If Any of You Have a Twitter

Post the tweets for us.

Righteo Ivan. Where to begin. I don't often talk about this.

In school, I faced really severe problems. Between year 7 and year 10, at the end of which I moved school, I was systematically destroyed as a human being. Physical abuse was very common, a couple of times on a good week, several fights on a bad one but the mental stuff was the worst. People found ways to get under your skin and make you look irrational you know? I remember being promised several times by the headmaster that things would change, and of course they never did. The Laissez Faire attitude of the school caused me no end of problems. I eventually started by passing the school and straight up calling the police when I was being chased home, thrown over walls and so forth.

But the event that still stings the most was my second to last day at that school. I was playing rugby in PE and someone threw the ball at me. For some reason everybody decided, both teams, to jump on me AFTER I'd passed the ball away and kick, punch and scratch me. You're talking maybe fifteen guys who had a go at me. Being a kid, I couldn't really handle that. But you know what made it worse? When it was over, and naturally the teacher doing nothing, they started clapping. Not applause, rhythmic. It felt like a blooming drumbeat. It was astonishing. Like something out of Lord of the Flies. I basically walked away from the field to wait outside the changing rooms, expecting the PE teacher to see if I was okay, he never did. Then at the end of the lesson they came back and started doing the same thing after trapping me in the corridor.

And you know, all I could think is how much I wanted to switch it off, to just turn away and be able to escape for just a few minutes.

And then I look at the idiots who allow this kind of thing to happen to them online, when it's only a couple of clicks away from being stopped. And when I compare it to the efforts I took, the desperation I had, in trying to get some kind of respite from what was going on. I'd LOVE for what happened to me to be replaced by online attacks.

Don't accuse me of not knowing.

I've never accused you of not knowing mate and my heart genuinely goes out to you for what you went through. I can't imagine how harrowing an experience that must have been for you.

However, at the same time I don't agree with you for cheapening what these people are going through. Ok it might not be the same as you went through (and what you went through was on the extreme side) but each individual handles things differently. In this age of social media importance it can be very difficult for kids to escape the tormentors at home.

Obviously it pales into comparison with what you went through but nonetheless to those individuals it's very real and very disturbing and I don't think you should simply dismiss it because of what you went through.

There are very effective tools for stopping online harassment, unless you've attracted the attention of anon or /b/ and it's really easy to stop. Take the girl from this thread, she's already protected her tweets as she was finding the attention her big gob was attracting was undesirable. Fair enough, that's the right thing to do.

I couldn't stop what was happening to me. I really tried, many times over. And that's why I generally have no time for people who cry "online bullying".

Wow! Sorry Giroulski for what you had to go through! No one deserves to be treated like that at a fragile age.

On the other hand, online bullying is enough to send people over the edge and cannot be underestimated.

Giroulski

I think we should probably leave this discussion where it is. Obviously it's an emotive subject and possibly not what the site was intended for!

I take on board what you've said.

It's okay Wumpatrol

When I finally left I went to a wonderful school some fifteen miles away with people who I'd give the world to, if I could, cause they gave me a chance. I never had any real bullying problems again in my life and since then I've regained my trust in people and have friends I cherish deeply. I didn't exactly bounce back, but I fought for a life. If I was to compare it to football I'd point to Ramsey's recovery. I got there, slowly.

I shouldn't use this forum to post my life story, that was slightly daft of me. But it was kind of necessary to explain why online bullying is a bit wet to me.

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Cheers Wumpatrol. It's funny. A lot of the people went to college with my little sister (I went to a college a bit further away, to avoid them) and kept approaching her to apologise. I think it was more the atmosphere of the place that made them do it. Look up the Zimbardo prison study. Studying Pyschology at A Level was worth it just to understand what happened in that school.