Cyber-bullied teen committed suicide in front of her family: Reports

[Queen of Hamsters]

Said no one that studies mental health, ever.

Well, it's clear that the people saying these things have no such education.
As someone who experiences Anxiety (the real kind), I'd never diminish how someone must feel in order to end his or her life.

I also find it horrid how they believe that teaching kids to "grow a thicker skin" is to prefer over teaching kids that bullying is a shitty thing to do, even if it's done on the web...

[Tijuana]

http://www.ottawasun.com/2016/12/02/...family-reports

How Tragic! We must do something against cyberbullying. How many must die before we act?

Don't worry, Melania Trump is on the case.

[Deleted]

When I grew up, my parents told me to never put my real name or any of my real contact information or pictures on the internet. None of the dangers that existed back then have disappeared, yet kids aren't taught that anymore. In fact it's encouraged to the point where if you don't have a facebook account you might miss a job opportunity simply because you seem anti-social. I mean what kind of a person doesn't have a facebook account?

Funny innit

[Deleted]

We can support legislation to hold cyberbullies accountable. Just look at the havoc they are wreaking.

And peoples ideas about that legislation often stoop into the territory of closely monitoring everyone's online activity and giving the police and government officials access to that data. So sorry, it's tragic, I hope the people involved are caught and severely punished, but no, not even if my own children were victims of cyber bullying in this manner (i'd probably do more and try to counsel my child through it one on one rather than let her continue to use social media with reckless abandon in a really trying emotional time of her life) but this is not the route to take.

I mean I've had it done to me, in the early days of the internet and even in school, girls are fucking monsters to people they want to alienate. Absolute troglodytes of the highest order. You call it being catty or a little petty or all those cute words, nah, son, I think some of them need their hair torn off and a swift knee to the nose, they are shits. But thankfully my parents and my friends managed to pull me through it. If suicide was her answer to this problem then people were not involved enough and she clearly wasn't as well beloved as hindsight is making this seem to those affected.

Also guns. But you know that already.

[Sevarin]

i was 6'4 my first year of middle school, (thankfully im still 6'4 and didnt keep growing). i had a huge scar on my face, wore glasses, and was in band. the typical nerd giant. i think i was called green giant over 4000 times during school. which never made sense to me, cause i wasnt green, and i never really liked vegetables.

people physically fucked with me all the time cause i was never fond of hurting people, and they knew it.


thoughts of kicking their asses often popped into my mind, but thoughts of suicide? why the fucking fuck would i let them win? if i gave up and killed myself, those fucktards would have won, and i sure as hell wasnt about to let that happen.


people being bullied can suck, especially if its physical bullying, but either you deal with it by doing something about it, or you ignore it. suicide over it is just foolish.

people committing suicide over cyberbullying? im kind of disgusted that word even exists, since there are an absurd amount of ways to avoid it. change phone number, dont give it out to random morons. change email, dont give it out to random morons. if youre into that facebook crap, make it private.

yes it sucks that she went and committed suicide, but at the same time.... i can only feel so bad, because it was partially her fault, and she was being rather selfish. one of the main reasons i never considered suicide was because of the people i would leave behind. the ones that loved and cared about me. i could never have done that to my family, no matter how bad things got.

[gyrados]

ok it sucks she killed herself but cmon cyberbullying if its a problem turn it off jesus its like common sense is dead these days

[Daedius]

Why do all of Tennisace's threads sound so condescending in his OP... ?


And on a side note -- how hard is it to just IGNORE things online... ?

[Varitok]

ok it sucks she killed herself but cmon cyberbullying if its a problem turn it off jesus its like common sense is dead these days

Because lives are online now, you're telling them to not interact with their friends and have an online existence, like it or not thats what it is. Stop being one of those people who just go "LOL TURN OFF THE COMPUTER". It's not that easy without being alienated and detatched from your friends.

[darkwarrior42]

Alright, few facts about suicide, because the amount of self-righteousness in this thread is more than a little bit sickening.

1) The vast majority of suicides are impulsive acts. If you can stop a person from completing a suicidal gesture, most often they won't immediately try again. They still need help, of course, but it's not an on/off switch or an irrevocable decision.
--If you don't believe me, look at studies or discussions about certain small changes that have drastically impacted suicide rates. Changing stoves to not be so readily used to kill yourself, changing windows in buildings to be resistant to jumping through or unable to be opened.... these sorts of little things stymie a person's attempt to kill themself in that moment, and more often than not by the time they're home or somewhere else where they would be able to act, they've changed their mind.

2) You don't know these people, or what they're going through. Everyone reacts differently. If you're telling them it's their fault, you're basically saying they didn't have a right to live in the first place. Ever have something bad happen and need to talk to someone else about it? Well, I've never needed to talk to others to deal with things, but that's because I internalize. I'm very introspective by nature, and when something happens I want time to myself to think it through. Perhaps I should insult others and tell them they're weak for needing to talking to others when something bad happens? Perhaps I should tell them it's common sense to be able to think things through? Or maybe that would be insenstive, stupid, and fail to consider that no two people are alike and the way I deal with things has no relation at all to how others deal with things.
That ignores the possibilities of there being other things wrong outside of the bullying, or physical issues, or actual mental disorders, or any of the other factors that could have played a part in this.

