Cyber bullying!! What am I going to do about it?

by Pearl · October 17, 2014

Wikipedia defines cyber bullying as the use of information technology to repeatedly harm or harass other people in a deliberate manner. Twitter is the only social media site where I am active enough to notice what happens most of the time so that is where I discovered this.

The topic is never important, whether someone knows the person is not the issue heck whether someone has the right to comment about someone else’s life does not matter. Day in day out, I stood by and watched while someone got torn to pieces online (Still do, Sigh). It might be for 5 minutes, 2 hours or a day but there is always someone getting picked on.

Over the past weeks or so, I have been actively thinking about what happens on my timeline *although sometimes I will follow the bullying to wherever it is* and 3 thoughts ALWAYS run through my mind whenever cyber bullying happens;

1. Thank God that’s not me.

2. One day that will be me, it’s only a matter of time.

3. When will I stand up to these bullies?

I have been in a number of online arguments that turned into cases of cyber bullying and the coward that I am crawls back to the hole from which I came but this did not stop the person(s) from going on with the insults. I have seen people who have stood up for themselves and still the bullies did not stop harassing them so as far as I can tell, there is no formula.

I have made an observation that cuts across for most of these bullies; they have harassed very many people and not many are willing to stand up for those being bullied because these bullies usually then turn their insults onto the knights in shining armor. It’s pretty much downhill from there and sadly I am one of those who have never stood up for someone. Every time someone is bullied, I tell myself that next time I will say something and yet here we are.

I have questions to which I need answers before I will probably ever be able to go to war with cyber bullies. Does harassing other people give them pleasure? Are they paid to do it? What do they achieve from harassing people? Were they always that way or nah? Are they aware that they are hurting people? Is it deliberate or subconscious?

I actually have many more questions but finding the answers to these will help draft a strategy of sorts on how to begin the end of cyber bullying!