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Examples of Cyber-Bullying Depravity

A good example comes from a post on Bullying UK about a family who were sent abusive messages on the internet AFTER their teenage son, 15-year-old Tom Mullaney, committed bullycide (http://www.bullying.co.uk/index.php/blog/uk-news/facebook-abuse-after-boys-tragic-death.html). It says that after a page on Facebook was setup for people to pay tribute and offer words of support for the boy’s family and friends it ended up being targeted with unpleasant and abusive messages.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident — a family in western Canada has faced the exact same type of bullying. After one of their adult sons went missing, ended up being held captive, and tortured for several weeks, the family was inundated with people offering support. In response the family setup a Facebook page where people could post their well-wishes, but since then cyber-bullies, proclaiming to be vigilantes, have harassed the family endlessly, even going so far as to give out the family’s address and phone number with the intention of having people in the area take real world action against them offline … and they were successful — the mother and her mentally disabled son who lives with her have both been verbally assaulted when they’ve gone out in public … and people have even gone so far as to go to her home and verbally threaten them. The police have been unable to do anything because these are all ‘isolated, one-time incidents’ by different people each time. Today, on top of dealing with the horrifying tragedy of what happened to their eldest son, the family now lives in fear with no possible recourse.

It is unpleasant to say, but this is what the electronic age has come to — people can now let out all their anger and hate towards others, or promote their conceitedness and arrogance over anyone they choose, simply using the anonymity of the internet … and if they actually hurt anyone in doing so they will still remain completely consequence free because government and law enforcement are unwilling or unable to take action against these criminals!

Our Degenerating Humanity

In the meantime there is an ever increasing trend towards people joining a growing gang-like mindset of vigilantism as the only true means of getting justice. The name which has been taken by people using internet anonymity in these kinds of ways is ‘Anonymous’ and, in the Wikipedia article about the group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29), they are considered to be an internet culture originally based on the concept of creating false online identities (i.e. fake profiles on facebook, youtube, myspace, yahoo, google, etc.) with the intention to use them for creating general mischief.

Over time more and more people began to utilize the anonymity of the world wide web to start whistle-blowing and ousting unscrupulous and dishonest organizations, government agencies, and politicians. Today, however, Anonymous (Anonymiss being the female counterpart) has deteriorated to mostly being used by self-serving individuals with only malicious intentions towards anyone in the public eye — such as the grieving family of Tom Mullaney.

With the issue of limited resources and disagreements about ‘who’s jurisdiction it is’ constantly hampering law enforcement agencies from being able to effectively deal with online criminals, most police organizations have put the bulk of their attention on major cyber-crimes such as identity theft, e-mail fraud, child exploitation, and human trafficking. For this reason police will often defer problems of cyber-bullying to private law practices — simply advising people to file lawsuits on behalf of the injured party.

This is the point where most people give up because, unless you’re a wealthy model such as Liskula Cohen who can sue Google (http://www.canada.com/news/Canadian+model+wins+suit+against+Google/1909987/story.html) then you have no recourse against your attackers. It is for this reason that cyber-bullies remain, and will continue to remain, above the law and free from consequences for their role in events such as the the bullycide of Tom Mullaney.

Other Links for Reference:

News article about Tom Mullaney’s suicide: http://theoriginalgreenwichdiva.com/tom-mullaney-commits-suicide-over-bullying/9442/

News article about Tom Mullaney’s suicide: http://www.birminghammail.net/news/birmingham-news/2010/05/22/facebook-tributes-pour-in-for-dead-schoolboy-tom-mullaney-97319-26497414/

News article about Mullaney’s family being bullied after his suicide: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/827866-web-bullies-attack-victim-after-death

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Related posts:

1. Hard Limit of Verbal Self Defense
2. When Internet Vigilantes Become Cyber-Bullies
3. External Bullies Create Internal Bullying

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The increasing separation of people through lack of human contact (i.e. only communicating through the internet, text messaging, etc.) makes our ability to understand and relate to how our words and action can possibly hurt others more difficult. It’s natural for all of us to only see things through our own perceptions; we understand the intended messages of what people say and do based on our own experiences and the mood we’re in at that time — like when we read an email while adding our own intonations to the words and sentences.