3) "Cyber-bullying" has another name: bullying. The medium is largely irrelevant. It's real people treating others like crap, and the fact that it's done via a digital medium doesn't change that fact.

4) If you're at the point of suicide, you're not thinking rationally. Criticizing them for not thinking of others, for not thinking long-term... that's not what was going through their head. I can't say for sure what was going through this person's head, of course, but typically it's something about how things will never get better.
---That's not just for people that are depressed, by the way. There are people who have killed themselves when everything was going well, because they were convinced that things would never be that good again, and that thought was more than they could take.

The only thing that truly surprises me in all this is that she shot herself... whether it's biological or cultural, typically males are more likely to shoot themselves than females. Females are more likely to use drugs or some other method that's not as bloody. She may have been one of the exceptions, but it also makes me wonder if there was something else going on, or if things were substantially worse than even the article made it sound.

My sympathies to the family, and I hope they stay away from threads like these full people people telling them their daughter didn't deserve to live.

- - - Updated - - -

Why do all of Tennisace's threads sound so condescending in his OP... ?


And on a side note -- how hard is it to just IGNORE things online... ?

From the OP:

Raul Vela also told CNN her schoolmates, who reportedly had bullied Brandy about her weight for years, used fake online accounts with Brandy’s photos that solicited sex to torment the teen, adding that they even got her cellphone number so they could continue the harassment well into the night.

Obviously would have been trivial to stop seeing her schoolmates, turn off her phones, make sure nobody at school had any means of contacting her... and I'm quite sure the sorts of people who are willing to do this sort of thing would not have made fun of her for running away or making it hard to contact her, because those sorts of people NEVER take that kind of reaction as encouragement to try even harder....

But yes, ignoring things online would obviously have fixed the problem, I'm sure.

[Daedius]

Obviously would have been trivial to stop seeing her schoolmates, turn off her phones, make sure nobody at school had any means of contacting her... and I'm quite sure the sorts of people who are willing to do this sort of thing would not have made fun of her for running away or making it hard to contact her, because those sorts of people NEVER take that kind of reaction as encouragement to try even harder....

But yes, ignoring things online would obviously have fixed the problem, I'm sure.

Then as many people have added, grow a thicker skin ... if people see it affecting you they'll just continue to do so, if not they get bored and move on.

[Tennis]

Don't worry, Melania Trump is on the case.

What does she plan to do?

- - - Updated - - -

Need better mental health care, clearly.

Just saying so doesn't make it happen. Actually take some action.

[Aggrophobic]

You have the power! Have children, and raise them to be kind and understanding and tolerant.

As to what to do about others? Not my kids, not my problem. All I can do, is if I have a child, I will teach them to have thicker skin.

It might very well be your problem though.

[Fox Trodden]

We can support legislation to hold cyberbullies accountable. Just look at the havoc they are wreaking.

Only thing you can really do is when you find a (cyber)bully is to step on them, that will let the person being picked on know they aren't alone, but you can't make it illegal for someone to be an ass, nobody is perfect not even you i'm sure. (yes I know i'm bit late on this one)

[twiddler]

Because lives are online now, you're telling them to not interact with their friends and have an online existence, like it or not thats what it is. Stop being one of those people who just go "LOL TURN OFF THE COMPUTER". It's not that easy without being alienated and detatched from your friends.

Says a lot about the poster's social life if he/she can't realize that social media is a means to communicate with people they physically know. We can even push it further to the mobile apps advertised as promoters of free speech in a world full of political correctness that are simply used as locality based gossip/bullying channels. "LOL TURN OFF THE COMPUTER" is a pretty thoughtless response.

[WintersLegion]

Only thing you can really do is when you find a (cyber)bully is to step on them, that will let the person being picked on know they aren't alone, but you can't make it illegal for someone to be an ass, nobody is perfect not even you i'm sure. (yes I know i'm bit late on this one)

That's the thing though a lot of times the reason bullying reaches that point is because people don't want to get involved for one reason or another.

[Fox Trodden]

That's the thing though a lot of times the reason bullying reaches that point is because people don't want to get involved for one reason or another.

Yeah, I'm guilty of that too, will try to stand up for others more when I find it, especially since I've been mashed by them too when I was younger. TY for reminding me of this

[May90]

I found a spider in my apartment a few days ago. How horrible! What can we do to prevent this from happening?!

[Tennis]

toughen up...

Did you read the article!

[Cthulhu 2020]

DON'T WORRY GUYS

If you just keep saying "They should turn off their computers" and "GET A THICKER SKIN" on internet forums, I'm sure the cyber bullying problem will end.

[Mistame]

kill yourself faggot

You can be charged in court already. If you tell someone to kill themselves, and they do it. Thats assisted suicide.

That's retarded. The right to life, like so many other rights, includes the right to not exercise it.

Not when its a teenager in question. Their brains are still developing and thus cannot think as responsibly as adults can.

She was 18. If, in 18 years, she hadn't learned that people can be dicks, that's on her parents (and maybe society).

No one is denying anything, we can see mental case in this very thread.

Thanks for making that point for me.

I also find it horrid how they believe that teaching kids to "grow a thicker skin" is to prefer over teaching kids that bullying is a shitty thing to do, even if it's done on the web...

It's not fucking binary. Kids should be taught to have thicker skins. They should also be taught not to be cunts and not to shoot themselves because someone hurt their fee-fees.