I’m experiencing
my first encounter with cyber bullying or cyber trolls.
Now I’ve been
playing on the internet long enough for my brother who sold computers at the
time, to tell me that I was being ridiculous in my enthusiasm, and that the
internet would never last, and I was being foolish. Right at the beginning I read a wild book called ‘Cyberia’,
that was talking about how the worlds of the internet were created and mirrored
by sub cultures and hallucinogenic adventurers and underground dance cults that
were hacking out our collective realities, and practicing online what we were
going to evolve to be able to do with our minds. It posed that a computer was a reflection of our heads, and
had literal connections to our thoughts.
And I also read Dale Spender’s book ‘Nattering on the Net’, where she
compared the advent of the Internet to that of the Printing Press in the middle
ages. She suggested that not since
that explosion of information from sources other than The Church, has there
been such an opportunity for the average person to be represented in a
universally available medium, regardless of gender, age, race, or money.
I got all the
equipment as it became available, the huge modems that made wild noises, the
hand held scanners that looked like paint scrapers, the enormous printers, the
massively expensive and endlessly fascinating software, that seemed to do
incomprehensibly complicated things.
I was one of the first on IRC, developing LOL and ROFL and ROFLMAO and the rest, that took a
while to seep into the internet mainstream. With Puke Punk, my fling at the time, we’d surf through
countless IRC channels, trying to see how many we could get kicked out of. How many witty and cutting jests we
could throw before getting bombed.
How many Christian channels we could infiltrate and terrorise. How long the accepting new agers would
take to get the shits. I had
intense relationships with people on the other side of the globe, and cyber
sex. I even had ops on a popular channel, and with my online love
at the time we’d merrily throw people off, and bamboozle newbies.
I was virtually
‘cool’ for the first time in my life.
Accepted by a whole bunch of people I’d never meet, part of groups and
friendships that really fit, and on the cutting edge of something new, and
unfolding, and brave. I was also
quite sure that I was open minded, liberated and ‘right’. And that there was a whole bunch of
silly people out there who needed a good drubbing.
I’ve also been a
young Mormon, completely knowing that I was a member of the only true church on
earth. I’ve also been a
Lesbian. Completely knowing that I
was going to rest in the soft arms of women for the duration of my life, and
other women that had a problem with that, were in denial of their own
sexuality. I’ve also been an
activist. Completely knowing that
I was aware of things that the average person was denying to themselves at
their own peril. That there was a
huge amount of heads in sand, and they needed to wake the fuck up. I’ve also been a homebirther. Completely knowing that natural birth
was the only way, and everything else was an aberration. That if everyone would just acknowledge
and trust birth, the whole world could be transformed.
And now I know
that I’m everything. I am a
complex microcosm of the macrocosm, I’m a collection of stories that reflect
the complete uniqueness of my snowflake, as I drift with all the other
snowflakes and drops of the ocean, in the embrace of a universe of complete
chaotic harmony and paradoxical perfection, trying to understand itself. The ecosytem within me, is mirroring the
culture within which I live, and also the natural world surrounding that, and
the greater matrices of the planets and galaxies beyond. All connected through the yarns and
strands of our DNA that we share with every other living thing on the planet,
the water that courses through our beings, some of which has come from
interstellar glaciers, and the star stuff and clays of our earth, that sculpts
our bodies and constantly flows as conscious and remembering energy…….
There is no
other.
But of course
the other day when I read through pages of complete strangers ripping every
detail I’d written and my photos to shreds……I wasn’t feeling quite so zen. In my latter years online, I’ve seen
many people affected by trolling, or cyber bullying, or harassment, on the
edges, round the corners, and in holes.
Through my birthing experiences, I’ve been interconnected on lots of
birthing and midwifery sites, and I guess the first time I started really
seeing the organizing of packs of trolls like blood hounds on the trail of a
fox, was around the mainstream turn away from homebirthing as an acceptable
option. I know now that it’s also
been intense around gaming sites, but I don’t visit them. YouTube is also full
of it. Most likely it’s been happening in all pockets of the net. But a lot of the women I knew were
getting horribly victimized by these bloodhounds. And as an observer, it appeared like a dance. A person posts an article or blog from
their heart, or just as a different experience to a conceived norm. And is overwhelmed by a torrent of
angry bloodhounds, ripping their fox pelt to shreds. The fox is hurt and wounded, and asks why this is happening,
and can’t you see my humanity and respect me? And no matter what they write, or how sweetly they plead, a
sentence or word is pounced on for being arrogant, or stupid, or wrong, and the
feed between the two groups gets strong, as other foxes jump into the fray, to
tangle with the blood hound back ups.
And as an observer, I could often see grains of truth and salient points
in both sides of the scrap.
And then it
happened to me.
