Cyber Bullying: A Virtual Menace

By Tejaswi Agarwal

Key Primers
Bullying has been defined as a behaviour that is intentional, harmful, repetitive, and reflects anabuse of power. In today's hyper-connected world via social media, bullying has taken a gigantic form whereby the perpetrators utilise the technological means to harass, denigrate and stalk people. In order to put it in words of Ben, Cyber Bullying involves the use of information and communication technologies such as e-mail, cell phone and pager text messages, instant messaging, defamatory personal Web sites, and defamatory online personal polling Web sites, to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group that is intended to harm others.

Contemporary Situation
In today's socially connected world, accessing information has become the easiest tasks. The evil elements of the society never leave a chance to defame anyone. In the current scenario, cyber bullying has taken various forms. The defaulters send angry confrontational messages, often using explicit and vulgar language, referred to as flaming this often results in hypothetical situations leading to havoc in the society. Approximately 32% of all teens who use the Internet regularly have reported being victims of cyber bullying, according to a 2007 poll by project. The exodus of the North-Eastern residents of India was one such act of Cyber Bullying which tore apart the well fabricated sheet of harmony. All sorts of chat rooms are one of the prime locations of virtual harassment which results in hazardous consequences. Recent instances of Meier, Ryan, Tyler Clementi reflects the serious consequences of the matter concerned. 

Global Efforts
Bullying, an initiative of The Alanah and Madeline Foundation conducts National Coalition Against Bullying Conferences every year which hold testimony to the fact that people are uniting against the menace of bullying. Numerous reports by NCAB elaborates on the emerging issues of Cyber Bullying. Evelyn M. Field, psychologist, writer and a Board Member of NCAB authored book," Bully" targets the uncovered issues of bullying in real as well as the virtual world. There are all sorts of help available on the internet which will guide one to avoid being bullied online. bullying.org, cyberbullying.ca are such efforts in the right direction.

Legislation Against Cyber Bullying
As far as India is concerned; there is no law that directly regulates cyber bullying. The Information Technology Act of 2000 (IT Act) are a set of laws to regulate the cyberspace but hardly do they focus on interpersonal criminal behaviour such as cyber stalking to the fullest.

In United States of America, Megan Meier Cyber Bullying Prevention Act was brought before the House of Representatives to prevent further events which happened with Megan Meier. Every State's legislation refers to the cyber crime laws with utmost seriousness. 

Word of Caution

• Keep your internet connection password protected. 
• Do not provide personal information like credit/debit card details to anyone on chat. 
• Don't open a message from someone you don't know on Facebook, Orkut or Google+. 
• Read the terms and conditions properly before providing personal details on any website. One needs to make sure that your personal information is utilised wisely and for appropriate purposes. 

Public View
Saurabh Jha, a prolific blogger feels that any form of bullying is no good to the society as it deeply hurts a person psychologically. There is a dire need for new legislations in India which bring about a change and also a fear among the perpetrators.

"Cyber Bullying has created a fear among the common people who use internet for their daily purposes. The social networking websites such as Facebook, Orkut have become a direct medium to bully innocent people. The current situation calls for an urgent mechanism in these websites to filter content which aims at hampering the social harmony "- says Ravi, a third year B Tech student at VIT.

original article found here

DEALING WITH YOUR OUTRAGE - WHEN YOU FIND OUT YOU'VE BEEN USED

When a narcissistic type (most cyberpaths & predators are NARCISSISTIC and/ or SOCIOPATHIC) launches one of his surprise attacks, a normal person's first reaction is to assume it's a misunderstanding and try to resolve it. That's her first mistake. She does this because she assumes she is dealing with a normal human being, who must have felt offended by something.

But a narcissist evades and discourages your attempts to find out why he's mad.

Typically he does this with a reply that is a reply to something other than what you said. So, to an observer who entered at your question it would seem that you are like two actors saying lines from the scripts of different plays. In fact, that is essentially what's happening. Remember, the narcissist has the personality of a little child, who does not distinguish between reality and fantasy. So, his off-the-wall reply IS a line from a script, the fiction about this incident that he is imagining.

This is how the verbal exchange typically plays out. You ask why he's mad. He has no answer that he dares acknowledge, so the question is a threat to his delusions. At all costs, he must protect them. So, he annihilates your question by acting as though you never asked it. You get a comeback that replies to something other than what you said.

That's his way of crossing out your words and revising them. Typically his non-answer hurls an incitatory insult, hurtful flippant comment or wild accusation. It's bait to draw you off the scent.

His favorite wild accusation is that YOU are always hurling wild accusations at him. Before you know it, this living, breathing Projection Machine is acting out a fictitious script in which YOU are the one who got mad, YOU are the one "flying into one of your rages" over nothing.

And he is doing his best to make it so. He is trying to outrage you. Moreover, outraging you will really make him feel grand about how mightily he vaunted himself on you.

Victims typically report that the narcissist twists everything so fast and furiously that it makes their heads spin.

