Guest Blogger: Please Welcome Zoe!

Tonight I am going to do something totally different with the blog and present to you a very special guest blogger. You all may know Zoe from the comment section of this blog, as well as me linking you all back to her blog before. Not only is Zoe an avid reader and commenter of this blog, but she is also a fantastically wonderful person, good friend, and spectacular writer. You should all follow her blog and follow her on Twitter so that you can say you knew her before she was famous, because this girl is going to be HUGE. Not that I'm trying to tell you what to do...

A few days ago, Zoe and I were having a lovely conversation in which I confused her a bunch of times. I'm sorry, Zoe. Somehow in that conversation, I ended up reading a piece from her blog, and asking her if it would be alright if she would be a guest blogger and share that post on my blog as well. Luckily, she graciously agreed.

There are so many amazing things about this amazingly talented girl, and this piece shows every bit of who she is and what she stands for. If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything, and she's not the kind of girl who is about to go down without a fight. Plus, she loves Taylor Swift, so where can you go wrong? She brings awareness to something that has been in the media lately, but passed off by many: Cyberbullying. So, please, everyone give a huge round of applause for Zoe and remember to check out her blog and twitter.

I read some pretty disheartening and quite honestly horrific attitudes regarding cyberbullying today. Someone said that cyberbullying is a load of crap because you can always turn off the computer and go elsewhere. I am gathering, from what I hear and read, that this is the opinion of a few people. Yet those people I can tell have never experienced the horrors of being bullied online. Yes, you can ignore it. It takes a great skill to be able to move on and laugh off people harassing you, but once you get a hold of it, it's easy to master. But you cannot always pretend it does not exist. The opinion I read clearly lacks a huge misconception; what if the cyberbullying follows you to school? Then, are you capable of ignoring the comments, turning off your computer and going to hang out with friends like everything is okay? You can't. If those people are joining in the harassment and it continues off the computer you can't just smash down the lid or turn the off button on the monitor and ignore it. It eats you up inside. The longer it continues, the more the comments and the name calling persists, the more you come to believe it. How do you think babies learn? They see the repetition of adults speaking to them, encouraging them, and they adapt and believe and repeat themselves. It is exactly the same when it comes to bullying. The victims learn that the things they are labelled as are true. They come to believe everything the bullies say about them. When so many people constantly throw names and belittle them without relenting, they have nothing else to do but to consider that perhaps, if so many people are saying it, then it must be true.

People like the ones I encountered are entitled to their own opinions. But the only thought that went through my mind was how little they know of the truth. They can say "grow the fuck up and move on" all they like, but that is never the solution, and I can tell they have never been through the experience themselves. How could they say things like that if they had? They cannot understand the feeling of being completely and utterly alone, of feeling like you are the only person in the world going through this kind of pain. They cannot understand how so much builds up and cyberbullying is just the tip of the iceberg. I can't look at my old tumblr account because of how much hate I am getting on there, and that severely hurt me. Those grey faces didn't know who I was, and they had no courage to come out and say it to my face. The vicious comments left by others to put me down reaffirmed my thoughts that I was not an important person. You cannot tell people to grow up and move on unless you have been involved in the attacks. Unless you have experienced the heartbreak over feeling that everyone is against you, that people who do not know you hate you without any justification for it. Calling someone ridiculous for killing themselves over vicious bullying online is completely out of order. I know how it is to feel utterly alone. I know what it feels like to be scared to talk to anybody. I know what it feels like when everyone turns on you, both online and offline.

Another comment I read said that turning off the computer, deleting the messages, ignoring the website all together, these were all solutions that were “not that fucking difficult”. I felt sick when I read that. Did they understand what exactly goes through the victims mind at that point? Did they not realise that as soon as one person has seen the message, there is every possibility that the message would have been print-screened, sent across to everyone in messages berating their chosen victim? If someone else posts a comment about them, and that person is considerably more ‘popular’ than the victim, who do you think people are going to believe? The victim has no chance to properly defend themselves in these situations. And people telling them to “grow up” and “move the fuck on”, that’s almost as bad as what the bullies are doing. The victim doesn’t want to hear anything that seems remotely harsh. They want to be comforted. They want to be reassured. They need their friends to stick by them. When all your friends turn on you, it can get so much worse.