I guess I knew
it would eventually. But it took
me by surprise. When I looked at
my Blog stats, there were HUNDREDS of people looking at my blog. ‘Wow’ I thought. I’ve gone viral!! I had a look at the
web page it came from, and I thought it looked like a Friesian word, and
thought ‘maybe someone’s discovered there’s a wild Friesian family with 7
Friesian babies!’ and had a look.
And started to shake, as my happy mood sunk quicker than a stone into a
kind of horrified fascination, like a bunny in the headlights. On the spot I made the decision to read
it all. Just once. Get a feel for what it felt like, to
get personally and viciously ripped to shreds. See if the areas that I thought they would pick on from my
past experience were true. Shaking
as I read it. My children, my
relationship, my appearance, my births, my craft, my art, my words, my life, my
sexuality, my choices, my experiences………everything picked over, chewed between
grinding teeth and spat out. There
was a huge show of dedication on their part, to research me, dissect me, read
my words and posts for hours, to find quotes that fit how they wanted me to
appear. Theories as to why I
was so batshit crazy. But I was
determined to read it. To see if
it fit the patterns I’d observed.
To see how it felt.
It took a long
time. There was a lot of it. And Currawong kept orbiting in to see
if I was allright, and would catch a glimpse of a thread, and get righteously
indignant on my behalf. Tumbling a
few babies around on my lap as I went.
And then it was done. I
closed my computer. Went into the
bedroom. Posted on Facebook about
it. And cried.
And that was the
worst of it and as bad as it got.
One of the first
things that came to mind, was that I hadn’t felt this way since I was in high
school – ‘four-eyes-brace-face-magilla-gorilla-big-bird-ugly-dog-fat-slut-lemon-dyke-long-socks-brigade’. That was the last time that school kids
and random strangers said really nasty things to me publically. Even the odd tussles I’ve had in real
life and online in my adult life haven’t been quite that nasty. The real nastiness went from
random strangers and school kids to the voice inside me – the snark – that came
out whenever things were rough, or I was feeling a bit hard done by. That also came out at family members
during fights, most particularly Currawong. Or was kept as private thoughts I had about other people and
the choices they made, damage they were doing, that I mostly kept to myself, or
only shared with people I knew would agree with me.
But every action
has an equal and opposite reaction.
Comments started pouring into my facebook account that started making me
cry with happiness instead of hurt, as people came out from all the interlaced
webs that connect through my page, and expressed beautiful and meaningful love
to me. I haven’t even really
started to unpack that whole thing yet - there are people from my past, and
people that I haven’t even met, and people that I admire hugely and get a bit
groupie like about, who took the time out to tell me I was important to them,
and to others, and that for everything that was ripped, they had a beautiful
patch to sew over it. Someone from
my real life community came to give me some chutney and a chins up, private
messages poured in on the internet, and I talked to my love throughout it all,
as we healed bits and sewed patches on together. I rang my beautiful daughter who’s been through so much, and
learnt so much from her own trials through bullying, and we had another degree
of connection.
And let me just
take a little aside here for parents or anyone who wants an authentic and
honest relationship with a child or young person – one of the most profoundly
amazing things you can do in the world is to drop all the ‘I’m an
adult/parent/teacher/elder/person who ‘knows’ trip, and sit down with a kid
like you’d sit down with a friend…….and ask their advice. Not in a cutesy, what kind of sweet
child fantasy am I gonna get kind of way, but in a real, friend to friend, if
you were me, what would you do? kind of way. What do you really think about that? kind of way. In a manner in which they know you’re
taking them seriously. It’s
profound. Trust me. Try it.
But back to the
story, it started to occur to me, how could we NOT have cyber bullying and
trolls? When bullying is the lynch
pin of our culture? Where does
bullying NOT exist? From the
moment we’re born, our parents and families and schools and churches and every other group and hierarchical
structure, are feeding us messages through all our senses, about what is
required for us to fit in and conform.
An ancient mammalian imperative we have as a species, to ensure our
survival. The rules as to how you
can get in the middle of a pack, and be safe from the predators and scavengers
that prey on the fringes. We’ve
got to put on weight a certain way,
crawl by a certain age, speak by a certain time, and any deviation is
anxiously angsted over. Lesson number one at school, is that whatever is
different about you, will become your nickname, and your personal cross to
bear. It will be picked on
relentlessly, even as you try to transform it or amputate it or hide it or just
shrink in general. It will be
picked on, until you learn to play the game by the majority rules. Which can always change just to keep
you on your toes.
At church we
learn the same lesson, whatever is different about us will be fair game and
public property, and up for derision and inspection. When we go to work the same thing happens. An infinite variety and means of
squeezing us all into the middle of the herd, and honing off our differences, so
only the fringedwellers get attacked.