For an example …

A friend of mine had this exact experience last year which caused an argument between her and her sister. My friend received an email with a question in it and she simply responded with the answer … but she also included a suggestion for an alternative approach to the problem. Her sister obviously read the email wrong because the reply my friend got back had some extremely harsh comments in it.

In an effort to clear up the misunderstanding my friend wrote an email back trying to explain that her intention wasn’t to upset anyone and was just trying to help (because she cared); however, the sister would have none of it — my friend’s sister perceived the second message as even more challenging (most likely because that was what she expected to hear — check out the article Led Zeppelin explains NLP frames… for more info on that idea). So, of course, the answer came back as very abusive toward my friend, and at which point she acknowledged that it was not entirely her fault for this accidental miscommunication, apologized to her sister for not being able to explain it in a way that worked better for everyone involved, and simply refused to continue the discussion. This was the only option that could work at diffusing the situation because ANYTHING my friend could say would simply have been twisted by her sister’s internal filters of that moment in time (her beliefs and expectations based on the situation at hand) and would only result in fueling the argument more.

Originally, miscommunications used to be less likely to happen when we, as humans, interacted face to face. In olden days there weren’t things like cellphones and email so you could get more information from a person’s non-verbal communication such as tone of voice and facial expression. In fact, studies in NLP have shown that, on average, 93% of our communication is all based on non-verbal components — only about 7% of the message we send will be interpreted based upon the actual words we choose. As the world became smaller and people found themselves separated from friends and family by greater distances for longer periods of time — it’s become so easy to simply jump on a plane and travel anywhere in the world that it’s possible for people to move almost anywhere and stay ‘close’ with the ones they care about (especially with online communication being instantaneous).

As times progressed, with more and more communication being done with written word, it became necessary for us to find ways of overcoming the ever-increasing number of misunderstands. Thus, emoticons appeared and quickly became a mainstream component of emails and online interaction. Emoticons were developed out of a necessity to let people know what feeling the sender of a message is trying to attach to it. The interesting thing to note is that, at first, it took time for the general non-tech-savvy population to learn what these extra characters at the end of messages were. In the end, it wasn’t until the majority of people could interpret and understand emoticons that they truly began to work they way their were meant to.

Along the lines of that same concept, most people would find it much more useful to try and communicate with others in the way that works best for their receiver — use the filters and the mental map (their understanding of the world) of the person you’re sending the message to in order to design and send the message you want to get across. Communicating this way will help the people you interact with to easily and effortlessly understand you and the intentions you have behind the messages you send.

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Comments that are intended to undermine your character and ruin other people’s opinion of you will be made up of parts that are fact and parts that are simply statements of emotion. As an example, being called a ‘jerk’ or a ‘mean person’ is an emotionally charged accusation with no base foundation. Alternatively, having someone say that ‘you have a bad attitude that is upsetting customers’ is a more direct accusation which requires further exploration — specifically, things like:

• How exactly does the accuser know that customers are being upset?
• What specifically about your attitude/behavior is causing customers to feel upset?
• In what way are the customers being upset?
• When did these alleged incidents of customers getting upset happen?
• etc.

Now, truly verbally abusive people will often incorporate both fact and emotion in the same accusation as a way to misdirect the focus away from the actual issue. So, in a more complex situation such as someone commenting that ‘your stupid ideas are costing the company money’ a strong verbal defender will avoid being caught up by the term ‘stupid’ and just focus on getting clear about ‘what ideas,’ ‘how they know these are your ideas,’ and ‘how it’s been determined that they are costing the company money.’

The main difference between accusations and innuendo is that accusations refer to identified short comings of the accused … and innuendo is merely implied short-comings that are never directly said. For example, a direct accusation is a person saying that ‘you don’t do your share of the work’ whereas someone could phrase the same thing as innuendo by making the comment that ‘the things you’re responsible for never seem to get done.’ In the first case it’s a direct statement that you don’t do your work, but in the second statement it’s simply implied that you don’t do your work. In any situation where an attacker uses innuendo as a way to undermine your character, authority, etc. verbal self defense focuses on the same basic goal — as a verbal defender you must confront the implications directly with the intention of having them be clarified in as much detail as possible.

