Dear Straight Talk: I’m in eighth grade and I’m glad you did a column on cyber-bullying. Last year an internet hate group formed when “Rachel” got really mad at “Sarah” for supposedly talking behind her back. In revenge, Rachel started a MySpace page called “WOS” for “War on Sarah.” Nobody realized that Rachel built the webpage until later; she acted like she found it and was just rallying everyone to use it. About a third of my class got in on it and it went out of control. At school Sarah was called names and given dirty looks, online she was threatened to be beat up and killed, and was called a no-good, two-faced prostitute who stole her friends’ boyfriends. Eventually all her friends dumped her and nobody in the middle school would stand up for her.
I moved here right after the “war” was busted, so I wasn’t involved, but I can sort of see how it happened. Sarah was this pretty, rich girl who would state her mind without fear or embarrassment. I think a lot of kids were jealous and wanted to chop her down.
After two months of the “war” Sarah refused to go to school and told her parents. At first they wanted her to ignore it, but when she showed them the WOS webpage they went to the school principal. The principal used the web postings to trace everybody involved. He then gave all those kids and their parents a huge lecture on how it is against the law to threaten and harass someone and he made each kid apologize to Sarah in person. He also permanently blocked MySpace on the school computers and the kids all had to delete their personal MySpace accounts at home.
Sarah tried to come back to school this year, but some kids kept harassing her and calling her names so she transferred to a different school.—K.W.
Dear K.W.: Wars like this have no winners. I hope the primary players receive professional help because the damage incurred is deep for everyone involved.
Psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, author of “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,” calls cyber-bullying the newest evil. Zimbardo has spent his life studying the nature of evil behavior, which he defines as “intentionally behaving in ways that harm others.”
Zimbardo feels that the template for evil exists in each of us, that given the right environment, evil can be activated in anyone. He would say the kids in this hate group were not “rotten apples” but that their environment created a “rotten barrel” in which good kids turned bad.
We can talk all day about willpower and moral choice, but the fact is, environment plays a huge role in behavior. The obesity epidemic is a perfect example. In homes that bombard kids with junk-food ads with little parental modeling or oversight, it is the rare child who will make healthy food choices. So, is the obese child a rotten apple? Of course not. It’s hardly his or her fault.
Similarly, the internet is an environment far from parental oversight where, for young people, shock and awe are prized and popularity is the goal. Are kids who “go too far” in this environment rotten apples? Or is the environment setting them up? Have we provided our children adequate role models and mental conditioning to remain moral within such an environment?
These are questions to consider as more and more kids find themselves bullying others online—while bystanders silently allow it to happen.
I’m impressed that you wrote in and I’m impressed with your school principal. Regardless of how obnoxious or different a person is, nobody has the right to abuse another. I hope schools and parents will warn kids about how certain online environments can bring out the worst in a person—and that such behavior is not acceptable.
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