Of bullying people in various ways, till they either fit in, or go and
find another herd to try and get in the middle of. And that’s not even to mention the great bullies of our
time. The countries who relentlessly
pick wars with other countries.
The corporations who bully us all into doing things we wouldn’t
ordinarily choose, in order to increase their profits. The media that bullies
people for a political agenda. The lawyers and judges who bully people in
courtrooms. The teachers that like
to bully small children. The
bosses that use money as an excuse to bully their workers. The doctors and doomsayers that bully
birth. It all rolls down hill,
from one to another to another, but a common currency in our culture.
And we
internalize these lessons, as we must, for we all want to survive, and those
nicknames and barbs become our inner voices. The inner cynic.
The voice that runs us down inside before someone outside gets a chance
to do it. The voice that tries to
get us to avoid doing anything that might make us stick out, and endure that
pain again. We all have these
voices, and many of us hate them, but I believe that ultimately at their root,
these nasty inner voices love us.
They love us, as everything in the universe does, (because it is us) and
want to protect us in the only way they know how. Which is to bully us into doing something or not doing
something, depending on which way they think will hurt less.
And
paradoxically, overarching all these mammalian herd dwelling goings on, and
shovings, and bullyings, and harrasments of the fringe, while we fluff all our
feathers and try to find comfortable, recognizable, and friendly nests and
heart homes, there’s this other thing that’s happening.
Our books, and
our stories, and our media, and our movies, and our music, and our popular
culture is FULL TO BRIMMING of stories of the maverick. The Brave Heart. The Chicken Little. The Robin
Hood. The Different One. Our stories and fantasies often contain
the person who wont be bullied.
The person who wont be changed.
Who has a stubborn difference that can’t be curtailed. The Hero. The Conqueror.
The Heroine. Whose
difference saves the day. Whose
inability to change a quirk, results in them saving the world. The Tall Poppy who ran the gauntlet of
the snapping hyena’s and survived to bloom. The Unique Person, who believed in themselves enough to change
the world.
I get this image
of our society holding all these amazing dreams and stories as carrots dangling
just in front of our eyes, saying ‘DREAM YOU BASTARD!!’ And then SLAPPING the
soft little souls as they go to school and get bullied for their
difference. ‘BUT DON’T FORGET TO
DREAM!!’ it entices, as SLAP
another dream gets a smirk and a sing song made about it, and another nickname
to remind you of how stupid you were to try. ‘But KEEP dreaming’ as SLAP you go off to university to get
a proper degree, now that you’ve had your hidden golden desire to be an artist
thoroughly trounced on. Maybe one
day you’ll get to dream uninterrupted, but maybe also you wont. Maybe it’s just easier to give up
dreaming, and maybe for others, it’s even easier to act as the slap. It can become quite seductive to inflict
pain onto others, especially when you know how much pain you had to
endure.
We all bully
each other in subtle and unsubtle ways, trying to get each other to do things
as we think they should be. Trolls
are like the tricksters and mean pixies in folklore and earlier traditions. Testing and tweaking and clawing at
people and their beliefs. Giving
them the opportunity to strengthen.
And they’re also the manifestation of our inner cynical voices and the
voices from our past, as well as the private voices and judgements we have for
each other. Made manifest under
assumed names and anonymous pictures.
Along with all
the love being sent as the equal and opposite reaction to the cyber bully
action, there were a few articles.
This one in particular resonated with me. I really dug the line “When it comes to actually changing minds, I think we’re stuck
with love.”
There was a blog post by Janet Fraser, who’s been through some of the
most torturous bullying by legal folk and media, not to mention trolls, and
shows incredible love and compassion.
And there was another one talking about how many people who anonymously
send poison darts over the internet in the form of trolling, have been bullied
themselves, and find comfort and self healing in bullying other people. Understandable. Not admirable. But…….a valid way to deal with the
world if that’s how your particular snowflake turns out. If that’s the path you tread, it will
no doubt give you lessons, as every path does. And if we look at humanity as a wheel, with us all as the spokes,
equally important to the wholistic running and understanding of the everything,
then they obviously have their purpose.
A few of my life
lessons helped me feel better after the initial shock of a face to face with
cyber bullying.
1. I’ve observed that people
become what they hate. And if
indeed many cyber bullies do this because they were themselves bullied and
hated it, they are a beautiful example of this. And are simply performing what they’ve been taught in many
stratas.
2. The only people I’ve ever come
across who had the time and energy to spend on trying to belittle or bully
other people, have been really really miserable.
3.
I only get hurt by stuff that
has a mirror in me, or that I don’t understand.
4. Love and hate are flipsides of
the coin, and for all those people so drawn to hating me anonymously online – I
know they really deep down are loving me, otherwise they wouldn’t even bother
to notice or mention.
