Ninth grade was supposed to be a fresh start for Marie’s son: new school, new children. Yet by last October, he had become withdrawn. Marie prodded. And prodded again. Finally, he told her.
“The kids say I’m saying all these nasty things about them on Facebook,” he said. “They don’t believe me when I tell them I’m not on Facebook.”
But apparently, he was.
Marie, a medical technologist and single mother who lives in Newburyport, Mass., searched Facebook. There she found what seemed to be her son’s page: his name, a photo of him grinning while running ”” and, on his public wall, sneering comments about teenagers he scarcely knew.
Someone had forged his identity online and was bullying others in his name….
Now you all know why I refuse to have anything to do with Facebook…….and friends are urging me to use it.
I have to admit I am the last generation of folks to come of age before the Internet imbedded in life. I remember a world with the internet, so I always have to strain to understand the concept of “cyber bully.” I guess the world I grew up in had bullies you only had to worry about if they had a rock to throw at you. I have trouble understanding a virtual bully. I guess I’m a relic from the time (not too long ago) that would just unplug the monster and be done with it.
a “world without the internet”-sorry, typo.
2, I too have the same mindset being pre-internet.
Same here. I don’t have FaceBook but my wife and children do. Of course, I only carry a free cell phone with no texting and they all carry smart phones.
Actually, this taking on the name of somebody you dislike is not uncommon. About 5 years ago I was silly enough to get into a cyber war with some snot nosed 15 year old on the subject of her posting annonymous nastygrams on her prolife schoolmates blog. (I signed my name and called her a coward for being annonymous etc. etc. whatever – I’m sure everyone is familiar with that sort of prideful idiocy).
Anyway she set up a facebook page using my “real” name as her annonymous cyber handle. So apparently I live in California “luv boyz” am into some sort of rock band and can’t spell. Oh well.
Actually, I think it is hilarious and further has the beneficial effect of increasing my annonymity because her writings tend to be more googlable than much of my prior writings, and give the impression that I am a harmless and not particularly bright nitwit who lives in California. Since I can deny her writings fairly easily if she ever did something serious (since I don’t live in California and she does not have any other ID on me) I find this false identity a rather useful cover. I would just as soon keep a low profile, as I think we are entering a period where it may become dangerous to write plainly.
[url=http://www.spywareviruscleaner.com/How-to-Remove-stdrt.exe.html]Spyware and virus[/url] are the growing fast online threat, infecting nearly 95% of Internet connected computers. In this case, what can you do if you want to get away from spyware virus infection?