Cyber bullying
If my readers haven't noticed by now, the title of my blog posts are lyrics of songs. I'm going to edit the rest of my posts and put the title of the song at the bottom. Just in case anyone was interested in checking the song out.
Anyway, today's topic is about cyber bullying. I was debating on including cyber bullying with my bullying post but decided no for a couple reasons: 1) My bullying post was already getting long enough. 2) Cyber bullying is a completely different issue altogether.
I've been cyber bullied a lot. In my bullying post I talked about how I went to a party under the guise that I was welcome. The entire thing was set up on-line which should have been a clue right there, but I was one naive child.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Internet. I love Facebook, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, lolcats, and a whoooole bunch of other stuff. My time on-line has brought me some good times. It's led me to some good relationships (romantically and platonically), and led me to some very bad ones.
The Internet can be a very unsafe place to be, yet you never really realize that until it's too late. You read all these stories about meeting on the Internet going wrong but you never think that it could happen to you. Thankfully, I've never had a bad experience with meeting someone on-line in person.
I HAVE had a lot of bad online experiences, though. Thankfully no stalkers (well at least not ones that stalked me in person).
Let me start off by saying this - people that bully you on the Internet have only one thing in common with "real life" bullies. They could care less about your feelings. Only on-line, they take it to the highest extremes. Because there is no face, no one to really look at, they feel like they have the upper hand. They also do it keeping themselves somewhat anonymous. They'll push it to the highest limit and they feed themselves off of the power they feel they have.
The only time I felt where my life was truly at stake was about a year ago when I joined a LiveJournal community. They stalked my every move after they kicked me out (over some trivial stuff, but whatever). It wouldn't stop. It happens even now. They found ALL of my information. It scared me because some of these girls even had my number. It was a huge wake up call for me and the time I spent on the Internet. You always have to be careful because you're not only jeopardizing yourself, but your loved ones as well.
Cyber bullying and harassment is getting to be a huge issue nowadays. You hear all these stories about people killing themselves over peoples' harsh words. People nowadays aren't afraid of telling someone that they're worthless, that they're nothing and that they deserve to die. You never know what kind of person you're saying that to. People like that LOVE to go after not just the LGBT community, but also after people who struggle with bipolar disorder, and depression.
If you are being harassed on the Internet, do not feel like you can't talk to someone, especially the police. This problem is becoming more and more of an occurrence. Don't feel ashamed. But if you feel like you are in danger from someone who is threatening you - do as much as you can to free yourself from the problem. Talk to the police. Talk to your parents. Make every social networking service you use private. Take extra precaution, and for God's sake, please, please be careful about who you give your information out to. You are not alone in this. There are tons of people in the world that are going through what you go through.
I wish there was more I could say about this but I'm trying to keep my personal experience from this as vague as possible. Just take care of yourself. Please.
With Love,
Liv
Song used in the title: "Defying Gravity" - Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, "Wicked"
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