Here Come The Laws Against Online Bullying
from the finally dept
For years now, we've seen stories about online bullying, and the only real surprise is that there hasn't been a rash of legislation aimed at curbing the nasty practice. After all, politicians love to pass laws that appear to "protect the children". Well, the laws are finally coming. Several states are now considering laws to address the problem, though it's not clear what, exactly, the laws are intended to do. For the most part, they seem like rather vague directives aimed at encouraging schools to do something about the problem. Of course, most online bullying happens outside of school, which means that states are asking schools to get in the business of regulating speech, i.e. violating the first amendment. As objectionable as online bullying is, insults remain a form of protected free speech (oh, and there's no age requirement for having free speech). Of course, direct threats of harm are a different matter, but there are already laws against that. There's no easy solution to this problem, just as there's no solution to regular bullying, which has been going on for ages, despite many efforts to eliminate it.
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bullying
Kids today are getting too soft, everytime something bad happens they run and tell mommy. The people getting bullied need to learn that it's going to happen their whole lives if they let it, if they do something to stop it then Yay for them they can see what it's like to move on. Otherwise get used to it, the more you complain about it the worse it will be.
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Re: bullying
What's funny to me is that the adults who say kids deserve to get beaten up are not saying the same thing about adults getting beaten up. We do not see many people saying that adults deserve beatings and should just get used to it as part of adulthood.
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Re: bullying
The problem with bullying today is that it escalates FAST. And it doesn't escalate to fist fighting, it can escalate to a glock to the back of the head... and we're not talking about the rare school shooting, we're talking about the far more common neighborhood voilence that doesn't make national news media coverage.
Soft... hehe you should become a teacher.
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Re: Re: bullying
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Re: Re: bullying
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Re: bullying
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Your feet stink
if it's truth, why be offended? if it's not truth, why worry what is said? if you worry too much....well, then you got insecurity problems - or even worse
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I don't need their help
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Thoughts from a Dumb American
Being involved in sports, and occasionally being bullied by others were the best lessons of my younger life. It helped me to understand that "the game of life" was all about other people jocking for positions, and for the most part, isn't personal.
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Re: Thoughts from a Dumb American
Still, this best summery ever!:
"the game of life was all about other people jocking for positions, and for the most part, isn't personal."
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Since it's the 'law'.
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Bullying
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ugh...
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While...
Of course I can understand someone wanted to do something. I firmly think that if those boys that shot Columbine had been able to turn to someone that would have listened to them (its my understanding that they were bullied but the teachers ignored them when they tried to find help) that horrible even may have been prevented.
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Bullies
Spousal abuse, in many forms, is still a standard practice in many cultures. Slavery used to be a predominant part of this countries fabric. And so you should see that just because it has been that way doesn’t make it right.
If you were bullied and you are better for it, good for you. You now have a responsibility to help those who can’t rationalize this treatment. They spend their days trying to avoid confrontation and worrying about the next incident. They feel isolated and ashamed. For those same reasons they don’t talk about. Not to their parents and not to counselors who could potentially help. They feel helpless and desperate in a situation they are forced to be in. Yes Dylan, on rare occasions they take extreme measures to empower themselves. If they “survive” they either become bullies themselves or introverts still attempting to fix things inside.
So legislation has been drafted in an attempt to deal with a very public and potentially intense form of bullying (a picture is worth a thousand words). Do I agree with it in principle? No. Do I think it will help directly? No. At this point though, we must stop pretending that we really are doing something. Sentiments like “it makes you a better person” and “it’s just a part of life” underlie the notion that we are a concerned nation. Kids should be in an environment where they taught the difference between jocking and jockeying, not how to coerce, harass or embarrass other people. A place where a request for sanctuary will not result in a half hearted reprimand with repercussions to pay later. Coddling our kids is not something to worry about. Life will offer plenty of hard-knock lessons. When they are unencumbered by schoolyard violence then they are free to excel.
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Re: Bullies
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Re: Thoughts From a Dumb American
Okay, first I have to rant about this line. Why are women obligated to stay at home with the kid? Men are just as capable of staying home. So instead of blaming women solely for abandoning their children to work and provide food and shelter, also blame the men that do the same thing.
Now, I agree that mild bullying needs to be taken with a grain of salt. This is a dangerous world we live in now though and true bullies that go unchecked can turn into viscous and violent offenders. I don't care who you are it is NOT okay to torture someone simply because you don't like them.
Oh, and the First Amendment right the article says has no age limit? It does, no one under 18 has full Freedom of Speech. That's why the local high school newspaper is supervised always by an adult.
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Re: Re: Thoughts From a Dumb American
no, because it's the school's newspaper. name one newspaper that will print ANY article a journalist dreams up. there's always a person or people who moderate what is printed in THEIR newspaper. freedom of speech is about what our government can do about passing laws that prohibit speech, not what individual organizations can allow in their own product. as the article says, the first amendment does NOT have an age limit.
