  With the publicity of Phoebe Prince’s suicide in January of this year, the recent suicide of college freshman Tyler Clementi, and the role the internet played in both, the destructive nature of cyber-bullying is evident in this day and age. Prince was bullied both in school as well as online through her Facebook and Clementi’s personal life was broadcast to the rest of his school and the world through Youtube.
  A bully is defined as someone who is habitually cruel or overbearing and it is not the bully who gets to decide if the joke has gone too far, it is the victim. Bullying is not just exclusive to physical confrontations. The current weapon of choice is the internet.
  Teenagers, notably, spend the most time online each day and the vast majority of this time is spent on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. And with the rise in popularity of Formspring, the ways that anyone can choose to hurt another through the internet has only grown. The sense of security that the internet gives is nothing more than a false luxury. Formspring gained popularity because of the option of leaving an anonymous comment on another person’s account. What began as a way to ask people questions quickly became a way to harass them in the form of anonymous posts. While some students managed to laugh off the rude comments, others did not find it so light-hearted.
  “Within a few days of me making my own Formspring account, I got a whole bunch of rude comments that told me I was ugly or insulting me and my friends,” said one Neuqua student who immediately closed down their account after the incident.
  Just because the bullying does not occur in a physical or face-to-face situation does not mean that it is not bullying. The computer screen gives everyone a false sense of security that they can be as cruel as they want and no one will ever have to know. Some even see it as a form of being honest without the repercussions. The thing about the internet is that it holds no emotional value whatsoever in the words that are typed. No one can read a joking tone or a playful smile.
  “I don’t care if it was meant to be funny because when someone logs on and all they say is a bunch of rude comments, their first reaction isn’t that it’s funny but that it’s offensive,” said the student.
  What many students fail to realize is that jokes can go too far and the amount of abuse someone can take differs from student to student. There is nothing gained by anonymously slandering someone and if anything, it is an indication of the poster’s cowardice.
  “If something really is bothering them, they should say it to [the person’s] face instead of posting things anonymously. And if you’re someone who can’t handle things like that, don’t make an account and stay away from the negativity.”
Hong-Ah Do, Editor-In-Chief
