Why I'm Against Cyberbullying

2/1/2008.

There's a lot of reason why I'm against unfair channel bans or unfair network akills/g:lines.

Anything that falls under the category of 'cyberbullying.'

Cyberbullying is not to be confused with cybersex, but Internet-bullying.

I'm against Internet bullying. Just like I am against irl-bullying.

I was harassed a lot as a newb when I 1st started IRC at 13, and a lot of that affected me. A lot of my reasons of Internet bullying come from my on-line experiences, which on IRC, goes back to age 13.

/*

Reason 1:

My very 1st channel on IRC, I joined on a java applet at age 13. It was a place where the ops cyberbullied the newbs. The newbs ranged pre-teen and such, and the channel ops were older. And in there I would witness a lot of cyberharassment and bullying going on between the channel ops and java applet children.

Besides random channel bans, the ops also harassed the users. Like making them click on porn. I recall seeing some of the earliest kick messages others got such as "go to www.yahoo.com and type in porn." And of course, at that time, I didn't know what the word porn meant. Just rhymes with corn. Everytime I saw that word, I thought of it rhyming with corn.

And at age 13, I was harassed and exposed to some famous porn sites such as tubgirl and goatse. And would get kick messages in all capital letters of swear words.

And all those affected me at 13. Now, I was already hitting puberty at 13, so porn images couldn't have bothered me as much.

But what if I was 9?
Or 8?
Or 7?

There were more than just unfair channel bans and verbal harassment going on. These ops could mail bomb your e-mail address or attack your guestbook.

Reason 2:

And then shortly I was later exposed to more channels and more unfair channel bans due to ad hominems. And later I was involved with network IRC ops and could get into unfair akills.

For example, at age 13, I once stumbled across a 56 year-old services root-administrator's p.m. window. And that didn't go well for me. Among my 1st akill..

So a lot of these counter-arguments you guys could use are "emo" or "cry me a river." And you could use just that.

Reason 3: the more powerful 1.

In 2005, someone was really hating me for logging all channels and pms, so he got me to copy/paste something. It was something that would wipe out my entire computer. And pretty successful. I lost lots and lots of saved files. Can you imagine, that much hate?

And since I was on my Mom's computer (my own was temporarily disabled of Internet) I suffered a great loss. Stupid? Yes. This was me trusting people that I've known for some time.

Oh yeah - and as for the person who got me successfully to wipe out almost my entire harddrive, am I still mad at him? Well, he died 2 years ago. Which was a year after the incident. Kind of hard to be angry and vengeful over dead people, eh?

*/

So as an example, I am against the Webnet network (run by adults). I note that when, persay, an 11 year-old gets akilled, I see that there is no sympathy, no mitigating circumstance, no benefit of the doubt, in punishing the 11 year-old, when akilling. A system like Webnet does not differentiate between akilling children and akilling adults. And that's 1 particular reason I am still against them. You can use the "Cry me a river" all you want.

Here's among the earliest of me forming into a force against cyber-bullying.

I was having a random p.m. window chat with a girl years ago. And over the minutes, I felt something was wrong with this girl. By the way she types or the wording of her text. All that. And then I asked her her age. Her response? 8.

Now: I developed the intelligence of detecting the age of the person I talk to. And started my own mentality of helping newbs.

So suppose a 10 year-old stumbles acrosses a 40 year-old executive committee's p.m. window. And that 10 year-old was annoying! And that 40 year-old was annoyed! And suppose he knew the age of the 10 year-old.

Well over hearing a conversation of my sister, she once said that children are actually capable of saying a lot of evil things on the Internet. Because if they are in an environment away from parents or anyone that knows them in real-life, then they are capable of saying really evil things that they wouldn't in real-life. And quite frankly, I would fault the 40 year-old for not being able to put up with the 10 year-old. He could add them to ignore or something. But akilling is not the answer.

More reasons.

/*

Reason 4:

In another pokémon chat, #SPP, lesser newbs knew of this 1 IRC op that hated p.m.s. So, they could get other children to type /msg hi, where I disclosed the nick of the IRC op. And then, the user would get g:lined for doing so. This IRC op absolutely hated children. And p.m.s. Or in other words, he hated idiots, newbies, etc. So telling others to send him a p.m. such as with the word "hi" is a great way to disconnect someone you hate on that network.

And then of course, the ban would last 24 hours or so. And the child would complain of course, and wonder what he did that got him to deserve that (am I using a subjective usage of the word, deserve?).

Reason 5:

That same channel, where there are rules like "no swearing allowed" and such, (where you will get banned if you do), but of course, the ops are allowed to swear. And that quite often happens. 1 such incident (that I wasn't around), an op ban kicked a user using the f word in the kick message. Later, the father of the child private messages the op, complaining that he did not send his kid to go to the pokémon chat just so ops could use the "f" word to him. The op just pasted that private conversation to a more hidden channel where I was at and laughed at it.

*/

So unfair channel bans and akills are a subcomponent of cyberbullying (because otherwise they would be fair channel bans and akills).

Maybe if I started chatrooms at age 35 or 40, I wouldn't have cared as much, but that isn't the case. So any form of bullying, harassment (which can result in channel bans or akills), I would be against.

So while none of you may care about cyberbullying or unfair channel bans and akills and screwing people over and hates crimes and such, I do. Since a lot of what I experienced starting off as a complete newb at age 13, I found something I can live to. And relate. And so any form of on-line harassment, hate crimes, and scenarios to screw people over, I am against.

And I'm not talking about where you say 83.33% caps and get banned for triggering a script that violated a caps rule (because that's a fair channel ban, not unfair). But hate crimes.