The next major step in dealing with these kinds of attacks/attackers is to go beyond the accusations themselves — it must be a verbal defender’s intention to also call out his/her accusers, not just their accusations. You must deal with the negative effect of the accusations as well as the underlying intentions of the accuser because, if you do not address those hidden intentions on the part of the accuser that same person will simply continue undermining your personal character and/or authority. Only by bringing their hidden agenda out into the open will it discredit any further effort on the attacker’s part to make unfavorable implications about you or your actions; otherwise, they will simply continue on much like a spoiled brat constantly throwing a tantrum in their vain, ongoing attempt to have things their way.

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Related posts:

1. Dealing with Emotionally Distressed Bullies
2. Hard Limit of Verbal Self Defense
3. How to Avoid Being Tripped Up by Feelings of Guilt

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One unexpected benefit of this general drive toward organizational transparency has, in the last few decades, brought about discoveries of dishonest and underhanded actions on the part of officials in all levels of public and private office. The downside of these new insights is an overall sense of distrust and fear among the average people in our communities.

USEFUL VIGILANTISM

Now, when this natural sense of curiosity is combined with our need for fairness and equality the outcome can be both gainful and disastrous. In the case of our political, legal, union, government, and organizational systems the result has been overwhelmingly positive with greater accountability on the part of people in positions of power. As well, it has allowed for more and more input from the public at large in how things are done and where our society, both nationally and internationally, is headed. Positive results due to internet vigilantes include:

• YouTube Cat Abuse Incident

  A video of a young male physically abusing a cat was posted on YouTube. After 30,000 views, YouTube removed the video and blocked the hosting account. Anonymous members investigated, identifying the individual as Kenny Glenn of Lawton, Oklahoma and reported him to local law enforcement. Two minors were arrested on charges of cruelty to animals.

• Cyclist Abuser Incident

  In 2008, video of Patrick Pogan, a rookie police officer, body-slamming Christopher Long, a free-spirited cyclist, surfaced on the Internet. The altercation happened when members of Critical Mass conducted a bicycling advocacy event at Times Square. The officer claimed the cyclist had veered into him, and so the biker was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The video went viral on the internet and after being viewed for over 2 million times. The charges against the cyclist were later dropped and Pogan was found to be guilty and was convicted for lying about confrontation with cyclist.

HARMFUL VIGILANTISM

On the flip-side there has also been an ever increasing sense of injustice on the part of individuals. To quote an old saying, ‘You can please some of the people most of the time, but you’ll never please everyone all of the time.’ — and, in this regard, that saying is truer than ever. Where there was a time when a consensus was needed for any type of action to be taken people have become more self-focused in their beliefs and values, resulting in a deeper feeling of ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ in some people. If this need to be ‘right’ is transferred onto situations of injustice or inequality people begin to feel a strong desire for vengeance or ‘payback’ in order to balance things out — to quote another old saying, ‘What goes around comes around’ … the problem being that people who feel they’re right want to be the person to enforce the ‘comes around’ part.

In the past it took an effort on the part of many people to organize and protest and take action to make changes and influence people in power. As the world has grown smaller and smaller with the advancement of new communication technologies, the number of people, the time required and the target of such protest and action have gotten smaller as well. Today, this modern vigilante mentality has moved to the internet in many different forms of cyber-bullying. Some notable examples from the Wikipedia article on Internet Vigilantism include:

• Dog Shit Girl

  In 2005 in South Korea, bloggers targeted a woman who refused to clean up when her dog defecated on the floor of a Seoul subway car, labeling her “dog shit girl” (rough translation into English). Another commuter had taken a photograph of the woman and her dog, and posted it on a popular Korean website. Within days, she had been identified by internet vigilantes, and much of her personal information was exposed on the World Wide Web in an attempt to punish her for the offense. The story received mainstream attention when it was widely reported in South Korean media, and was discussed in Korean communities in the United States as well. The public humiliation led the woman to quit her university, according to reports.

