Philosophy Now Forum

What does anyone think about the discussions of cyber bullying and online harassment like the rape and bomb threats on twitter, which resulted in an arrest, and the bullying of a child in the UK to suicide, which resulted in some sponsorship being removed from the site.

Is it all as simple as "Dont Feed The Trolls" or is there a corporate responsibility issue rather than a personal responsibility one?

Attributing responsibility - finding someone to... stop? regulate? shun? beware of? punish? - isn't going to solve this problem. The problem hasn't even fully defined itself.

Bullying is a symptom of a wider, deeper social malaise than we can easily identify or deal with. Psychological bullying is just a branch of general bullying, which goes on in personal contact in households, workplaces, schools, boardrooms and sports arenas, and is an attribute of a society in a particular phase of its (d)evolution. Electronic media happen to extend the bully's reach, that's all.

Possible questions to ask:
Is bullying behaviour more prevalent in some places - nations, regions within a nation; city, small town - than in others? Is it more prevalent in some demographics? If so, what other factors have the most bullying places and demographics have in common? What's different from the least bullying places and demographics?

What predisposes some people to be victims of psychological persecution? How are they chosen? Why do they succumb? How do the targets who do not succumb defend themselves?

What makes a bully act the way s/he does? Why do other, normally less aggressive people, follow the lead of a bully? What circumstances turn peers into a mob?

Then, perhaps correlate the behaviours to the places and see if you can spot the stresses that cause a society, or a significant segment of a society, to malfunction.

and when the group unites to bully the bully, bullying is justified?

or is that democracy?

bullying your way to utopia...

-Imp

What?