:: netwoman's blog ::

Ion blogged about Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - an article that appeared in the Washington Post.

The article "Cliques, Clicks, Bullies And Blogs " by Rachel Simmons talks about a new type of bullying - Blog Bullies.

"Weblogs, or "blogs," are the latest sites of Internet cruelty. Blogs are cyber reality shows, widely read diaries that publicly detail the social drama and fluctuating emotions of young lives. They are often scoured for personal mention, and they spare no language or feelings. "

The article also says that because the medium is not face-to-face, it is much easier to throw insults and humilate people.

"When two boys at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda devoted a Web site to pronouncing a classmate a "fag," school officials disciplined the boys and had them dismantle the site after a student notified the school."

Kids bullying each other on the Internet has changed the nature of safety. The article notes that kids who were picked on at school once went home to escape cruelty - now this is not as easy because kids spend so much time on the computer in the home.

People need to understand that this bullying behaviour - the threats, the virtual cat calls - is still violence.
"The posted messages grew more menacing by the day, but it was not until the targeted girl was urged to kill herself that school officials were alerted and intervened, demanding that students delete their postings from the much-visited Web site. "

Principals in schools often don't know what to do with this Internet bullying because of their lack of technological skills.

We have many issues surfacing in this article - the right to free speech and the right to not be impinged upon by others. Free speech or hate speech? People will argue that blogging is their fundamental right to free speech. But at who's expense? We have seen the controversy over white supremacist websites, anti-holocaust literature and so forth. Free speech? At what cost?

Also, who's responsibility is this? the school or the family? I suspect much finger pointing will occur, and ultimately the family will be to blame.


Check out this interactive game called Sissyfight - "The Net's nastiest little game is a girl-vs.-girl showdown." Russ Spencer talks about it.

"And when things get real nasty, those bubbles often become filled not with offers to team up, but with astoundingly creative bursts of expletives and sexual and racial epithets. "

The wonders of technology. Why would we think the virtual world would be any different than the physical?

posted by Netwoman @ 10:24 PM