5. People usually only ever talk
about themselves. Or as a friend
once said, ‘when they’re pointing one finger at you, they’re pointing three at
themselves’.
6.
People who judge others
harshly…..judge themselves the hardest of all.
7. Folk that hurt other people the
most, often have the biggest hurts inside them, and the biggest fears about
being loved.
8.
Sometimes victims can become
the biggest victimizers.
But the real
boon has been the love that’s come my way as a result. The affirming of who I am as a byproduct
of the introspection that always occurs whenever I encounter criticism or
bullying. The words that came from
people who have a good experience of me, and value me enough to let me
know. And when I look at it now,
and on reading from all the different people who wrote to me that have been
affected by it, this trolling and bullying has been happening a lot. But I sense that the balance is
shifting. When I first started
noticing it, there were sporadic bursts of it here and there, fairly
undirected, and people reacted strongly to it. Now trolling has become more focalized, and the discussions
about how to deal with it, transform with it, and work through it are
focalizing also. Articles and stories
and information that helps are becoming easier to find. And I’m watching in my personal
networks, an increase in empathy and compassion. Especially after enduring a personal tradgedy or online
bullying, I’m watching people work hard on their communication, to avoid such
things being perpetuated. I’m
watching discussions that would easily have escalated into personal attacks
becoming more understanding and respectful.
In response to
the trauma of cyber bullying, the equal and opposite reaction in many online
communities has been to uphold and support loving and respectful
communication. And the way that
angels and fairies and whirling dirvishes came flying in to soothe my wounds
was a perfect example of that. In
being the opposite to creation, bullying is helping to create an ever widening
circle of community between people who wish to feel safe and be open with each other. In teaching us
so completely how NOT to help a human open up, relax, be themselves, and be
honest, they are showing us the way to closer connections, even if it is by
avoiding them.
So cyber
bullies, and friends, and onlookers……..I guess I’m saying that everything has a
purpose, even bullying, as long as we continue to learn and grow from our
experience. I’ve been held and
supported by a loving community of friends. I’ve had the chance to reflect again on the bits that stung
and see where they have a home in myself.
Our family as a result has taken a resolve to work even harder on
hearing and respecting each other without bullying. I’ve had a chance to revisit my school yard bullying and
realize that I’m finally free of its tendrils. And I’m ever more certain, that the most important job that
I have in this life, is to truly be myself. No matter what kind of reaction I get. And from the amazing folk who have been
cyber bullied, I know that I’m in tremendously good company. It almost seems to be becoming a rite
of passage for the authentic, passionate, honest, and inspiring. And like Mae West said, there is
no such thing as bad publicity.
Thousands of people have now looked at my blog that wouldn’t have
otherwise. A few were nasty. Many said nothing, and a few more
wanted to become my friend. It was like a big, handspun, sun woven blanket was
wrapped around me by people that I admire and love. A greater amount of love was poured as a tonic.
In light of
that, a small group of people who need to hurt others to make themselves feel
better, ripping my blog to shreds on an unremarkable forum, is almost a fair
price to pay. Especially as one of
their favourite sports is to attack people like a woman who’s lost her child,
or families that are grieving, their company and lack of admiration is not a
huge loss.
And before I go
– just a word to the onlookers.
There was an amazing black and white movie called ‘Gentlemans Agreement’
with Gregory Peck. In which he was
a reporter asked to write on racism.
He decided to pretend to be Jewish, and moved to a Jewish district. Him and his son started copping
racism. At the same time though,
he was having a relationship with a woman and became engaged. At the engagement party she told
everyone that he wasn’t really Jewish, so they could stop treating him badly
and pitying her. And in the end,
the article he wrote stated, that it wasn’t the lynchings and the public acts
of racism that were the worst, but the wordless onlookers who knew better, and
said nothing. He suggested that
when the average person stands up for their beliefs, and says no to the jokes
and the bullying and the cruelty……..then racism will stop. And bullying will stop. And everything that adds to our
seperation will stop.
And I’d like to
take it a bit farther. Maybe our
time of circling in the pack, and keeping our uniqueness in, while steering
clear of the fringe is done. Maybe
the time of loyalty and devotion to a hunting pack of blood hounds is
fading. Maybe now, this great
shift that we’re experiencing can be an evolution towards oneness, and delight
in our difference, rather than the herd mentality of keeping it safe. Maybe bullies can evolve into conscious
and compassionate critics, that test the boundaries to make them strong. Maybe our social networks can become
clearer about respectful ways to communicate, and how to deal with trolls and
other mythical creatures. Maybe
making peace pacts with our inner snarks will help the macrocosm to heal the
outer snarks. And we can start
playing more enjoyable games of creation and discovery together.