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To all those yelling about the nation of weenies:
P.S. I'm from Russia. Believe me, I've seen bullying. There's very little educational value in it. Almost insignificant. If you claim you've learned something, it's most probably not something that makes you more effective in your life. Most probably, it's an illusion of strength - a pride of going through something hard in your childhood, while actually having nothing else to claim as a "tough experience". It could be a lesson to deal with things by means, which produce the negative net outcome.
As for online bullying - screw it, who cares.
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Online Bullying doesn't exsist.
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I think you missunderstand.
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Sorry but you are wrong, when and where i grew up nearly every kid carried a knife (guns were/are rare though because it was a country where guns were/are illegal ).
Fights were common.
Hospitalization was common result of these fights.
Death sometimes happened, though thankfully was rarer
But no one went on about "bullying" because no one viewed it as such, it was "just life"
Where as these days this kind of stuff would be national headlines as "bullying out of control"
The only ones these days i would say that face equal or worse violence than we did are the ones living in gang neighbourhoods (which are a tiny miniroty in any country), but i would say for them it is not "bullying" but rather "just life"
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Get Real
#2 Politicians do what they think will get them the most votes more often than then they do what is right.
#3 If you're bullied on-line get a new e-mail or I don't use that Handy-Dandy block filter that most email providers give you.
#4 if the "bullying" is not true IGNORE it, if it is Live with it i.e. Someone calls you gay and you are not don't worry about it. the only reason they said it is probably cause they are so far in the closet it isn't funny. and if you are Big Deal, So What, Who Cares? It ain't the end of the world. If people would be honest about who they are we wouldn't have half the problems we do today.
Oh and by the way the entire world better pray these laws don't pass. cause there go the usefulness of threads to noobs. and it will be the US going in to other countries to get bullies just like we go after the child porn in Russia, that is that countries responsibility. Or the Communist Censoring of the Internet. I'm sorry that the man's son killed him self but If he had been a True Parent it Would Not Have Happened.
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Re: Get Real
There's hope yet!
"If he had been a True Parent it Would Not Have Happened."
Suicides don't happen becauase of one single event, they happen due to many events that compund into one very large unchecked problem. This is more than likey why the kid killed himself. He probably put up with crap his whole life, had a deadbeat dad who didn't take the bullying seriously and wound up taking his own life because of it. Now the dad had somewhat of a reality check and goes about the same avenue of fixing problems he's probably always taken, letting someone else bare the resposibility for him.
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Re: Get Real
Someone calls you gay and you are not - reply "you wish".
And do the ; ).
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no I think you're the one suffering for a sever ca
"...you can't be physically bullied"
So if I punch you in the face how is that not physically bullying you? What I think you were trying to say is that you can't be physically bullied over the internet, however people can still threaten you with physical violence.
No one here is under the assumption that some random kid in some state is going around IM'ing anyone he can. We acknowledge the fact these bullies are just finding a more thorough way to be an ass. But thankfully in real life as well as on the internet we have the ability to simply IGNORE them.
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I think that this style of behavior might be more of what the article is based upon.
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1. ban children from the net, Duh! (no one under 18 allowed)
or
2. Don't have kids cause life is 100% fatal
I hope this offends some of you, but if you let the Govt regulate Morals, you offend me.
Bullying is natures replacement for the sabre tooth tiger, survival of the fittest, trust me, the Herd Needs thinning
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That is a joke
"One entry found for bully.
Main Entry: 3bully
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): bul·lied; bul·ly·ing
transitive verb
1 : to treat abusively
2 : to affect by means of force or coercion
intransitive verb : to use browbeating language or behavior"
No how the hell would they intend on enforcing or "tracking" this "browbeating language"? Like hell are they going to be able to monitor everything, people would never let that fly.
So would it be on the basis of complaints?.. thats how the system for reporting abuse (physical or verbal) works now... so whats new and improved and nessesary about this?...
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football
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ONLINE/CYBER-BULLYING
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GETTING BANNED FOR USING CAPS: IS THAT ONLINE BULLYING ?
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GIVEN [VERBAL] IMPLIED OR/AND INDIRECT DEATH THREATS FOR HAVING A DIFFERENT OPINION ON A SUBJECT MATTER.
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AND I'M GETTING HATE RESPONSES FOR SIMPLY SPELLING ERRORS, LIKE TYPING [BUR] RATHER THAN [BUT], A TYPING ERROR I MADE IN PREVIOUS POST.
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&, I AM GETTING HATE RESPONSES FOR TYPING & POSTING A MORE CONCISE OPINION, RATHER THAN VERBOSE, IN NINE PERCENT THE SPACE THAT THE OTHER POSTERS TAKE TO STATE AN OPINION, & GETTING HATE RESPONSE FOR MY POOR GRAMMAR & USE OF CAPS, & USING [&] FOR [AND]...
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