Social networking and cyberbullying

I was doing my usual blog-hopping when I came across an impassioned entry of a blogger explaining why she is staying away from Plurk and more social networking sites. It opened up a very interesting discussion about personal information and privacy which I also gave my two cents’ worth to, but more than her own very understandable reasons and the points of the many others who posted their comments, I found the Sciam.com article she linked to very compelling.

In Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy? Daniel Solove writes, “Social-networking sites allow seemingly trivial gossip to be distributed to a worldwide audience, sometimes making people the butt of rumors shared by millions of users across the Internet.” He writes about the kid more popularly known as “Star Wars Kid,” a pudgy and awkward fourteen-year-old boy from Quebec who became an Internet phenomenon when his schoolmates found a video of him wielding a golf ball retriever like a lightsaber a la Darth Maul. Thinking it would be funny, they uploaded the video and shared it via Kazaa. Maybe they only intended it to be shared among friends, but the video became a huge hit. In fact, it went viral, eventually spawning a gazillion responses and remixes, making Star Wars Kid the butt of jokes and ridicule in cyberspace. Then, it crossed over to mass media, with the video appearing in South Park and The Family Guy, among many others.

I suppose you can understand why the Star Wars Kid suffered a mental breakdown and had to seek counseling. Lawsuits and settlements were made, but there’s still no telling if the poor kid’s going to be okay.

While there are many people who’ve had their fifteen minutes of humiliation online for the whole world to feast on (think Miss South Carolina Caitlin Upton for Miss Teen USA 2007), and I admit to having indulged in the fun of it all, many other people are crossing the line, either unwittingly or knowingly.

I’m not new to the term cyberbullying. I’ve read of a South Korean television personality and another South Korean pop star who both committed suicide after suffering from intense cyberbullying. In China, an angry man posted information about his wife’s lover, leading to thousands of web postings denouncing the lover and revealing personal information about him. More recently, I dug up another case, also in South Korea (one of the most connected countries on the planet), which involves a young woman more popularly known as “Dog Poop Girl.” Back in 2005, Dog Poop Girl brought her lap dog on the subway and the dog pooped on the floor. The other passengers requested her to clean up the poop, and she declined.

One passenger gave her a tissue to clean it up, and Dog Poop Girl used it to clean her dog, but not the poop. She got off at the next stop, but before that, another passenger took a picture of her and her dog with a camera phone and posted it on a Korean website, triggering an angry reaction from netizens. In a matter of days, her identity was revealed, as were the identity of her parents and some relatives. Dog Poop Girl suffered humiliation, quit school, threatened to kill herself, and issued an apology that apparently calmed the whole thing down.

Still, there’s the whole matter of everything being stored online for anyone to just dig up. In some parts of cyberspace, she’s Dog Poop Girl forever.

Sure, the net is a wonderful and powerful tool for ordinary people like you and me who want to be heard. We don’t need to be interviewed by big newspapers to have a global reach. We put information out there, and the people who care can find it easily. On a personal level, I’ve managed to reach long-lost friends and keep myself posted on their life developments. I’ve also managed to keep them updated about mine. These are the reasons why I like social networking sites.

I’m also very much aware about how easy it is to google everything these days, which is why I’m very, very careful not to post stuff I can’t be held accountable for, or stuff I can’t own up to. I use my complete name in all my accounts as a constant reminder of this.

I refrain from writing about intimate encounters (not that I have any to write about), serious skeletons in the closet, and complaints versus private individuals and institutions. I’m also trying very, very hard to refrain from writing cryptic posts about whatever emotional drama I’m going through. But that’s just me policing myself, and I don’t expect other people to do the same.

Indeed, there is a line to be drawn in terms of your own and other people’s privacy. I’m just not sure who’s supposed to draw it yet. So, in the meantime, just protect yourselves.