A lot of these comments seemed to centre on the ABC movie, “Cyberbully”. Many labelled it as a copy of “Odd Girl Out”, but “Cyberbully” actually modernized and brought the issue to the forefront of people’s minds, focusing strongly on the bullying that occurs on the internet, and particularly social networking sites. In fact, a large quantity of the people bashing this movie shared the opinion that bullying online is not an issue because nobody forces people to endure the internet; they can turn it off. They can delete things and report them, and it’s online so it’s not real—they can ignore it. Allow me to direct you to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier. Megan Meier was bullied online, mostly through MySpace. Not long after setting up her account, she received a message from ‘Josh’, though the actual perpetrator was her former friend’s mother, Lori Drew. Several people, mostly Lori, contributed to running the account. They would gain her trust and get information about her, personal information, to use against her because Megan had allegedly spread rumours about Lori’s daughter. Then the messages changed from being kind, to being insulting and cruel. ‘Josh’ told Megan she was not a nice person, and he didn’t want to be friends with her anymore. Several people posted bullitens about Megan saying that the world would be a better place without her. Later messages were sent through AIM, and Megan was found twenty minutes after, having hung herself. Now. Would you call that bullying ridiculous? Could you so easily say that she was stupid, and should have deleted the comments and not let it bother her? The bullying spread to the outside world. It did not just stay online. People in her school and the town began to turn on her. Imagine, just put yourself in her shoes, in the shoes of people everywhere around the world who experience this kind of bullying. It’s never easy to deal with and nobody deserves it. I am thouroughly sickened by people who have the attitude that bullying online doesn’t have a basis in ‘real life’. Comments like that stay with you for a long time. When people who you thought were your friends turn on you, you feel like you are the only person in the world going through this. You have no one to turn to.

I honestly think people need to reconsider the effects of online bullying. People who make comments like that will never understand unless it has happened to them or someone close to them. But it happens. The internet is the world of this generation; kids spend hours online. It’s like a whole other world to them. So yes, words hurt, regardless of how they are said or where they are said. If someone starts spreading ugly rumours about you and they do not even know who you are, you are going to be offended. When people gang up on you just because the ‘queen bee’ decided you were her next target. I want to direct you to this book: http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Girl-Out-Culture-Aggression/dp/0156027348. Rachel Simmons’ book does not focus on cyberbullying, but it helps to understand why girls in particular bully one another. As she says, “There is a hidden culture of girls’ aggression in which bullying is epidemic, distinctive, and destructive. It is not marked by the direct physical and verbal behaviour that is primarily the province of boys. Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into non-physical, indirect, and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumours, name-calling, and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on targeted victims. Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victims.” By no means was she, and by no means am I, saying that all girls do this. They don’t. But the evidence that it happens in undeniable. That book helped me to understand why girls bullied me, to an extent. I understood why girls bully one another, and I learned how to get over it. With my recent experience being bullied through the site Tumblr, I was fortunate enough to know how to deal with it. I may have left the account and made a new one, but I did not let it affect me emotionally offline. I was comforted by the knowledge that they did not know who I was, that they were too frightened to come off anon and say these things to my face. I had been through enough years being bullied that I could ignore it and pretend as if it didn’t really bother me. I may have shed a tear or two at their expense, but that was it.

Many people are not as fortunate. Your closest friend may be being bullied and you could have no idea. I’m not saying you should act like a spy. I’m saying that those people who make these claims that cyberbullying is ridiculous should approach the subject with a more open-mind, and a gentler attitude. You may go through your whole life without being bullied; it is entirely possible. But look at what it does to people. Just because you break down and cry over comments online does not make you emotionally unstable. You will never be prepared for it. You will never expect it. You do not think that it can happen to you, and you can say “shut the fuck up and move on” all you like, but when it does happen to you, a part of you will understand what goes through the minds of other people and maybe, just maybe, you will regret the things you said. Once more, I am not saying it will happen to you. I am saying that sometimes you have to go through something to understand it. Cyberbullying is one of those things that is so easy to ignore because it has a very simple solution. In reality, it is never simple. Words hurt.

Perhaps cyberbullying doesn’t feel real to some people because it is not physical. It’s not direct bullying in the flesh, therefore it is easy to ignore and pass judgements. But cyberbullying is an issue people need to take more seriously. Know that your words hurt people online. If you say something cruel, start spreading rumours, and more people surround the victim, they are going to be hurt. They are going to feel excluded, alone, depressed, maybe even suicidal. If they feel too ashamed to tell their parents, their mind is going to come up with a thousand scenarios to make everything disappear. In Megan’s case, this was suicide. In the case of many others, their escape was suicide, through bullying online.

If this is happening to you, I implore you to speak up. Tell someone. Anyone. There is even a website, CyberMentors, completely free to register and highly confidential. There are helplines who never mind listening to you. There are groups you can go to. If you are too frightened to tell your parents, write something down on paper. Leave it on your teacher’s desk. Give it to someone, an adult, who you find it easy to talk to. Rachel Simmons’ website gives you the opportunity to email her. You can contact me, if you want to. I don’t mind. I will listen, and I will try my best to help. 
http://mymindgoesfast.blogspot.com/ On my profile you can find my email. Nobody should be without help for this. What you are going through, if at all, is wrong. It hurts and it is very, very real. There are many other people who will gladly be there to listen. Just be brave, brave enough to click that send or request button. Brave enough to write that letter and leave it with someone you know can help. And as for everyone who thinks this is not an issue, I have this to say: please, open up your minds a little. Take a good look at what really happens online. Understand how these words hurt people. Acknowledge that turning off the computer is not always the best solution. Try to put yourself in a position similar to theirs. It’s not something that can easily be ignored.