Harassment, threats, bad-mouthing, exposure of private matters, and other forms of bullying are rife on the internet. You can get your tragic fill of stories of suicides from bullying here: six deadly cases.
Cyberbullying is a scourge that seems to have no cure, as long as free speech is a cornerstone of democracy. Measures have been taken by Facebook and Twitter to minimize abuse—as private enterprises, they are not bound by the same rules as governments—yet there’s no way to stamp it out entirely.
So? We’ve always had bullying. Although bullying in general may be on the rise, what’s so special about online bullying?
There are three characteristics that make online bullying especially pernicious: (1) the cloak of anonymity available to abusers; (2) the immediacy with which information (or lies) can be broadcast to the world; (3) the size of the audience—potentially, everyone on the planet with a computer or cell phone, except for censored networks such as in China and North Korea.
OK, so much is obvious—but these factors are synergistic: they amplify each other. What’s more, they set an example that encourages any troll who may once have been reluctant, to try their own hand. Even without anonymity, on account of speed, size of audience, and imitation, online abuse can quickly metastasize into a psychological, if not physical, atrocity. Young people can be scarred for life, and even many adults—such as the women who are deleting their blogs following deluges of hate—will never be able to ban these cruelties from their heads.
Most of the targets of this abuse are women, the perpetrators men. If this sounds like things going on in the “real” world, then we have to see the Internet acting as an extension of misogyny and hate. We are like civilians living in a digital war zone.
