Cyberbullying and Trolling

Although the internet can provide a safe space for those who want to express their ideas, feelings, and points of view without exposing their personal details, it can also become an outlet for the ones who play out their darkest traits uncontrollably and unpunishably. 

Trolling and cyberbullying have become so widespread that it created the need to come up with stricter laws and regulations through which victims of such attacks could prosecute their perpetrators.

In the early 2000s, I was subjected to trolling on a few separate occasions. Most of the time the attacks came from anonymous male figures who questioned, mocked, and insulted my intellectual abilities as a female. Some of their comments were so coarse, cynical, and vulgar that I’d feel as if the ground had been pulled from under my feet. I’d question my own existence and the degree of trust and openness with which I can perceive the world around me.

And because back then there weren’t any widely used mechanisms to detect and prosecute anonymous bullies/trolls, the only possible way to control the situation was through banning a specific account through which a person executed such activities. However, this measure wasn’t always effective since a bully could create multiple accounts through which he continued to troll a person or multiple individuals. This way a moderator of an assumed public space would be overwhelmed by the never-ending virtual battle.

Regardless of the covered timeframe, whether it is the early 2000s or our days, the bullying that takes place on public forums or social media accounts, mirrors the same type of bullying that happens in real life, with the only difference that its virtual version is magnified in number of active participants as well as witnesses, and may therefore have a stronger effect on a victim.

Through trial and error, and in response to countless cases of cyberbullying with tragic outcomes, new mechanisms have emerged on technical and legal planes to mitigate its impact.

These are great advancements that we can appreciate on one hand, but on the other: the fact that cyberbullying continues to emerge in its new forms and harm younger users, means that the remedies should be found within the boundaries of one’s own family and physical community, where young minds are shaped with a certain belief system, mentality, and countless biases embedded in their intimate and social circles.