CAT # 3

     Sticks and Stones may break my bones and hurt me but words will evidently kill you hold true as this article would suggest. As in the old days when someone was an outcast they would have been picked upon and physically beaten up in the street or a playground. Typically over something mundane as being a nerd, a social outcast. Back then they would have lived with it, as only those in the neighborhood would know of  what transpired and why. When someone puts pen to paper and spews vicious words it can be detrimental to the mental health of the person being attacked.

      One such instance i can recall that made headline news around the world is the "Columbine High School Massacre". This happened on April 20,1999, where two stundents; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went beserk killing 12 students and injuring about two dozen other students and teachers. These two students had become social outcasts, they were not in any cliques, they frequently bullied and picked on for being who they were or were not. Years of mental abuse caused them to become secluded in their own world, a world of violent video games and gun magazines. Possibly delusional from this abuse they decided who should die. This day in April they came to school to take the lives of those who made life difficult for them. They then  killed themselves. Bullying others as was done to these two students not only took their lives but that of others in their path.

         As the professor John Suler has suggested in the online book "The Psychology of Cyberspace", " people say and do things on the cyberspace that they wouldnt orduinarily say in a face to face world."  I believe that to be so true as i have said some harsh words to people, which would cut that person right down to the bone; emotionally, menatally. When i was in my early twenties. I've seen that person, a co worker of mine become so disheveled, distraught over the mocking words i said; words that were said amonst his peers and friends. Those words had a lasting effect on him as most of his friends were not friends anymore. No, he did not attempt to kill himself, but he was seriously depressed, alone and secluded.

The authors' Jake Simms and Larry Magid note in their article that whether its a case of defamation, outing, joking or just being plain mean, cyberbullying can inflict mental anguish which can haunt that victim forever. As what seems to have happened to a teenage high school girl recently. She was outed over the internet on facebook about being easy, a slut, that she would have sex with anyone. She became so depressed she attempted suicide. The internet reaches the masses and can change a person mentally, not knowing that someone you never met knows what was said about you.

A bully gets satisfaction from seeing others quiver and in the old days it was physical. Nowadays the mental anguish of words or video posted through cyberspace can have a profound effect on the victim as we really don't know the their state of mind and if they can deflect what was said . it is said when someone takes their life