#wk7post

I consider myself extremely lucky that I haven’t been subjected to THAT much bullying in my life. I mean back in secondary school anyone and everyone was free game for some kind of bullying or harassment. But I don’t believe it had any lasting impact on me.

  Throughout my teenage years social media was just becoming popular and important to young peoples lives. MSN messenger was massive during my teens and chat rooms were frequented. Though I tended to just chat with already established friends, occasionally searching for someone new to talk too. I started to use Facebook when travelling in 2007 so a year after I finished school. I am so thankful that Facebook was still an emerging platform; there could have been some very incriminating photos of me uploaded. But this raises the issue that since social media has become such an integral part of our lives we feel we should share EVERYTHNG from our lives. The good and the bad.

  Young people are utilizing this medium to satisfy their insecurities, posting pictures of themselves in the hope of being validated by their peers with likes. I have a friend actually, who uploads photos of herself, in what I can only describe as a cry for attention. Yet the responses that these acts ignite can make the person feel far worse than before they posted that photo or status. I am neither condoning nor condemning these actions these are just what I have seen first hand.

  I think the idea around bullying and cyber bullying needs to be clarified. From the research that I’ve done there seems to be a misconception of what bullying actually is. In the academic world the most commonly accepted definition of bullying has three components:

-Aggression

-Repetition

-Imbalance of power

  So this means that one off offences, or a disagreement between former friends doesn’t really fall into the category. The media also has a hand in this misconception of the word bullying, by using it as an umbrella term for everything from harassment, stalking too abuse. Interestingly Danah Boyd notes that it’s adults who use the term more loosely and that teenagers understand what the term means and apply it correctly.

When I think of trolling or trolls I think of my childhood and that little bridge and those poor little Billy Goat Gruffs that just wanted to pass over but the troll wouldn’t let them. The goats did nothing to the troll apart from being in his presence and yet the troll wanted to eat them.

The second thing that comes to mind along with the word troll is the term ‘key board warrior’. Someone who is too cowardly to say something in real life so instead sticks to the safety and usually anonymity of their computer keyboard. However I think the conventional view may be a bit harsh –the speaker may not have the means, geo location or publicity of expressing themselves and being heard other than online. So to blame computer keyboards and social networking sites for giving these trolls the ability to speak their mind is not necessarily right as the persons intent would not differ without such capabilities.

Trolling is bullying. No matter what anyone says, deliberately putting someone down is bullying and trolling is just a fancy new word for it. Cyber bullying is not a new issue, I remember 7 years ago getting my own Formspring account where people can ask anonymous questions publicly. My friend assured me it was only compliments and good things people asked and showed me her profile of positive comment and questions. What she didn’t tell me was that as soon as enabling my account I received some horrible queries regarding false gossip and some downright mean comments that I should have just deleted according to her. So that brings up two points- firstly that this 14 year old friend was already creating a fabricated persona online and secondly that anonymity gives way to bullying even the most mundane and boring teenage girls. Needless to say my Formspring career latest exactly 27hrs before unceremoniously deleting it.

 Many governing bodies have tried different initiates, education and laws of ethics to stop these trolls but they will just keep coming back. Bullies will keep being bullies because it is not the victims issue but the trolls. As evident by my own Formspring account people will fine any old reason to have a go at someone with or without social media platforms in which to do it. Just like those poor Billy Goats Gruff, trolling, bullying or any other name you give it will continue to occur in on form or another.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

People are mean. They will be mean to your face, behind your back and heaven forbid, even online! Blaming social media platforms for bullying is begging the same questions and critics as blaming scientists for nuclear war. The public sphere and the social discourse that takes place within it will always be a window for heated debate and nasty comments. The new digital age has just ushered in an alternative platform in which these hot headed –and sometimes just mean for the sake of entertainment- “trolls” can communicate.

Governing the internet is like trying to enforce a nation-wide ban on swearing. People will still swear, they’ll just find new words in which to turn derogatory or they just won’t stop using the old ones. A recent study found that a majority of trolls only troll for the lols. They do it because they are bored and are looking for some entertainment. Rarely is it out of spite or revenge or actual loathing. Because of this, trying to stop them will be increasingly difficult as they don’t really care enough about it to care if they are stopped.

I spoke about this video in my last post and out of curiosity I went to YouTube to see if people were still watching it. I expected there to be a few recent comments but I didn't think that there would be so many people commenting in the last 24 hours. Still, there are hateful comments. It's really sad that people feel the need to contribute to the hateful discussion 3 years on.  Here are some of the comments: 

2 hours ago

  this is absolute crap, thank you society for letting this shit exist. It was funny how this old black dude gets a cameo in this video of preteens...

2 minutes ago

Trolling as defined by the ever so trustworthy, Urban Dictionary, is "being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it's the internet and, hey, you can".  I like this definition because it sums up very effectively why people troll. Because they can. And on the internet, there are almost no rules. It's a free for all space with very little, if any consequence for trolling.   Trolling can also be likened to 'hating' and the term 'keyboard warrior' is often thrown around in reference to online bullying. Those who sit behind a computer screen that type out hurtful comments that they wouldn't necessarily say in person. It's using a keyboard as their choice of weapon over their voice. 

