Trolls beware of the Cyber Bullies Part One!

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Snugglepuss

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I have been looking into the world of online communities recently and found some really interesting stuff!
Online communities like to believe they are in Utopia! This is mainly because everything is done by the written word and behind the comfort and safety of the computer screen. When someone comes along and upsets this feeling, then the discussion board feels totally at unease and out of sorts with the world.

There are many different ways of an unpleasant people upsetting the harmony of an online community such as:

Trolls beware of the Cyber Bullies Part One!

Trolls
Cyber Bullies
Thread Breaking

Trolls beware of the Cyber Bullies Part Two!


Stalkers
Flaming
Baiting
Hit and run posting

There are other ways, but for the time being I will concentrate on:

Trolls beware of the Cyber Bullies Part One


Trolls


This one interested me for two reasons, it is mentioned in the Geek commandments and I believe that I have now been TROLLED and was the initial reason I started looking into the psychology behind it all! An Internet troll or troll in internet slang is someone who intentionally posts messages and which is constructed to cause controversy on an online community!

So why do they do it? Well many people believe that it is because they are sad individual jerks who love the attention it generates. It also could be because they are bored or lack communication skills in the real world. As stated earlier, the World Wide Web is in lots of ways anonymous and therefore in some ways the troll feels that their true identity will not be discovered.

Furthermore, by being so aggressive and hurtful on the internet, they escape the reality of a real life face to face confrontation!

How do they troll? Basically what they like to do is find a thread, post a load of rubbish on it, but more importantly, is extremely personal to the thread starter. The troll is not bothered whether they (the troll) look silly or not, they just love to cause havoc and try to discredit the thread starter. Once the people from that particular community respond to the post, and then basically the Troll has managed to do what they had set out to do and won in their opinion – cause trouble, hurt people’s feelings and gain a lot of attention!

The best way then of not encouraging a troll, is not to respond to them AT ALL! some online communities have signs which warn not to feed the trolls and hand on heart, in the future, if I believe anyone is either being an internet troll on a thread I start or another members thread, then I will alert the mods to a TROLL ALERT and then put them on my ignore list!

Cyber Bullies


For me, I believe this is far worse than trolling! With a troll, the thread and posts soon run their course, or one of the wonderful mods will delete/sort it out, if the original poster hasn’t already. The troll has got a “quick fix” and will wait for the next opportunity to have a go at someone else – they very rarely attack the same person in a short space of time.

The cyber bully however, is far harder hitting to the person that they are bullying. This is mainly because of the psychology of the bully. They are motivated by power, anger, revenge, frustration, boredom, for laughs, to increase their ego – to show that they are a better, more controlling and powerful person than their victim, that their social standing is better than their victims. Sometimes it can be the revenge of the bullied – what I mean by that is that the original person who was bullied try to defend themselves and then they discover that they can be the tough guy or gal or that they are righting a wrong and protecting the bullied!

They show this by wearing down the victim by continual harassment on posts. For example, they may post about a bullied person and ask for comments and ratings about whether this person is liked. The bullies will then use instant messaging to discuss the results. All the while they will be letting the victim know that it is them that they are on about.

Other forms of bullying can be attributed to repeat ignoring of what a person has said in a post and the cyber bully wanting to have their own opinion known. To do this, all they have to do is keep telling the poster/victim that they are wrong and they should do it in “XYZ” way otherwise, they must be stupid if they don’t etc etc etc.

As with trolls, the way in which everything is anonymous actually amplifies the negative impact the bully has on the person they are bullying. Furthermore, because you do not know the person who is the bully, then it wears you down even more – mainly because if you can see/know the bully, then you have a better idea of what you up against.

Also in day to day life, there can be an escape form a bully for short periods of time.


(PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM NOT CONDONING ANY TYPE OF BULLYING just trying to point out the differences).

Continued on Page 2 :right:


[BREAK=Page 2]


However, with the internet it can be 24/7 - email, instant messaging, online communities, web sites which show video clips and of course because it is the WORLD WIDE WEB, then people from all over four corners of the world can see/discuss, what terrible things are being said about a person – it is recorded for everyone to have access to! The other ramification it has is that the person who is being bullied maybe having to deal with a really stressful life, the added cyber bullying could just send them over the edge!

It will be nigh on impossible to stop all cyber bullies as they may just argue that is their honest opinion and that they are being bullied by virtue of them being told they should not state their opinion. So what can we do about it, well we can report it to the mods, we can support the victims and try to make them feel more worthwhile and part of the community.

Think before we write – read it aloud – it’s amazing how different it sounds when spoken out loud as opposed to within your own head. It also gives you time to spot spelling mistakes and other errors and gives you the opportunity to edit before submitting. Best of all though, it makes your family laugh out loud because you sound so silly :lol:

If we don’t, then we could be responsible for the bullied person taking out an extreme act on themselves (eg suicide) and I for one do not want ever to have that guilt on my shoulders.

:green: If you are pleasant and non judgmental, then you will end up with far more friends, respect and feel better about yourself – bullies lives are very very lonely and despised!

Thread Breaking

I know that some people will say "OMG I so understand why that is so threatening/off putting!"

This is a really simple way of disrupting a thread. All the poster has to do is put all their text into one long paragraph (there are other ways as well such as stretching text downwards but the first example is the simplest).