  The reaction by Korean citizens to the incident prompted several Korean newspapers to run editorials voicing concern over Internet vigilantism. One paper quoted Daniel Solove as saying that the woman was the victim of a “cyber-posse, tracking down norm violators and branding them with digital Scarlet Letters.” Another called it an “Internet witch-hunt,” and went on to say that “the Internet is turning the whole society into a kangaroo court.”

• Zhang Ya & Sichuan Earthquake

  In 2008, a girl called Zhang Ya (sp?) from Liaoning province, Northeast China, posted a 4 minute video of herself complaining about the amount of attention the Sichuan earthquake victims were receiving on television. An intense response from Internet vigilantes resulted in the girl’s personal details (even including her blood type) being made available online, as well as dozens of abusive video responses on Chinese websites and blogs. The girl was taken into police custody for three days as protection from vigilante death threats.

• Stephen Fowler and Wife Swap

  Stephen Fowler, an English expatriate and venture capitalist businessman, gained notoriety after his performance on ABC’s Wife Swap (originally aired Friday January 30, 2009) when his wife exchanged positions in his family with a woman from Missouri for a two-week period. In response to her rule changes (standard procedure for the second week in the show) he insulted his guest and, in doing so, groups including the lower classes, soldiers, and the overweight. Several websites were made in protest against his behaviour, such as StephenFowlerSucks.com. After the show, and after watching the Wife Swap video, his wife, a professional life coach, reported that she had encouraged him to attend professional behaviour counselling. Businesses with only tangential connection to Fowler publicly disclaimed any association with him due to the negative publicity. He resigned positions on the boards of two environmental charities to avoid attracting negative press.

• Vigilante Group Torments Mother

  In 2009, a Facebook group was started, accusing a single mother for the death of a 13 month old child in her foster care. It was the Mother’s, then-common-law husband who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the mother was not accused of any wrongdoing. It’s important to note that none of the vigilantes were held accountable for the consequences of any damages caused by the original accusations made against the innocent woman.

VIGILANTE DANGERS

Although a person’s heart is often in the right place the thing people should keep in mind is that no one ever fully knows all the information on a situation. This is the reason why there are procedures and protocols for investigators in law enforcement, government agencies, and organizations — to ensure there is a full and clear understanding of all the facts BEFORE any action is taken against a person or group.

Individual vigilantes who work within the system to initiate and encourage proper investigations by qualified people can definitely make a positive difference in our world … however, individual bullies and cyber-bullies who seek only to advance their own self-proclaimed heroism by enforcing their own twisted form of justice will only do more harm than good — creating a society where it is an accepted common practice to take action specifically designed to hurt others (even with the best of intentions) will only increase the feelings of anger, hate, resentment, and distrust which are already too prevalent in our world.

The final outcome to these kinds of attacks (especially from sources which aren’t held accountable for unfounded or unethical accusations — i.e. anonymous cyber-bullies) is being identified more and more often as the cause for bullycide in our communities. To better understand how cyber vigilantes incite people to commit bullycide you can check out the article recently published on www.DrDanSays.com ‘Why did daddy kill himself?‘

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Related posts:

1. Cyber-Bullies are Above the Law
2. Hard Limit of Verbal Self Defense
3. External Bullies Create Internal Bullying

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The point at which this is accomplished is the moment the target of the bully begins to second-guess the way they handled the interaction. The most well known example people recognize are those times when you have sat around thinking back on an event wishing you could go back and change how you acted or what you said to the other person. It’s during this process of re-experiencing the negative feelings generated during the original incident that one’s inner bully is created and made stronger.

The more you allow your unconscious mind to re-live a bad experience the more you’re allowing your mind and feelings to emotionally bully you into feeling bad about yourself and your abilities to handle life. The truth is that the higher purpose of your unconscious mind doing this behavior is to help you learn from it and deal with the unpleasant feelings so you can let them go. This unconscious healing process, however, is not always successful because the act of re-experiencing something over and over — although occasionally beneficial — does not in any way address the problem of not having the proper skills to deal with the situation in the first place.

Only by avoiding this negative thought cycle can you stay out of the ongoing, negative emotional feedback and be able to overcome your inner bully. Taking the time to logically pull apart the facts of an experience and identify what you could do differently next time will you help your unconscious mind come to the conclusion that re-living the experience has served its purpose, and consequently be able to leave those bad feelings behind.

