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Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Internet: Cyberbullies



Jericho Junction had a posting in Sept. about this subject and I wanted to present more information since anyone using the internet can fall prey.


"The Internet provides the perfect forum for cyberbullies, individuals whose aim is to gain gratification from the distress caused by provoking and tormenting others.

Many serial bullies are also serial attention-seekers. More than anything else they want attention. It doesn't matter what type of attention they get, positive or negative, as long as they can provoke someone into paying them attention. It's like a 2-year-old child throwing a tantrum to get attention from a parent. The best way to treat bullies is to refuse to respond and to refuse to engage them - which they really hate. In other words, do not reply to their postings, and on forums carry on posting without reference to their postings as if they didn't exist. In other words, treat nobodies as nobodies.

The anger of a serial bully is especially apparent when they come across someone who can see through them to espy the weak, inadequate, immature, dysfunctional aggressive individual behind the mask.

The objectives of bullies are Power, Control, Domination, Subjugation. They get a kick out of seeing you react. It doesn't matter how you react, the fact they've successful provoked a reaction is, to the bully, a sign that their attempt at control have been successful. After that, it's a question of wearing you down. The more your try to explain, negotiate, conciliate, etc the more gratification they obtain from your increasingly desperate attempts to communicate with them. Understand that it is not possible to communicate in a mature adult manner with a disordered individual who's emotionally retarded.

The Number One rule for dealing with this type of behaviour is: don't respond, don't interact and don't engage. This is not as easy to do as it sounds. It's a natural response to want to defend yourself, and to put the person right. However, never argue with a serial bully; it's not a mature adult discussion, but like dealing with a child or immature teenager; whilst the serial bully may be an adult on the outside, on the inside they are like a child who's never grown up - and probably never will. Serial bullies and harassers often have disordered thinking patterns and do not share the same thoughts or values as you.

Although you may be the target of the cyberbully's anger, you can train yourself to act as an observer. This takes you out of the firing line and enables you to study the perpetrator and collect evidence. When people use bullying behaviours they project their own weaknesses, failings and shortcomings on to others. In other words, they are telling you about themselves by fabricating an accusation based on something they themselves have done wrong. Whenever you receive a flame mail or hate mail, train yourself to instinctively ask the question, "What is this person revealing about themselves this time?"





WHOA is a volunteer organization founded in 1997 to fight online harassment




How to spot signs and symptoms of serial bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths
including the sociopathic behaviour of the industrial psychopath and the corporate psychopath.



"Most organisations have a serial bully. It never ceases to amaze me how one person's divisive, disordered, dysfunctional behaviour can permeate the entire organisation like a cancer."
Tim Field

"The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance my deride it, but in the end, there it is."
Winston Churchill

3 comments:

Unknown said...

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial

This was the best thing I have read all week.

The only psychology I have ever had was a 101 class and having to read a few psychological profiles here and there in college, along with various seminars I have attended and readings I have done surrounding psycho-educational topics. So this was mostly all new information for me.

I have always believed that information is empowering and this certainly was.

I wish I had read this very detailed information back in June.

It will be very telling who the real bullies are now by watching the reactions to this information being made available to the general public. As it says in the article, what the bully fears is others having information such as this.

Thank you for something I will carry with me outside of my interactions in the Jericho community.

maybei said...

Interesting article and link.

Thank you.

Hawksdomain said...

Jane, I did find this post of yours very interesting. I am so glad someone has moved to at least make this known. It is because of these 'cyberbullies' that you will no longer find me involved with anything to do with Jericho.

Good luck to you and to all.