Glamour Article (December 2010)- can they really say that?

 I’m not sure I’ve mentioned before but I am a typical girlie girl and like clock-work every month Cosmopolitan and Glamour  magazine (the ultimate woman’s guide to.... well, everything!!!) come gliding through my letterbox – Yes, I admit I subscribe!

Anyway, among all the fashion pages, beauty tips and sex and relationship articles, I came across a very interesting article about cyber-bullying! Since starting this course I immediately take an interest in everything and  anything “cyber”.  I have done a previous blog on cyber bullying from the point of view of it being one of the downsides of social networking sites but this article caused me to reflect again on this very real issue that is on the rise in an ever expanding “online” world and is an issue in my particular profession that we cannot afford to ignore.

A few months ago I would have read the article just the same but not particularly linked it to myself or thought about it in any depth and how it could affect me. I now read such articles and they make me think how I use the net.

 I thought I’d share my findings and thoughts on my blog as the article is, how do I put it, engaging and rather shocking! I think in my particular business I think we need to be aware of some of the terrible things that do happen. These are real life stories, quite extreme, but nevertheless a sign of our times. Often we think this can never happen to us but to these women in the article the evil and odious effects of being bullied have caused severe depression, eating disorders , self mutilation and even suicidal thoughts and can have long and debilitating effects .

The definition of cyber-bullying is;
          ‘when someone uses technology like the internet to deliberately hurt, humiliate, harass or threaten someone else!’

The article covers several stories about innocent girls who have been bullied through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube,  and how easily they can be targeted by  horrible, vicious attacks through comments online and some of them are literally death threats!!! I find this to be rather sick and very wrong as quoted, “social networking sites make it alarmingly easy to escalate cyber-bullying to levels previously inconceivable”. The article is also about how these women are starting to fight back and challenge bullies through the legal system.

Me, personally, I have never been a victim of cyber-bullying but being in the profession I am in, how long will it be until I see a photograph of me on a site with hundreds of derogatory comments????

 Mean taunts and comments are everywhere from blogs to social networking sites. Just one insult can sour dozens more and give the malice more momentum. It is really alarming how easy it is to escalate bullying levels through social networking sites. This is because few are caught and even fewer held responsible for what they post but more and more women are fighting back by exposing their attackers or helping to lead awareness campaigns this hopefully will alter the online landscape and give cyber bullies fewer places to hide. In one particular ground breaking case in August of this year a judge ordered Google to disclose the author’s email address in a bullying case. I think this is good news for all of us.

“Bullies are, by their nature, cowards – in school and society” but what kick do people get out of writing such cruel and hurtful comments on other people’s photographs?? I wonder! I mean, imagine how the person feels when they read these comments, what will they think? I know if it was me – I’d feel awful and probably break down and cry saying ‘so this is what people really think when they look at me?’ Having been the subject of bullying as a child I know how this can destroy self confidence and self esteem for many years.

Cyber-bullies tend to ‘zero in on two things: physical traits and sexual behaviour’, so it doesn’t matter what the person’s like as a person or what they would be like to talk to, the focus is only on the way they appear in a photograph. A lot of cyber-bullying can turn into stalking too as someone becomes so obsessed they have to send 10-20 derogatory comments a day just to get their fix !! A little bit like a drug or alcohol addiction really....?? It really is just an ‘act of gratuitous nastiness to satisfy their own twisted nature’!   

The article discusses several examples but one that stuck out to me was about an American ex-model, Liskula Cohen who’s 38 and from New York. (Models, dancers and actors all promote themselves in similar ways through photographs and showreels so this is why I chose her as an example.) Liskula sought legal advice against her cyber-bully; she was called a “psychotic, lying, whoring skank” on Skanks in NYC, a now-defunct US website seemingly launched just to attack her reputation. When she sought legal help to unmask her tormentor, she got little encouragement. Some judges – in the interest of protecting free speech – have refused to require websites and internet service providers to indentify anonymous posters.

Liskula didn’t let that stop her though and asked the court to force Google, whose subsidiary hosted the blog, to identify the author. Eventually the matter was, in what legal experts call a precedent-setting ruling and a judge ordered the company to disclose the author’s email address but Google said in a statement that it would only provide information about the user in response to a court order – Google said ‘they always defend the privacy of its users. Liskula learnt that her cyber-bully was actually someone she knew and all she wanted from her bully was an apology which she did eventually receive. Liskula’s theory of cyber-slime (a nickname for cyber-bullying) is, “People sit at home bored out of their minds and spew hate”. Liskula’s torment was played off of her sexuality.

In an age when everyone from potential dates to prospective employers Google’s first and asks questions later – web chat matters!!!

