KSAViolet, I applaud your aunt & uncle. While the school punishment seems harsh, maybe that's what it took to send a message to the students. Too bad it was your cousin.

I'd just like to throw one more thing into the equation: cyberbullying someone who's 14-15 is a lot different than someone who's 24-25. But in all aspects, it does add a layer to the being bullied onion.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...F/applause.gif

No need to repeat a bunch of stuff that's been said, but I agree with all those who said bringing real life to the Net and vice versa is crossing the line.

I'm kind of surprised that this thread hasn't Beetlejuiced in shadows of the past...

Claps for your aunt and uncle. It's always heartening to see parents who have their stuff together.

LOL.

I don't know if this counts as cyberbullying, but I think it might:

http://jezebel.com/5661968/horrible-...ed-on-facebook
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news...ors-in-trenton
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news...Offers-Apology

That sounds like all kinds of harassment.

I don't care if my neighbors are complete effing tools, I'm not going to harass a dying child. Jesus.

Dr. Phil the other day was about bullying and cyberbullying.

His guests included a couple whose daughter was decapitated in a car accident. Someone from the scene of the accident took a phone photo of her body and it ended up on a lot of websites. People even went so far as to make negative comments about this dead young lady. For instance, one man said he had sex with her corpse and another person said something about her being a whore.

Everyone has their own sense of humor, some of which can seem strange and unfunny to others but WTF is wrong with people?!

I saw that photo a month or so ago (thanks a lot, Google SafeSearch :mad:). I have an odd sense of humor, but that picture was brutal. I would never make light of it.

Yeah, welcome to GC where having an odd sense of humor can make at least 1 other person chuckle.

I didn't see that photo but I saw the photo of the wrecked car. I don't want to see her dead body. I agree with you that there's NOTHING funny about it. Those people who spread that photo can go to hell.

I agree. I just don't take this online bullying thing as seriously as bullying offline, in person. You don't have to read crap from someone on the Internet. People are just too fragile in some respects. But you're right. When the real life bullying somehow spills over into the Internet, that's different. Like people posting youtube videos of people in humiliating situations.

I admittedly felt malicious glee in hearing that 4chan published their address and did their typical harassment. I mentally slapped myself for it later, but damn those people are assholes.

IMHO, cyberbullying is different in one major respect. Some kid might be a real nut job, and get bullied at school. The bullies might even follow him on the school bus or follow him home.

But with cyberbullying, there's no escape. Go home, watch some tv, and boot up to do homework & see what's going on on the internet and wham! There it is again. The bullies that the kid knows have now influenced total strangers to jump in on him, and it's relentless. Sooner or later, the bullies get the cell phone number, and now that's ruined, too. It's not a matter of turning off the computer or screening the calls, because let's face it, even Wikipedia has bastardized articles that the kid might have to use to do his homework. I would imagine that this same kid has bad dreams, so there is literally no escaping the harrassment.

Bullies are cowards. They are so afraid that they will lose their own standings that they will heckle or join in just to stay on top. Some scapegoats survive this, some don't.

My gosh, there was a kid in my class when I was in high school who was thrown into the Goodwill box every day after school, and sometimes the bullies threw lit matches in after him. It made me sick to my stomach - enough so that I told my mom about it, and she had a friend call the bullies and tell them that she saw what happened, got their names, and would call the police if it ever happened again. It stopped after that, but what if it hadn't? Of all people, I had a good reason NOT to like the scapegoat, but someone had to stand up for this guy, and the bullies were more than I could handle.

He had a chance, because he could go home, do his homework and watch tv. His parents screened his phone calls, so no one was calling him, berating him all night. He got a good night's sleep so he could survive another day.

Had he lived in this day & age, I could totally understand him cracking under the pressure. Seriously.

I can see that, but I'm sure we all know that bullying doesn't stop at the end of the day. The kid may have a break tonight, but it goes right back into effect tomorrow.

The cyber-victim's escape could be not turning on the conmputer/visiting social media sites.

Maybe. But they also know that the entire world can see what's written about them. Whereas a kid that got harassed in high school could look forward to at least getting to start fresh in college before online harassment, now those facebook/myspace pages about them follow them around...and if their bullies are really resourceful and move on to internet sites that won't take harassment down if reported, it's there forever.