Harassment Without Borders: How cyberbullying victims are blamed for their fame
alexander savina
For more than a month, the Russian Internet continues to discuss the situation of Diana Shurygina. Last April, 17-year-old Diana accused 21-year-old Sergei Semenov of rape. The court found Sergei guilty and sentenced him to eight years in a strict regime colony; later sentence mitigated. They tried to figure out the situation on Channel One - the stories of Diana devoted the release of the program “Let them talk”. After the ether, the Shurygin family faced harassment: the girl’s mother was beaten on the street, her father’s car was punctured by tires, the family had to move, and Diana herself was forced to drop out of college. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the harassment - the Internet was flooded with numerous memes, and Burger King used its image in advertising.
After that, the First Channel released two more parts “Let them talk”, the second release of the program, Andrey Malakhov, began by discussing the bullying Diana and her family faced. Many still do not believe in the rape of Diana, but because of the harassment, they began to treat her a bit softer - even Sergey, who was interviewed from the colony, opposed the prosecution of the Shurygin family. Nevertheless, the bullying of Diana did not stop, and many are confident that the shooting helped the girl to achieve the glory bloggers dream about (Andrei Malakhov himself expressed this opinion on the program). But can mass mockery and ridicule be considered synonymous with popularity?
Harassment itself is not a new phenomenon: since the story by Vladimir Zheleznikov, The Scarecrow, and the eponymous film by Rolan Bykov, came out, its mechanisms have changed little. Bullying is violence, physical or psychological: repetitive bullying, ridicule, boycotts, the spread of false rumors and much more. The essence of persecution is in the unequal distribution of forces: the one who mocks others feels stronger, and the victim cannot find the strength and courage to respond to the abuser. There are also situations where the same person is both a victim and an offender: for example, if older brothers and sisters are bullied by a teenager, and he is poisoning a classmate. The aggressors are trying to influence the self-esteem of the victim and expect a strong emotional reaction from her. At the same time, those who persecute others rarely realize what they are doing: they often believe that there are objective reasons for bullying and the victim deserves what happens to her with her behavior.
If fifteen years ago, bullying was associated primarily with the school, now the Internet is increasingly involved in it. Harassment has no age restrictions, but more often and more painful this problem manifests itself in adolescents. The Internet makes persecution unavoidable for them: if earlier teenagers could take a break from bullying at home or change their school or address (at the very least, move to another city), social networks do not leave such an opportunity. The victim has practically no safe space.
There is no universal portrait of a person who mocks others, but in a certain environment, anyone can become an aggressor.
The exact history of cyberbullying is difficult to trace, but there are key points. For example, the situation of Monica Lewinsky, who calls herself a “patient zero” is cyber-hydraulic. In 1998, she became aware of her affair with married US President Bill Clinton - as Lewinsky admitted, it took her years to recover from the mass public humiliation that followed. “Although it happened before the emergence of social networks, people could post comments on the Internet, send e-mail stories and cruel jokes. The media was full of my photos; they were used to sell newspapers and banner online advertising to keep people watching televisions,” she said at a TED conference.
Scientific journalist Francis Dype recalls how, when she was 13, her friend abused her: she broke her email, periodically deleted all her letters and left only mocking messages sent to her from her own address - and also set reminders in her calendar "Kill yourself." With the advent of social networks, it has become even simpler to influence a person: thanks to smartphones, we are online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it seems the only way to disconnect from what is happening is to stop using the Internet completely (although it’s not a fact that it will stop hate flows) . Personal data posted on the Internet, threats (anonymous and not), victim’s fake pages, and mocking public pages are just a few of the many ways to influence a victim.
Susan Suerer, a psychology professor who studies the problem of harassment, believes that there is no universal portrait of a person who mocks others - but in a certain environment, anyone can become an aggressor. “Somehow the mother of the girl who committed suicide because of the harassment told me that those who mocked her daughter were“ ordinary children, ”she says.“ The conditions of a small town and a small school contributed to bullying. ”
The Internet is an environment where existing connections are felt closer. In addition, here you can act anonymously, you do not have to meet the victim personally and see her face-to-face reaction - and sometimes the victim, in principle, does not have the strength to respond, so it’s even harder to realize the consequences of your actions. Attacking is easier for others to join: sending a meme or putting a comment under a comment is easier than surrounding a victim in a school corridor. If the situation becomes public, thousands of users are connected to the persecution - remember, for example, how Gamergate developed, or the numerous public groups where they scoff at strangers. As in the case of criticism, it seems to us that on the Internet, our opinion is always appropriate and necessary.
The Internet gives a feeling of impunity and unreality of what is happening: few people realize that there is a living person on the other side of the screen. Without personal contact, we often cannot understand what the other is experiencing, or interpret his reaction incorrectly.
At the same time, the effects of cyberbullying are quite real and tangible. According to a survey of 4,700 teenagers from different countries, every fifth teenager faced harassment on the Web - and more than half of them believe that cyberbullying is worse than “traditional” harassment. The UN considers cyberbulling to be no less dangerous than physical violence - and notes that women suffer more from it. According to the doctor of psychological sciences and the professor of the psychology department of the Moscow State University named after MV Lomonosov Galina Soldatova, every fifth child in Russia regularly faces harassment in real life or on the Internet, and every fourth acts as an aggressor, and this situation has not improved over the years .
WHO considers bullying to be a threat to the health of all who are involved in it: victims and offenders, and even those who simply watch the situation without interfering with it. In the news regularly there are reports of victims of harassment who commit suicide - against this background, comparing the popularity of victims of cyberbullying and bloggers look at least inappropriate.
Anyone who finds himself in a situation of cybertracks knows that a trauma injury cannot bring joy, no matter how popular you are.
They are trying to find ways to protect themselves against cybertravels in the world: the UK police have changed their rulebook to more effectively deal with cybercrime - including fake pages set up on behalf of another person, and in Sweden last year they tried to introduce a special law to help combat bullying. and harassment online.
The accusations that a person who finds himself in a situation of cyber-hydraulic, uses the "glory" that has fallen on him, and therefore is in a very favorable position, are untenable. Diana Shurygin is accused of using the program “Let them talk” for self-promotion: she records video messages, uses the phrase “on the bottom” that has become a meme and attends events for bloggers. But anyone who finds himself in a situation of cybertravel knows that the trauma of persecution cannot bring joy, no matter how popular you become. The only thing the victim wants is to get rid of her and public humiliation as soon as possible, and in this case the video blog may be an attempt to take the situation under its control.