Alternatively, it’s possible that there is no identifiable lesson or learning to get from an experience of bullying — occasionally there is nothing you could have done or do differently next time … you did everything you could, the best you were able to based upon everything you know and have learned. In these cases the only thing to do is realize that you did your best and give yourself the praise necessary to help overcome and put an end to the negative thought cycle of inner bullying.

Whatever the case may be, the fact is that bullies in our external world are one of the truest sources of inner bullying which people live with on a daily basis. Negative self talk, bad feelings, and low self-esteem can easily start and end with bullying in one form or another — the important thing is to develop the strength and defense mechanisms to deal with inner bulling because there will always be people who say and do things (whether they mean to be bullies or not) that leave you feeling bad … the trick is to not let them influence how you see or speak to yourself and who you are and what you can do in this world.

As a side note, people in the field of NLP have noted that it can be very helpful to change the inner voice of bullying to one of more comical origin … like the voice of a cartoon character such Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse — as an example, any time your inner bully starts to negatively comment on your how you handle verbal conflict try changing that inner voice to the voice of Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants and see how it affects the validity of those arguments.

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Related posts:

1. Dealing with Emotionally Distressed Bullies
2. Acceptable vs. Unacceptable Bullying
3. Avoid Escalating Workplace Bullying – 2 Qualities of a Good Verbal Defender

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Verbal self defense is something that can really help against bullying and domestic abuse, both mental and emotional, so I’m trying to get the word out but I need people to know how valuable this tool can be — we need to get people to review this book on Amazon! So…

Every person who reviews my new book, Verbal Self Defense in The Workplace, on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.ca will get a free copy of our 6-Step Verbal Self Defense eWorkbook!

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The fact is that there are a lot of people who will agree that their friends are more like ‘family’ than their actual family is — in verbal self defense we put it this way:

If you wouldn’t allow someone on the street to treat you in a certain way, then why would it be okay for your own family members to treat you in that same manner?

Being Tripped Up by Guilt

One of the most common form of bullying among family members is ‘guilt tripping’ — intentionally causing someone to experience feelings of guilt in order to get them to comply with your wishes. The act of making another person feel guilty is easily accomplished by putting that individual’s personal identity in question. One way to do that is to use voice tone to imply that the other person’s decision to do, or not do, what you want makes them a bad person (ie. uncaring, selfish, spoiled, mean, etc.).

In order to verbally defend yourself from such attacks requires two main things; 1) enough self-worth to acknowledge that there are times when your own beliefs, values, and needs deserve more attention than the attacker’s. 2) the confidence to say that implying someone (ex. you)  is a bad person [that you don't care, that you don't love them, that you are doing this out of spite, etc.] in order to convince them to think or do things differently is not the kind of communication you want to use in building your relationship.

How to Stop Guilt Tripping

When you confront a person who guilt trips you it is very important to be specific about identifying what the person is doing or saying that is creating the feelings of guilt — is it their tone of voice, the look on their face, a certain phrase or comment, etc.? When you know what it is about the person’s communication that is making any implication regarding how you are being personally irresponsible towards them (ex. intentionally causing them pain by not agreeing to their request) you can then use the techniques of verbal self defense against that exact bullying behavior.

In the case where you’re not comfortable addressing the issue in the moment, you only need to remember the details of the conversation in which the other person laid a guilt trip on you. You can then go back at a different time and place where you and the person are in a better, or more private, place and you can speak without any blame or emotion getting in the way.

At that point in time, simply present your concerns as facts about how you feel and what you’re hoping the other person will be open to changing… or at least being aware of how their way of communicating is being perceived by you. Stay focused on only dealing with the exact component of their communication that is of concern — stay away from talking about the content!

The goal is to get them to ask for what they want or explain their thoughts in a healthier way that leads to a better and more open relationship. Remember that this is all about ‘family’ and building those deeper ties that bind … free from negative feelings like fear, obligation, and guilt.

