Bully Pulpit

It’s stretched from news to the web and now it’s in your favorite reality shows. It’s bullying. It’s made it into the 21^st century and the collective consciousness of the media. Students committing suicide over what was said or shown about them on the Internet. Students committing suicide after endless verbal taunts, harassment and vandalism. We even had an Assistant Attorney General in Michigan recently fired because of his constant cyberbullying attacks against a student body president.

Researchers used to argue that the Internet was not capable of carrying significant social or psychological content. It was merely a tool (and an inferior one at that) that people would use to be more direct and less connected. It took years for the communication, linguistic, sociology and psychology fields to even begin to admit that there was a possibility that the content could be psychologically significant. Trust me, I did the research. I even wrote a dissertation about it.

Well, I guess the naysayers are “stick a fork in it” done. Could they have imagined that people would actually commit suicide because of Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, AOL, Yahoo or any of the other ways to talk to other people on the Internet? Probably not.

Frankly, I knew what the Internet was capable of when Al Gore and I invented it, or at least used it at its more humble, less flashy beginnings. Engineering and science geeks have been marrying off of Zorkish multi-user domains since the late eighties. I’ve even attended some of the geek weddings. So that people’s worst natures (as well as their best) can come out (excusing the pun) isn’t much of a surprise to me.

The funny thing is the reactions to this “new” form of torment, particularly when negativity was built into ARPANET. When things got too bad in a chat room or site, you did the ultimate conversation-stopper: Ctrl-Alt-Del. You left the program. Why sit there and continue to take abuse? But masochistic teens and tweens, riveted to their digital umbilicals seem unable to break the connection. Of course, many times these are also the same people who post pictures that get the negative attention in the first place.

The content is driven by the fact that people are using digital cameras, smart phones and other electronic umbilicals to regurgitate every little detail of their life on some social networking site. I don’t care what you had for lunch, unless it’s poisonous. I believe you can’t have Twitter without “Twit.” If you didn’t put all of that out there, there wouldn’t be much to talk about. Public lives mean that there’s a chance that there will be public ridicule. Going low profile is one way to avoid the problem. Oscar Wilde said noted that no one gossips about someone’s secret virtues. It’s as true now, isn’t it?

"Just because they said it, doesn't mean it's true." I put that sign on my front door so that I saw it every time I went to teach. Frankly, even if it is true does it really matter? It's not going to represent the entire story. It's a snapshot. There's always a context, and most often it's entirely removed from anything you see or hear. Everything is taken out of context when it seems for fun, effective or evil to do so.

So now people have started paying attention once it crossed the geek threshold into “mainstream” society. So has suicide. Does anyone else remember the movie Heathers? I particularly remember the line by the “granola” guidance counselor who said, “Whether or not to commit suicide is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.” It’s the holidays, so how about A Christmas Story? Remember the bully that regularly tormented the neighborhood? Did they call social services or have a vigil? No, they moved on with their lives.

I have to admit I’m being sort of callous. I’ve watched too many hysterics about what’s happening to the children. And the resilient little buggers still make it to adulthood. To cover it like it’s the newest of the new is a sad commentary on how long it was ignored in the first place. The fact that gay youth have a high suicide rate has been a steady statistic since the records started getting kept decades ago.

Maybe the rest of you need to get a bit callous. Teach children, adults and your companion animals that the Internet isn’t a truth machine. It’s a content machine. Lies can be typed in as easily as truths. There are whole sites devoted to “Photoshop-ing” images. With the right equipment I can make anyone look like anything. Don’t buy into it. Cyber-gossip is just gossip gone digital. Did you believe in Bat Boy? Or that Jimmy Carter was cavorting with aliens? Weekly World News argued that point many times. So read the content and think about whether or not it may actually have any relationship to reality. What? Think about what we perceive? I know that sounds heretical, but it actually does work.

I believe in good self-esteem, I really do. But isn't the strongest sense of self developed when it's tested? Every individual comes to that point where they think or say "No. I'm not what you make me out to be." They say children are mean. Of course they are, the little monsters. I also cynically believe that adults may be less mean, but have more resources to express it. Do you have a bully at work, or your gym, or your community group or religious expression building? You do and you try to ignore and work around them when you can. Should children be kept from exposure to things that are likely to follow them forever?

I'm reminded of why my mom didn't teach my brother how to cook. "He kept burning himself on the electric elements--he didn't know that they were hot," she said. So he didn't learn to cook until he was 37. As a side note, I learned to cook at age 5. I had no difficulty determining that stoves were hot. In the interest of full disclosure, I would note that my brother's tested IQ is 5 points higher than mine. Mom reminds me of this every time I roll my eyes about this issue. How many times do you think he would've burned himself before he figured it out? Maybe once, maybe even twice. Then he would have learned. Did insulating him (not excusing the pun) actually help him? It's practically gospel that we learn more from pain than happiness.

I do feel bad about what happens to people. I'm not that mean. But I also believe that people need to learn, grow and experience life. It won't always be comfortable. We can't prevent that, nor should we. If we concentrate on giving people the tools to deal with bullies won't that fix the problem more effectively than legislating or hiding? I tend to think so.