Sanity will get no further with him on these points than it did on the first point. For, he ain't all there. He's off in his own little world, simultaneously writing the play and acting out the part of the hero in it.

If you contradict these lies (by telling the truth), he will do whatever is necessary to cram them down your throat. (sounds like Beckstead, Thomas & Dunetz/ YidwithLid, Gash, Jacoby, Hicks)

Like a three-year-old, volume is his weapon of choice: He will scream to yell you down and silence you. Or post lies & smear about you all over the web. If that doesn't work, he'll probably get physical. (if he stalks you he will find a way to make it look like YOU are the stalker! Including reporting YOU to the police)

Also, narcissists relentlessly block communication by yanking a conversation bewilderingly off track every which way at once. They say it's "not a good idea" that you two talk. Maybe their girlfriend, wife or boss (or THERAPIST!) doesn't want you talking anymore to each other. Convenient way to duck out of the truth and a real apology.

They LOVE when THEY'VE involved you in infidelity - they BLAME you for the whole thing, say you "KNEW WHAT YOU WERE GETTING INTO" or "IT WAS JUST A GAME AND SHE KNEW IT" and then say their counselor, pastor, rabbi, priest says that "you have to stop speaking to her." Makes it really easy for them, don't it?

So, rarely can you say afterwards what a rage or an argument was even about. Usually it's some vague rendition of you just being the way you are. And the narcissist says he doesn't have to put up with that. Its HIS story - or it's NO STORY!!

You can't even just try to smooth it over with some form of appeasement. You try to take down postings about them, say you're sorry too, offer to talk - but NOOOOOOO! That's about as effective as it was with Adolf Hitler. His eyes light up at that — vroom! — he just shifts into high gear and runs you over. In other words, he just gets madder.

Because you gave an inch, he takes a mile.

He acts like he's the one who is outraged, but that's part of the farce produced by his Magical Thinking Machine. You are the one subjected to outrage.

This is a willful and wanton outrage. Their aim is to outrage you, to break you down into burning outraged tears. That's victory for the bully.

The reason all this outrages you is because it is an outrage. Especially in trying to cram his lies about you down your throat. That's extreme perversity — making someone bend over for it.

And, if you have any respect for Truth, his willful and wanton contempt for it is another outrage.
So, don't let anybody send you on a guilt trip over this. First, you did nothing to provoke it except get caught in his cross hairs.

Second, don't let any airhead who just mouths whatever nonsense blows in the wind today tell you that you shouldn't be angry or to "just let it go."

It is absurd to regard feelings as wrong or sinful. If a person gets burnt, there's something wrong with him if he doesn't feel burnt. Feelings are not a matter of choice, an act of the will. We can lie about them. We can deny/repress them. But we can't change them.

Know your anger. Because it's dangerous to repress it. Doing so just banishes it to the subconscious where it still motivates your behavior like an unseen puppet master.

Know your anger, so you can deal with it appropriately and temper it with reason and good judgment.

original article here

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He sees himself as right, the victim, or the only one that knows anything at all. He sees you as the re-victimizer of him, wonderful and yet horrible, needed and yet hated, smart yet dependent on him, in need of his brilliance, faulty without him, as pathological as he is... and the list goes on.

Pathology is the inability to change and sustain change, grow in any meaningful way, or develop insight about how one's behavior effects other. If he can't change he projects his inability on you and makes it YOUR fault or YOUR inability to change that is the problem in the relationship. He acts as if he should not be asked to change or he has changed when he hasn't. He makes you 'think' that you asked for something huge and wrong for him to change OR that what needs changing is only you and nothing in him.

If he can't grow in any meaningful way, he projects his non-growth onto the relationship and suggests it's the relationship stagnation you are really experiencing. If you could only GROW to accept him in all his pathology, then the relationship would thrive. If he can't develop insight about how his behavior effects others, he projects his undeveloped insight on you and says these are your traits. And you simply don't understand 'what you are doing to him.' All his anger is yours, all his deviancy is yours, you are just as sick as he is which is why you are a great match, all his lying is yours, all his manipulations are yours.

That's because in pathology they are MASTER PROJECTORS. It is in fact, one of the 'symptoms' of pathology. They take all their pathological attributes and say they are YOURS.

The Master Projection he uses causes similar symptoms as people who have been held captive, thrust into cults, or held prisoner in other people's belief systems. These are intensely programmed beliefs that are not 'removed' simply because you break up.

Police Dispatcher Charged After Harassing Online

(U.S.A.) A South Texas police dispatcher is in trouble with the law after she posted photos of her husband and a female police officer on her Facebook page.

Brownsville dispatcher Laura De Leon is free on her own recognizance after she was charged with single counts of online harassment and phone harassment. Both are misdemeanors. She's also on administrative leave from her job with the Brownsville Police Department.

De Leon told The Brownsville Herald that she posted the suggestive photos and text messages exchanged between the woman and her husband, both of whom are Brownsville police officers.

She also admitted to calling the other woman and leaving a voice mail message on her phone. She said she did this because she was upset and later took down her Facebook postings.

original article found here