The sad death of Charlotte Dawson at the weekend has reignited the whole debate over online assholes being, well, assholes.
Not that it’s much of a debate: “if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, then keep your trap shut” is probably a good code to live by. Unfortunately, there are plenty of trolls out there who get their kicks from aggravating and annoying.
If you’ve spent any time on a message board or chat room, or if your name is in the media for any reason, you are likely to become a target at some point. For most of us, we can shrug off their bullshit. But some people are a little more fragile, and sometimes the bullying and bullshit becomes a lot more persistent.
A few years back, there were a couple of quite public suicides in a relatively short space of time, one of them actively encouraged by chat room participants who egged on the victim as he put in place the rope he planned to use to hang himself.
Since then, online bullying seems to have become more and more common. As wrong as that is, I’m sick of seeing the blame being laid with Twitter, or Ask.fm (a stupid fecking site, certainly, but participants are there by choice) or any other site. The blame belongs to none other than the person doing the bullying.
Although, I’m seeing several young people I know personally getting themselves worked up into a lather lately over questions and comments on their Ask.fm accounts and am starting to think that sometimes the “victim” needs to take some of the blame. Not a lot, and not all the time, but sometimes. If you are being abused on Twitter or Facebook, you can block the person but you can’t really stop them saying what they want. However, the sole purpose of Ask.fm seems to be to set yourself up to be asked dodgy/sexual/nasty/leading questions. Really people: don’t go there if you don’t want the negativity!
Sure, I’ve had some thoughts that I’ve shared online about the like of Justin Beiber being a douche, but he brings that on himself by doing stupid and uncool shit like spitting on his fans, driving like an idiot and generally behaving like a spoiled brat.
Anyhoo, the little ditty in the video is both catchy and timely.