Presenation on Cyber Bullying

[Linadae]

Cyber bullying is more effective in more personal areas like Facebook. How can someone cyber bully an avatar in a game? Some one being extremely rude or insulting shouldn't be considered cyber bullying. A bully IRL can find ways to get at you. In game you just /ignore and grow up.

You'd be surprised how you can be bullied in game. In ff11 a friend and I had a falling out and she bullied me unmercifully. All over a guy I wasn't even interested in. I was kicked from my Linkshell, she shouted I bought gil, and constantly harassed me about the guy in question.

She wouldn't stop no matter how many times I told her that the guy and I were only friends. We were more like brother and sister than anything else. The guy and I both ended up quitting the game though he did return for a bit and ended up changing servers and names to escape her and the damage she did to his reputation.

[statikcat]

You'd be surprised how you can be bullied in game. In ff11 a friend and I had a falling out and she bullied me unmercifully. All over a guy I wasn't even interested in. I was kicked from my Linkshell, she shouted I bought gil, and constantly harassed me about the guy in question.

She wouldn't stop no matter how many times I told her that the guy and I were only friends. We were more like brother and sister than anything else. The guy and I both ended up quitting the game though he did return for a bit and ended up changing servers and names to escape her and the damage she did to his reputation.

That sounds more like spamming and drama. Can't you /ignore someone in these games (I have not had to so assuming)? If they are saying things not appropriate can't you contact game support and they can review the logs and suspend an account for harassment of some kind?

[Anandra]

Unfortunately, I've met my fair share of cyber bullying throughout my MMOs. A few communities have been notorious for bad behavior and that has put an early end to my playing of those games.

Saddest case of cyber bullying happened in WoW to one of my guildmates. She was a healer and pretty fragile mentally. Unfortunately, she was a pretty weak healer and when I partied with her, I inwardly cringed, knowing there were going to be plenty of wipes. She started going through a particularly rough time--problems in her marriage, general deterioration of her mental state. Then we had some nasty guild drama happen where some not so nice stuff was going on and things were getting downright mean. As she started doing more runs outside the guild groups where frankly we had carried her, people started getting increasingly mean to her. Some of the WoW PUGs seemed to attract the dregs of humanity. After a string of bad runs where players were actually encouraging her to kill herself, they finally got their wish. After a culmination of guild events, toxic community dealings and problems in real life, she had a nervous break down, suicide attempt, and ended up in a psych ward where fortunately she got help. She gave up MMOs---got a bit addicted to FB games from what I could see. I think that she got better but haven't been in contact with her for quite a few years. I hope that she has stayed away from MMOs since they seemed to be a dangerous place for her mentally. I could tell that after every bad run in a PUG, she was crushed. Absolutely crushed.

I've come across so many people like this actually. Some find MMOs to be a refuge from whatever is troubling them in their lives. I met terminally ill people, mentally unstable people, people going through significant life events. I know that a standard come back would be---"This is the internet, grow a thicker skin." On the other hand, you never know what someone may be going through and it is best to always be kind. Just my opinion. Frankly, if a player tells another player to kill themselves, threaten them, etc, I would love to see HARSH action taken. Ban the account or give them an extraordinarily long time out from the game. Some harassment is over the top and should be dealt with accordingly.

I do have to second what Allyra said above. Perhaps look at other cases of cyberbullying where you can collect more data. As a parent of a middle schooler, cyberbullying is foremost on my mind. Our last school had some horrendous problems with this where the school district had to get involved. With so many social media sites out there, it is always a challenge for a parent.

[DardGhalawad]

You'd be surprised how you can be bullied in game. In ff11 a friend and I had a falling out and she bullied me unmercifully. All over a guy I wasn't even interested in. I was kicked from my Linkshell, she shouted I bought gil, and constantly harassed me about the guy in question.

She wouldn't stop no matter how many times I told her that the guy and I were only friends. We were more like brother and sister than anything else. The guy and I both ended up quitting the game though he did return for a bit and ended up changing servers and names to escape her and the damage she did to his reputation.

Excuse me for dwindling in your FFXI life, but was that in the world Cerberus? I remember something similar happening with 3 members from the ls I was in, and that wasn't funny to watch <.<;

[Linadae]

Excuse me for dwindling in your FFXI life, but was that in the world Cerberus? I remember something similar happening with 3 members from the ls I was in, and that wasn't funny to watch <.<;

Fenrir actually. It was pretty shocking to me too. I was not expecting her to get so unhinged. Specially over a guy half her age. In any case, call it spam call it drama, it's still bullying. It's one person purposely making another's life miserable. Motives may change but the results are the same.

I was bullied in school and it was long before cyber-bullying came about. And to be honest, the term ,bullying, really made it sound nicer than it was. If it had been adults doing this to another adult it would have fallen under the term torture. People would have ended up in jail but because it was children it was passed off as kids just being kids and if I ignored them they'd stop. Well that doesn't work.