Online bullying is a serious issue and for many, the internet is not a place to escape, zone out or relax because of the bullying they experience online. School kids may experience bullying at school and online which makes it almost impossible to get away from. Students shouldn't have to shut down their accounts. Everyone deserves the right to use social media platforms if they wish.  Despite there being no universal definition for bullying, one definition that is widely accepted is from Swedish Psychologist, Dan Olweus which describes in three parts: aggression, repetition, and an imbalance in power (boyd 2014, p. 131). Social media opens up opportunities for bullies to bully online. (boyd 2014, p. 128) So what can be done about online bullying? Sadly, not a lot.  Social media platforms often have a set of rules which users must accept before their account can be made. But it's very hard to actually monitor this behavior.  Dana Boyd (2014) states that ‘the assumption among many parents and journalists is that social media radically increases bullying" which I believe to be quite true. As mentioned earlier, keyboard warriors emerge and say things that they probably wouldn't say in person because it's not socially acceptable behavior. Many social media sites don't have strict guidelines about what is an isn't acceptable. 

This is very true for YouTube. The comments section for this platform can find some of the most encouraging and hateful comments you could come across. And with no guidelines about what people can and can't say almost makes it okay for people to troll. There is also a thumbs up and thumbs down feature which makes it okay for people to not like a video. Commenting gives viewers the option to then say why they don't like it in often negative and hurtful ways.  For example, Rebecca Blacks song 'Friday' went viral but not for positive reasons. 80% of the overall likes are dislikes. At only 13 years old, Rebecca Black was receiving hateful comments including ones telling her to die. Now, the song may have been terrible but that it no reason to wish such awful things upon someone. 

Thankfully, Rebecca Black seems to be relatively okay. She continues to upload videos on her YouTube channel and laughs how silly the song actually is. But there have been many other cases where people can feel so helpless and hurt by online bullying and trolling that they choose to end their own lives. 

Trolling is an interesting thing as it is such a big issue that has been around for a while now, and yet, no one really has the answer. 

The lines are blurred. Honestly sometimes its hard to talk to your mates, or colleagues about the difference between 'trolling' or cyber bullying. To me, I think of trolling as acting like the 'annoying guy'. A 'troll' thrives on saying exactly what they know will spark up a reaction from another person, whether it be sadness, aggression and so on. They just want a reaction. Trolls like being the dude who gets the most attention, whether its through being racist, homophobic, misogynistic and so forth. 

However bullies isolate one person, this includes cyber-based bullies too. They will edit photos, spread them, talk about them, make up rumours etc, mostly just to get a laugh but at someone's expense. 

Now look, my take on cyber-bullying is common, it's hard to put the blame on anyone else but the bully (which isn't the case in regards to trolling in my opinion). I believe everyone should be critical about who they friend on Facebook and who they associate with online anyway. The internet can be a  dangerous place if you go down certain paths and people can use it negatively, these factors are less influential when it comes to bullies as they usually have a specific audience and motive.

But, back to trolling. To me, this is a very avoidable thing. I mean look, most of us know the feeling of posting something you like, or posting even your thoughts, and getting someone making a sarcastic or condescending remark. Now, this is where minds differ and people think differently, who's fault is it that a sarcastic remark was said? and who has the responsibility? I'm not going to sit here and say the person who posts is asking for it, they're not. Everyone has the right to free speech and if you want to say something, say it and if you find yourself often coming in contact with 'trolls' then delete them, block them, let it go. We cannot always put the blame on these attention-seeking individuals.

Everyone knows, no matter where you go, what you do, how successful you are, how right you are, how much sense you think you are making, there will always be someone there to be a critic, someone there that will tell you 'no, don't say that'. Hopefully it is obvious where i'm leading with my opinion on this...

When I was around the age of 14 (yes, that young) I discovered this site on the internet www.4chan.org/b/. It was word of mouth that spread this site around, although i'm not sure about how influential this site was to others, but it certainly made an impact on me. /b/ has become more recognised in the mainstream recently but back in those days it felt like the most rebellious thing to be doing at the time. It wasn't that I liked everything posted on the site, most of it I was physically repulsed by, but the fact that these things could be posted with no consequences. 

One of the things that I took guilty pleasure in watching take place however were the mob style antics that just did the most ridiculous things. An example, so that I don't seem like a complete creep, that is clearest is when /b/ decided to start calling up starbucks cafe's asking about their newly implemented birthday cakes that they had in stock. Unfortunately for the employees of Starbucks, these cakes did not exist. However after receiving hundreds of calls across the United States requesting cakes and asking why they didn't have any in stock, some frankly hilarious recordings of the calls started popping up. Starbucks managers demanding to know where the false information about the cakes was coming from, exasperated by these seemingly clueless customers that couldn't seem to comprehend they'd gotten the wrong information. Some even believing after enough callers that somehow the head office had failed to inform that specific cafe in the chain about the fact that they would be starting to sell birthday cakes.

