bullying is not that serious as it just comes from people who do not have any real relation with the victims. However, a recent research has pointed out that 73% the victims of cyber-bullying admitted that they knew the person who abused them. Moreover, the impact of online bullying on the offline people is really beyond the expectation. Indeed, in 2012, a Canadian girl named Amanda Todd was found hanged in her home after posting a video on Youtube sharing that she was bullied. In 2013, a 12-year-old American girl killed herself due to pressure of being targeted for cyber-bullying. In this year, a Vietnamese high school girl also committed suicide by insecticide owing to cyber-gossip after a sex clip with her boyfriend was leaked online.
Cut scene from the video of Amanda Todd
Hold on! Don’t be so pessimistic as there is always light at the end of the road. Recently, Criola, a civil rights organization based in Brazil, has just launched a campaign called "Racismo Virtual, Consequencias Reais" ( or "Virtual Racism, Real Consequences" in English) aims at shaming online abusers. This project collects uncivil comments of online racists from Facebook and Twitter, uses geotags accompanying the posts then hires a billboard nearby the houses of the racists. The hateful tweets and comments of the racists are shown again and again, from morning until midnight, right under these no-longer-anonymous bulliers ‘s very nose.
"If you washed properly, you wouldn't be so dirty," the billboard reads
Founder of Criola, Jurema Werneck, demonstrated her determination towards putting a stop to anonymous cyber-bullying to BBC.
“Those people think they can sit in the comfort of their homes and do whatever they want on the internet,” she said
“We don't let that happen. They can't hide from us, we will find them."
Hence, from now on, online abusers should think twice before posting malicious comments on social media as you will never know whether you will wake up with your nasty comment written yesterday appears in front of your house. Also, don’t forget that you can’t run away as your facebook or twitter will update your new location. Let’s take out your phone and remove your uncivil comments quickly now, hurry!
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