photo: buttha/ BY-NC-SA

Cyber bullying is often something that is overlooked. It is the act of verbally abusing someone through comments, blogs, or messages on the internet. Admittedly, much of the time, simple teasing on Facebook or other social messaging websites is not a big deal. It’s something that I do all the time, but there is definitely a range of cyber bullying. It’s one thing to tease a friend, but a completely different thing to post racial insults on somebody’s blog. Many of the comments on the web fall into the latter category. In fact, if you ever want to feel depressed over humanity, go to any YouTube video and I guarantee that you will find at least one nasty comment. What these “web terrorists” as I like to call them don’t realize is that just because you have a keyboard and a computer doesn’t mean you can say whatever you like. As a rule of thumb, if you don’t have the courage to say something in person, then you shouldn’t be saying it online. This subject is very personal to me. This past year, one of my best friends passed away for mysterious reasons. In an online news article, it mentioned how he passed away at a party for mysterious reasons. Many of the comments following the article read similar to “finally that party town gets what it deserves” and “it served that stupid kid right for drinking under-age.”

Of course these comments have been sugarcoated. It angers me to think that somebody who doesn’t even know who this person judges them just because they can. Web terrorists don’t really know the issue, but target vulnerable audiences. This was a perfect example of people not knowing the issue at hand. My friend did not die due to alcohol; in fact he had almost none in his system. For weeks after the article was posted, my friends came to school with printouts of what the web terrorists said and remarked about how disgusting their comments were. It was then that I realized that we were giving them what they wanted. These people crave attention and thrive off of people’s reactions. They remind me of my dog. He often steals things out of my room and runs around with them. If you run after him, he’ll fight you to the death over a dirty sock. But if you simply ignore him, he will drop the sock and walk away because he’s not getting any attention. As long as you don’t acknowledge these web terrorists, they cannot hurt you and they will give up and drop the subject. When you respond and are hurt by their comments, you give them what they want.