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 Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 3:28 pm
This is where I'm going to leave all the stuff I've previously written am writing, please criticise so that I know how I can improve,thanks.
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 3:37 pm
This is something I put into a writing competition a few weeks ago, still waiting for the results.
Social networking is the act or hobby of using certain internet sites to communicate with friends and acquaintances. The concept of social networking is a relatively straight forward; you sign up to a “social networking” site under your name and afterwards you can send messages or hold calls to any other user of the site. Since the conception of social networking the idea has been driven a long way, steered by innovative thinkers like Mark Zuckerberg. We can now share almost any experience or thought “online” via text, picture or video, or arrange events with hundreds of peers in a matter of minutes.
Theoretically social networking is quite a democratic concept – everyone can discuss with equal power, no user can forcefully stop another from submitting a post (or thought) and no one can sensor information; the practicality is very different.
Collectively social networking site users have turned the environment into a barren wasteland. Snobbery, offensiveness and inappropriate behaviour have become dominant features upon social networking sites and the delinquent and malicious have the ability to exploit the system to attack and assault other users with hateful and abusive material – be it a picture, a video, or a comment.
Social networking sites are a naturally effective tool to degrade and demean other users, one reason being because they have such a large audience: a comment made online isn’t just seen by the victim but by everyone they’re connected to on that site, potentially everyone that the victim knows. This can easily create a sense of embarrassment and shame; and for the victim dramatically intensifying the effects.
Cyber bullying can be a vicious second blow if the bully already interacts with the victim in another environment (Eg. School or work). Bullying is pressure and the escapism of going home can often be the only release; the freedom to rest, read or flick open the laptop lid: but cyber bullying opens a door from your sanctuary back to the harsh onslaught you thought you’d escaped from. What’s worse? Being taunted in your school corridor or work area, or being isolated and cornered in your own bedroom?
The reason cyber bullying is such a problem is that there’s no defence against it – it can be difficult for a user to permanently block a bully from contacting them when the malevolent can swiftly make new accounts, and a reply only leads back to abuse; this means that the only solution is to delete your own account. Cyber bullies are persistent; victims can find themselves coming home to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of vulgar messages addressed to their account.
Since cyber bullies usually begin bullying in school or another area .They generally hold a large amount of leverage over the victim and this carries on to effect the victim online. The victim may be afraid and hesitant to argue back or block or remove the abuser from (present) contact for fear of consequence in the real world.
The worst thing about cyber bullying isn’t the invasion or perversion of the victims sanctuary, it isn’t because of humiliation or lack of defence, it’s that there’s no punishment: Social networking creates a place where one user can abuse, threaten and degrade another with no trace of reprimand. Social networking sites become a place where the deranged scum can further deepen the hole of depression, or cause or catalyse the suicide of the innocent and vunerable isolated teens with no accountability.
“When you give everyone a voice, and give people power the system usually ends up in a good place” but when you mix potential bullies with people they have leverage over in real life you give the wrong people a dominating, invulnerable voice and others only mute sorrow. You give the wrong people the power to weaponise words and slaughter countless victims. You give the decrepit and malevolent a method by which to assault and attack the quiet and undeserving, too often without reprimand, without consequences.
Social networking has bred a different kind of freedom of speech, it’s not the American civil war, or the struggle for Irish independence; it’s the holocaust, it’s African American slavery. Like they did, the anonymous and silent victims of cyber bullying need a voice, a voice to hold accountable the guilty of blatant acts of harassment and inhumane treatment of fellow peers. They need the reassurance and safety of knowing that the discrimination and alienation is accountable in real life. At the end of the day you only have to ask yourself “is the luxury of social networking worth it?” ”Is the ability to chat with friends worth the countless depressions and deaths that come with it? Next time you switch on the phone or the laptop ask yourself “Is this message worth the death of a girl in Donegal?
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Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:10 pm
I think that spaces between the paragraphs would make it all more readable.
sorry if I am intruding on the blog... space.
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