Although this harmless example of a "troll" showcases that a wholesomely good time can come from /b/, there are also many other examples in which clear victims reside and the actors on /b/ are clearly causing harassment. Tracking down people to their home addresses, calling their homes non-stop, causing people to cut off their home and mobile phone lines and in extreme cases move away from their homes all because of a stupid comment they made on the internet. Harassment can often go way too far without people realising it when each person only contributes slightly to it. 

Trolling is the act of deliberately infuriating others online, often for no real reason other than the supposed pleasure of getting a rise out of someone. Where and when trolling becomes “cyber-bulling” is often extremely difficult to tell, but the issue has become prominent enough to be pick up by Australia’s mainstream media and come to the attention of politicians.

The vast majority of these politicians have little idea of how to effectively combat online abuse, only seeing it as an opportunity to placate the worries of parents, creating “quick” fix solutions to the problem such as installing a “cyber-bulling commissioner” (whatever the hell that means) to police trolling. But this is just a bandage solution, it does not solve any actual problem, it just makes it look like something has been done.

Online harrasment or cyber-bullying is not the same thing as trolling. Trolling is not targeted, and is often not malicous, but simply designed to get a response and annoy people. Cyber-bullying however is very targeted, and is designed to make a particular person feel terrible.

Online harassment of women is a growing concern. There have been a number of high profile cases of cyber bullying (and worse) of professional women. Charlotte Dawson, a media personality and anti-bullying ambassador, was driven to attempting suicide in 2012 after a torrent of online abuse via Twitter that included death threats. Amanda Hess, a journalist that writes about sex and relationships (among other things) received rape and death threats from an account that was created just to torment her. Caroline Criado-Perez, another journalist, received similar threats after successfully campaigning for the Bank of England to include more women on their notes other than the Queen. Following this, Twitter changed their policy and terms of service after a public backlash, but pursued nothing tangible.

The real question should not be “how do we crack down on online conflict?” It is “should we be cracking down on online conflict?” Not all conflict is bad. Conflict is something that is necessary in the formation of ideas and in dialogues; otherwise you have an echo chamber. An echo chamber is when a community, online or otherwise, has no opposition. No one that can be critical of a communities ideas, which can lead to very skewed perspectives.

  While the online society becomes more and more apart of our daily lives so does they complications that arise with the possibilities of animosity and ability to hide behind a computer screen. The common misperception of internet trolling and instigators of online harassment, bullying and prevocational behavior is that they were born as a product of the social networking. This type of behavior has always been apart of our culture, social networks just allow platforms for greater spreadability and visibility and lesser regulations on disruptive citizens from taking part in this behavior. The user based nature of many of these networks creates a participatory public, open forums used as a platform for individual expression within a collective environment, but at the same time it fosters widespread disruptive behavior from those who misuse networks to create conflict in interactions.

  So what exactly is trolling? The term can often be hard to define and even harder to differentiate from practices of cyber bullying and harassment, often all being associated together under a big umbrella of prevocational activities.  According to the most upvoted definition on urban dictionary trolling is the art of deceiving and deliberately pissing of users, they aim to disrupt flow in conversations in a thoughtful and often malicious or humorous manor to motivate emotive responses. They thrive on the interplay and responsive dialog of users, some becoming counter trolls, who can adopt the same aberrant behavior in response. This again prompts a question should the trolls be the only ones that are punished? Or targeted? Because they portrayed hostile behavior even if counter trolls use the same type of language that is often abusive, derogatory and victimizing. It is the panics and anxieties that surround social conflict and the nature of trolling that make provocation such a dominant issue, it is not the acts act of trolling itself that creates social tensions but the effects on those being trolled outside the digital world and the dangers of participating online.

    Many trolls aim to embarrass, offend and discomfort users often for their own amusement, although some do have political motivations and more serious aims with those being trolled becoming the but of their jokes, often no one is off limits.  The best advice instigated by many online citizens is ‘Don’t feed the trolls’, basically don’t add flames to the fire or instigate response but how many people are going to do this and not protect their opinion? A whole new internet culture surrounds trolling, it is inescapable in the cyber world with sites like 4chan dedicated to this type of behavior and visual trolling through memes. Troll hunters actively seek out to report provocative contributors by reporting online content but troll behavior can become malicious and hard to control. Kaitlin Jackson hunted over 500 people to date, and has dedicated thousands of hours to eradicate disruptive and harmful behavior online but through 4chan she and her family became trolled, all their private information was published online, allowing people to target her online. Comments like ‘take this bitch down’ arised and the problem integrated into her real life, being placed on craigslist looking for a ‘quick fuck’. It is this type of behavior that has created anxiety and unrest in many online users, becoming victims of public discrimination, harassment and becoming the butt of jokes.