How to deal with twitter bullying

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Shakthi
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Like all my other blog posts,let me start by saying what a wonderful thing twitter is.As a medium,it is very powerful and flat in structure.As a community it is simply teeming with voluminous updates that are chronicling just about all facets of life.As a tool for expression,it gives you incomparable reach.But then nothing is all good and sweet.Every place has a big bully and twitter is no exception to that rule,hence they exist here to. What do we do when faced with one ? Let us look at this in this post

To effectively deal with a twitter bully,we need to understand the psyche of a bully first.A bully is someone who is habitually mean to others, inflicting both physical and psychological abuse on his or her victims. Bullies can appear at schools, in workplaces, and on the Internet. Bullying can also take on an international scale when nations bully each other with their politics and militaries. Bullying can be extremely harmful on every level, and there are a variety of ways to deal with bullies and their actions.Bullies tend to pick on targets they think are weak. Children, for example, will target children who are younger than they are, along with children who look different because of race, disabilities, or fashion sense. People who appear emotionally weak may also be targeted for bullying. Bullies themselves are often former or current victims of bullying. Children who have unstable home lives, for example, may take out their frustration and aggression on other children.

That was about bullying in general, on twitter there are some specific signs to watch out for.The first one is that you will see the bully constantly squatting on your timeline with profanity or unfounded sarcasm.In the beginning it all looks like harmless humor or banter, you will then notice that the bully does not relent.They keep going at you and trying to ridicule or box you on twitter.When they think that you are vulnerable and are not responding to them assertively, they will step up the ante and try to rub it in.Most of these bullies hide behind anonymous handles with obnoxious avatars that give them a bizarre sense of security and power over their targets.There are instances when they get blocked by their targets and the bullies actually create new/fresh accounts to keep up their attacks.There are also examples of companies paying people on twitter to bully their competition and diss them on the public timeline.The lack of face-to-face interaction actually boldens bullies on twitter.

There are important things that you can do to handle twitter bullying effectively when you are the target. Let’s list them out

  1. Ignore the bully as much as you logically can.They will certainly look stupid talking to themselves on the timeline, remember that a response elicits more virulent outbursts from the bully
  2. If the attacks get personal and dirty, respond curtly and simply block them and report for spam, that does the trick most of the time
  3. Dig in to your friends circle and spread the word, if your friends want to, they can call out the bully on the timeline and let folks know, keep the flip side of this in mind,you don’t want to come across as a bully and his band of cronies yourself.Take care about that.
  4. Pick and choose your battles. 90% of the time a full scale slug-fest is useless and pointless, block and move on works in most cases
  5. If the bully keeps taking different handles and does not relent, turn to twitter support and let them know, use bit.ly/twicket
  6. If the bully is someone you know in real life, use a face to face method of confrontation and combine it with possible legal action
  7. The bottom line is you just have to develop a thicker skin to be out there in the public eye on twitter. Get used to ignoring jackasses.
  8. More often than not, I’m seeing the little guy pick on the big guy e.g. tweeps with less followers or less influence hitting out at popular tweeps, a perk of being popular on twitter

The only problem I have with others ignoring bullies and ignoring others suffering is the same problem I would have with someone ignoring it going on in the school yard or on the street. In today’s society it seems so often easier to not become involved, become self involved and just turn the other cheek. By ignoring this behavior do we not in fact perpetuate it? By ignoring it are we not in fact actually part of the problem? This is clearly a two edged dagger, while the mechanics of twitter are in favor of ignoring the bully, the mind knows that they get strengthened to attack the next person knowing fully well that no one will care a hoot .I guess what will permanently solve this problem is the maturing of the mindset of society as a whole and a few steps from twitter to try and step in to control anonymity and animosity where they are misused to hurt people

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