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1. Avoid Escalating Workplace Bullying – 2 Qualities of a Good Verbal Defender
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The interview questions Dr. Scott addresses in these videos are:

• Tell us about your book … what makes your book different from other books in the same genre?
• Who should read your book?
• Why did you write your book?
• What are the 3 key messages your book helps people understand?
• With hindsight, what one thing do you wish you knew when you started out writing your book?
• What was the most challenging part in going from book idea to getting published?
• Who helped you along the way?
• What’s the best thing about being a published author?
• What’s next for you? Other books?
• Is there anything else you want to tell people?

As a preview, here is the first video in the series …

If you’d like to watch all 10 videos you can …

CLICK HERE to check out our
‘Get to Know the Author’ page now!

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In the modern age one of the greatest benefits of the internet is anonymity; however, it is also one of the internet’s greatest short-comings. In a time where big business and government must be held accountable, a degree of anonymity allows whistle-blowers to inform the public of inappropriate decisions on the part of the people in charge of our country and our economy. This same anonymity also offers people who have more sinister intentions a greater amount of freedom to harass, bully and discredit people without the risk of any consequences for their actions.

This exact scenario has recently happened to several people I know (including myself) and there is absolutely no recourse on the part of the victim(s). It would seem that, as an expert in the art of Verbal Self Defense, I should have some kind of means for dealing with something as simple as attacks to one’s character, but the problem is the lack of an opponent towards which I can fight back. Anyone who has access to a local internet coffee shop can create a fake (and untraceable) email or social network account under a false identity, and then they can use those accounts to begin spreading malicious libel on website forums, personal blogs and social networking sites. In real life a person who slanders your good name can be held accountable in a court of law for any damages they may cause you, but on the internet anonymity means there is no accountability at all. Huge companies such as Microsoft/Hotmail, Google, and Yahoo are able to protect these cyber-bullies from prosecution by helping them to hide their identity … and simply because no one has the wealth necessary to fight such large corporations there is no recourse for the average person even if they attempt to use techniques of verbal self defense.

You see, the main concept behind any effective strategy for verbal self defense relies on the persuasive power behind the potential consequences for the bully if they do NOT change their abusive behaviors. For this reason, verbal self defense has no power against anonymous internet attackers because there is no chance for any type of consequence to the things these cyber-terrorists say (online or in private messages), insinuate, or even directions they give for people to attack a person or their family.

This is currently a growing trend behind cyber-bullying and one of the major causes behind ever increasing statistics on bullycide (bullying induced suicide). However, until large internet businesses such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and others are made to be held accountable for their choice to protect the identity of cyber-terrorists you can expect to see this problem continuing to become worse and worse. At this point in time the only way targets of internet bullying will ever be able to make the changes necessary to stop these kinds of personal attacks is if we band together as a group and start more class-action lawsuits against the industry leaders who are allowing the victimization of innocent people by mean-hearted individuals using their internet servers and websites.

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There are certain contexts that will have behaviors which, in a completely different setting, would be considered inappropriate or in some cases even illegal, but in those places/situations are thought to be normal. A good example is bars and pubs — anywhere else people wouldn’t allow the rampant amount of sexual harassment that is common place in the liquor industry. In an office environment using vulgar language will usually end in some kind of reprimand from your supervisor, but in a bar it’s totally acceptable.

In the same way, just like behaviors are identified as acceptable or unacceptable by the context, bullying behaviors are not always true forms of bullying. Any bullying type of behavior that does not leave a person feeling bad are actually not a form of workplace bullying. One common example of this is certain types of playful humor — practical jokes which are found to be funny by everyone involved can easily become a form of workplace bullying if even one person considers the experience hurtful.

Have you ever experienced a situation where you did something or said something that, although you thought it would be funny, the other person didn’t understand or misunderstood your intentions in a negative way? Maybe it was the context you were in or maybe it was the wrong time or just the wrong kind of person to share that particular type of humor.

The key however is to remember that it’s not the bully’s responsibility to assure the other person is unhurt by their words or actions — in fact, it only becomes bullying at the point when the target informs the person that what they’re doing is a problem. After that point it should include input from both sides to find a solution.

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Related posts:

1. Passive-Aggressive Teasing: A Gateway to Verbal Abuse
2. External Bullies Create Internal Bullying
3. Avoid Escalating Workplace Bullying – 2 Qualities of a Good Verbal Defender