Or 

HOW CYBERBULLIES WILL REINCARNATE AS BACTERIUM

I went off Facebook for a several months – mainly because of the extraordinary invective I was receiving from certain quarters after the death of Sarah Lundberg. The majority, indeed most of the communications were heartfelt condolences, and will remain with me as a comfort for my life. But there were others who made being on Facebook dreadful. Even the experience of being online was somewhat fraught for me. One was afraid of some nasty remark being lobbed at one from some quarter or other. To be honest, Facebook is an entity I have very mixed feelings about. I find it hard to decide whether it is the best or worst of things. However I have friends there, and I miss them when I am not on Facebook. However my point is the experience of  cyberbullying  was shocking. The term seems to be mainly used for teens, but it really extends to everyone. Anyone can be bullied online. For myself, when it happened, sometimes I could not believe what I was reading. Most of it is unrepeatable here. Moreover, at the time, it was something I could not really deal with. I was simply too raw, too confused and too sad about the death of someone I had spent much of my adult life with. Added to that there was the sadness associated with the fact we had been separated for about eight months when she took her own life. I have no agenda here to add to the catalogue of already well recorded statistics around the painful effects of what is called cyberbullying but I do note that the Law Reform Commission, according to the Irish Times today, has published an issues paper asking for a wide ranging  series of contributions from as wide a demographic as possible on cyberbullying –  “…the posting of private, false, humiliating, shameful or otherwise harmful content, notably through social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, without the consent of the subject…”

It (the commission) goes on to say that the effects of cyberbullying is particularly insidious. this is because word spreads online at the speed of light. So, whatever a particular keyboard hero is out there posting unpleasantries, venting their own ill considered insecurities and distorted view of reality online, it can be worldwide in minutes. In the hands of the wrong person, this can be a bad thing indeed. The times article quotes once more from the LRC position paper that the idea behind the submission is to widen the scope of Section 10 of the 1997 non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act to include cyber bullying. I encourage everyone who reads through this blog post to contribute their views on this one. There’s a billion people on Facebook alone. And everyone pretty much has email.

Oh, and if it happens to you:

*Block The Person  *Keep the Message/s *Report the bully /ies

The paper is available at lawreform.ie

And here is the link to the Irish Times Article