How many of us hate to see that? It puts you off reading the post straight away, so much so that you may not respond to the thread starter or other relevant subsequent post – and hey bingo, the cyber bully has struck again! They have prevented a legitimate thread/posts to come to an abrupt end! How does that leave the original poster feeling – pretty miserable I’m sure and their confidence knocked and geeky friends there is only one thing worse than a thread breaker and that is when people feel that their posts have been ignored. :eek:

However, in defense of no replies, I will say that, you cannot always read and reply to every thread/post and therefore, we have to be mindful though, that no replies don’t mean that everyone in the community hates the sight of us!:hug:

On that note geeky ones :green:, I will just say that luckily we don’t suffer much of the above and if and when it does happen we have a fab mod team who sort it out the best way possible. To keep it this way we need to support them all, to the best of our ability, work with them and not against them :hug:

Part two will be here soon - I'm off for my dinner now :green:
 
Very informative...and a lot of food for thought there Snuggs.
You are certainly back with a bang after your holiday!!!
 
most informative. Ta for that:green:
 
wow deb, very intresting reading there hun :hug:xxx
 
Very interesting and thought provoking.
 
If only everyone was as lovely as our snuggs, the world would be a better place.:hug:
 
If only everyone was as lovely as our snuggs, the world would be a better place.:hug:


Perfectly putxxxxxx

Welcome back Debs:hug:
 
woo hoo Debs is back and with a bang I have missed you :hug:
 
This is really interesting, brilliant article.:hug:
 
Aww bless you all :hug:

I'm still on my holidays (will be back home late Sat/Sun) but it was rainy today and the littleuns were drawing and playing nicely and hubby was reading and we were all listening to music in the hotel room :green:

So I thought I'd try and write something intersting for my brilliant geeky friends :hug::hug: and this is why I love this site - there are SO MANY FAB GEEKS with huge hearts :hug::hug:

I will try and log in as much as poss but the wifi connection keeps going down so I won't be back fully until Sunday night xxx

Take care my geeky friends love n snuggs Deb xxx :green:
 
very interesting reading, thanks for taking the time to write this article

xx
 
Very interstesting read Debs, have to say, as you said, I haven't seen much of it here, well maybe a wee bit over that past couple of weeks...perchance some of these people don't realise they are doing it, or is that part of the psychology?

Also does this include the moral highgrounders as in people who believe they should set the moral standing of what is right or wrong for the board and tell others how they should be thinking, speaking, writing?

OMG does that mean I have just done it or am asking a legitimate question! I was, honest!

Glad you're having a great hol, even if the weather is a bit pants!
 
nicely done hun. I am impressed!
 
Great thread! And how true! As tempting as it is to 'fight back', these days if someone tries to get into a slanging match with me on a forum, I always do my best to ignore their rant, they'll always get bored in the end and go away. I used to be a memeber of a forum where this Trolling & Cyber Bullying was a daily occurance between certain members, people just couldn't bite their tongues (or fingers) and let it die a death, causing it to go on and on and on....... so boring! I left in the end. This made a very interesting read..... :)

Jackie
 
Interesting article Debs ... let's hope it has the desired effect :hug:
 
Very interstesting read Debs, have to say, as you said, I haven't seen much of it here, well maybe a wee bit over that past couple of weeks...perchance some of these people don't realise they are doing it, or is that part of the psychology?

Some people don't always realise that they may be unintentionally bully, they get an idea in their head and it all comes spilling out. Once pointed out they will almost apologise publically and feel ashamed of what they have done. Proper, bullies be it cyber or in person are relentless and would never think of apologising :eek:

Also does this include the moral highgrounders as in people who believe they should set the moral standing of what is right or wrong for the board and tell others how they should be thinking, speaking, writing?

In itself taking the moral high ground isn't wrong especially if it is in the best interests of the board and is debated and accepted by all of the members in the community.

However, when the people who take the moral high ground IMPOSE their views and opinions without any flexibility, then yes it can be classed as cyber bullying!

OMG does that mean I have just done it or am asking a legitimate question! I was, honest!

:lol::lol: Bless ya Cathie YES it is a legitimate question and in all truth it also shows everyone how complex the whole thing is but in the end these people all want to achieve power status etc.

Glad you're having a great hol, even if the weather is a bit pants!

Thank you :hug:

We are having a fantastic time, in the main the weather has been fantastic - I have the tomato head to prove it :lol::lol::lol: there has just been the odd afternoon/evening where it has rained!

A huge thank you for your comments geeky ones - the psycholgy of the stalker is interesting - well IMHO :lol::lol: so hope you will all look forward to that :green:

BTW, I know that there are a few typos in the article and I will get around to amending them asap and also a huge THANK YOU to Sandi for putting the piccie in the correct place and splitting it into two pages :hug:

Rightio Geeky ones I'm off to have a bottle of bud and take in the breathtaking view :green:
 
Brilliant article Snuggs, you have done your homework! Really interesting. Looking forward to the next installment. xxx
 
This is a great article.
 
This is a great article.

Thank you for the comment - it really does mean a lot

It is really interesting that The cyber troll always does so much damage emotionally - I don't "write" on the board much any more - the trolls saw to that BUT I believe that at the end, they show themselves to be how daft they really are!

Note to Lucia - hope it is all sorted - AND remember ANYONE who has been affected by cyber trolls, that it will take some time to come to terms with it BUT eventually you will over come it!

Take care all - you know where I am if you need me :hug::hug:
 
What a brilliant thread....I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks.

You know what always amazes me? How do they know that someone has started a thread on their particular subject? For example, we had some nuter trol destroy an interesting thread this year on whther people believe in the spirit world.

How on earth did they see that thread and then join salongeek just to start trouble?
 

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