Most people view insults appearing online as a severe form of social rejection! Take one of my friends for instance, she has a hair lip and was very badly verbally bullied at school but she had lots of friends and many people liked her. One day, back when I still had my Bebo account, I had an album which had individual pictures of all my friends in (it was a very common thing and I was only about 13) which featured a picture of my friend with the haired lip. A few people had written some really awful comments about her photograph calling her ‘fishy’ and ‘your mum hated you so much she hit you with a shovel’!!! I was appalled and deleted all of those comments along with the album, I felt so bad for my friend! It shouldn’t have to be this way but unfortunately the net gives bullies so many more options to hurt and torment their victims and they can hide their identities which means they can be more aggressive. It is a lot easier to hurt people when you’re not looking them in the eye!!

I really think this is a serious issue! I have been socially and verbally bullied throughout my childhood years by all different sorts of people! I will never forget one day I walked up to a friend in the playground just to say hi and a boy said to me “f*@king hell, you’re ugly!” – I know how it feels to be belittled and to feel so small and intimidated by, let’s be honest, cowardly pathetic people. It hurts. I know that comment has stuck with me for a very long time and I’ve been criticised a lot for the way I look because of the industry and career path I’ve chosen to pursue!

Luckily, I think, we’re becoming more and more aware of cyber-bullying in the UK and the first case has been through the courts  and the  bully is now on a 3 year restraining order and had to pay a huge fine. This poor girl used to receive 10 messages a day telling her “I am your stalker – I just love stalking you and bullying you. And if you block me you stupid b@tch, I will log on under another name and keep on doing it until you are out of this site forever!” And this ‘site’ was in fact YouTube! She received all sorts of posts saying that “you are ugly and don’t deserve to live” and “you need plastic surgery” until finally threatening to slit her throat, she’d had enough and reported it to the police who at first ignored it as they said they wouldn’t be able to trace the address and wouldn’t be able to find the bully. Fortunately for this girl, the bully slipped up and left a real name when it was reported to the police it was found that the bully was a 29 year old woman who was soon arrested, she did only get off with a warning though until she re-offended by posting thousands of comments of abuse and threats aimed at others posing to be this innocent girl until she finally got caught and things were taken more seriously. What do you think??   

Reading this article has made me reflect again on this issue. I think there are some really scary people in this world and the net can be a dangerous place as it’s been made so easy for cyber bullies but perhaps the time is coming when it will be easier for people to get justice against bullies . During the first few weeks of the course it has made me realise that I have to be so careful with what I post on my Facebook, blog or any other site. As a dancer I am in a very vulnerable position to criticism, you receive it all the time and sometimes it can make you feel totally stuck, you lose your motivation and your enthusiasm and feel like packing in and giving up but you push through and persevere!  It is a fact of this business you have to toughen up to personal , sometimes rather blunt criticism but this is normally criticism you can learn from and after a few days you put it to the back of your mind and forget it as it goes with the business.... BUT if vicious, malicious messages and comments are being posted online constantly, like these girls were experiencing, there is no way to hide it even if you delete the comments you still have to face it day after day!

 I thought I would share Glamour’s tips to help us protect ourselves from cyber-bullying:

1.       Don’t post ‘girls gone wild’ –worthy (pictures you wouldn’t want to strangers to see) shots of yourself on Myspace, Facebook or anywhere they can be copied.

2.      If someone is saying malicious things about you online, email a polite request to the site’s web master, asking that the offensive material be deleted.

3.      Still concerned or, worse, worried for your safety? Harassment is a criminal offence. You’re perfectly within your rights to contact the police.

I agree with Glamour that these issues should be highlighted more and bad cases should be dealt with by police or even still in our justice system as cyber-bullies are dangerous and how does anyone know whether they are all mouth?? Maybe they will eventually become so twisted with spite and hate that they do act out the actions they threaten??!! I feel we should stand up and speak out about this – ‘their cowardly, pathetic actions should not be tolerated!’

I think my experiences on this course and the knowledge I have got about web 2.0 will make me more aware about my personal information to try and protect not only my identity but my safety and privacy. At the moment there are no specific laws in the UK governing online harassment but cyber bullying can be dealt with under regular harassment law but you have to have proof of at least two acts designed to cause alarm and distress I think this article has taught me we definitely need tighter controls over internet bullying in the meantime at least this gives us the knowledge that there is something we can do and just exactly how careful and wary we should be.

Reading the article reminded and has taught me that being in this profession with all the tools of Web 2.0 out there to promote yourself that I have to be very wary and selective as to what I post onto sites. I need to be 100% happy that all my information is what I want other people to see and that I am content with all my photographs and showreels that they are for promotional and professional reasons only not photos of me falling out of a club drunk or dancing around with friends on the dancefloor! I have learnt that I want to be in control as much as possible of the information that is out there about me.

After all who are these people?

And should they really be allowed to say that? I think we should make sure they are not wherever we can !