Harassed online?

[jordonus]

first of all, is this oversensitivity some kind of American thing?

The irony in this question is that the US has one of the freest implementations of free speech in the world.

[Mystrome]

What seems to be a 'thing' around here (probably elsewhere too) can be really tough when it happens to you. It starts in for example a classroom as a disagreement of some sort, or somebody being picked on by a bully. Then after a little a fake account in popular social media is created to get all sorts of crap spewn out into the world. I come from a large family of teachers of all sorts and am a driving instructor myself, and have heared these stories frequently both directly and indirectly. I know kids who've lost (summer)jobs over stuff like that.

Don't say crap like 'you can ignore/block/unfriend/etc, it's no biggie', you cannot defend yourself when it happens. By the time you manage to get fake accounts down the damaga has been done, and in the mean time you've been humiliated. I know 1 person who after 7 years still can't find work in his field of expertise because of shit like that.

[Aspect of Death]

Aaaw Manakin poor thing will be bombarded now.

[Flalia4]

I've gotten lots of such pictures on another forum as well. People are just creepy. :|

Sometimes with detailed descriptions of what they would want to do to me. ._.

*goes and deletes private messages I was writing up* . I had a ton of female friends on wow get harassed by a guy once so I made him think I was a chick then sent him a picture of me shirtless pressing my sweet moobs together. He did not appreciate my kind gesture.

[Borgiest]

Don't make friends online, don't make eye contact ever, keep one hand in your pocket and the other hand on your wallet.

[Deleted]

You are a moron - please use the logic you speak of. that is quite possibly the stupidest thing ive read all year.

So if I look at a picture, that I dont particularly find apealing, they are then harassing me???

its bad people like you that cause cancer.

And this was probably the dumbest thing I've read this year. YOU CANT SEND REVEALING PHOTOS OF YOURSELF IF IT'S NOT WARRANTED.
You can't send people pics of things you don't find to be socially acceptable. When you pass that border, you're in there somewhere.

And the cure cancer part? Fuck you.

[Raphtheone]

1) I'm gonna say if you go up and plant a hand on each cheek and make them bounce, it's probably going to be funny, and you deserve a slap in the face, and if the girl doesn't slap you in the face then she probably doesn't feel too "harassed". As for a slap on a woman's bottom once, nope not harassment, inappropriate? maybe if she doesn't like it. 2) How about when football coach slaps the players on the ass as they are leaving the tunnel? 3) Sexual Harassment? 4) Honestly, up tight conservatives like to make the biggest deal about the littlest shit. 5) Girl gets slapped on the ass? Fucking deal with it herself like an adult… 6) I was on a boat last year and this girl was all over me, she dropped something in between my legs as she was sitting next to me, she put her entire body over my waist and bent through my legs to pick up the object she dropped, I slapped her on the ass as it was IN MY FACE, and she flipped out. Ok, mental note, don't slap her ass again.

As I'm from Sweden (as you can see to the left), I'm speaking from that perspective. I'm not talking about personal opinions, since they're completely irrelevant when living in a society. I don't know where you're from, so I can't know if you're disagreeing with me due to personal belief, or that your local laws state differently, or that you simply want to argue over the internet with some random, albeit rather handsome, face. Here in Sweden (inserted numbers into the quote for reference), by law:

1: That's harassment.
2: That's harassment.
3: Yes. It's sexual harassment.
4: I can only speculate on this, but you're probably right.
5: You guessed it; harassment.
6: You were sexually harassed.

No one has the right to touch your body without your permission. That means, for the cave people out there who find this concept alien, permission FIRST, then touching. And I don't even have to touch you to sexually harass you. I just have to sit in a corner masturbating while locking my eyes on you, I don't even have to show you my private parts (as in, I can fake it, and it's still harassment).

The same logic applies to verbal harassment. If I call you a fucking homo (though I'd never), it's harassment. That single sentence, no repeating, no stalking, nothing, just that single sentence in itself is harassment. Even situation based harassment (though this is where it gets a little... too far) use the same logic. If I'm in a wheelchair, and I can't get onto the bus, that's harassment. If you're ignoring me due to my race, religious beliefs, sexual identity or whatever, that's harassment. Even if you're just looking at me in a funny way and I feel you're objectifying me, you guessed it, I don't even want to type that word anymore.

This is the third time I've explained it in this thread, yet people still argue with me. I've got to change my sig to my old one I used to run back in the days.

[Tradewind]

According to some in this thread that does indeed count as harassment.

I think we need to take that word back.

Retard 4 Life

[Deleted]

Can't believe I just read this all. Harassment on the internet does exist. Yes, you can block people, delete the things, but the feeling lingers. "Just grow a thick skin" only supports the case that it exists. Why would you grow a thick skin if it didn't?

And yourself, how do you cope with people trying to harrass you? You're probably too proud to feel harrassed, you know they're wrong and acting just silly. How do you know? Because you've learned somewhere that you should always be proud of yourself. Everyone should at least be a bit proud of himself.
But what if you didn't? What if your parents never told you that they loved you, your teachers told you you were shit, what do you have left to be proud of? You'd feel worse and worse and you'll make their expectations happen: you will become shit. Now you get to the internet, where anonymity makes everyone a troll. Can you imagine what happens?

Now, I've grown this thick skin over the years myself. Some years ago, some guy that had been removed from our guild kept bothering us with loud music on our ventrilo server. IP banned him, changed the password... Didn't help. He probably had someone on the inside telling him the password. Does growing a thick skin help against some guy playing loud music when trying to explain raid tactics? Of course not. We chose to fight fire with fire and DDOSed him. Problem solved :P

Truth be told, harassment on the internet can be much worse than it may seem, especially if it ends with RL stalking. "Protect your identity." Of course, that's true. But what if some "friend" posts your stuff on the internet because you got in an argument with him/her? Shouldn't have told him your stuff? He lives just down the street, of course he knows your name and address... Get him arrested? Your stuff is still on the internet....

tl;dr: not everyone has a thick skin and even if you do, that doesn't always help

[Deleted]

How can you be harrassed online? Does someone hold you from pressing X or not reading the text?

[Graeham]

I've been unfortunate enough to be harassed online back when I was more heavily invested in WoW. To make a long story short it involved a very spiteful individual trying desperately to drive a wedge between my partner and I. There was also a complete psychopath who somehow managed to track down my personal details and began harassing a few close friends and family members over Facebook because of some pretty ridiculous role-play related drama. That was...difficult to explain to people.

[Drewman]

How can you be harrassed online? Does someone hold you from pressing X or not reading the text?

It depends, there were a few cases of harrasment (well, more like bullying) last year I think that led to the suicide of the victim. Harrasment is not just private messages on a forum. In those cases it was emails, facebook pages, photos, youtube videos etc... It can turn your life into a living hell. That is if some of your (useful) personal infos are known by the offenders. Of course if they don't know shit, the impact they could have is fairly limited and the X or an "ignore" button solves the problem.

[Collegeguy]

Everyone has weird, stalkerish, creepy things happen to them. I think the only difference is that some people call it harassment and others don't care perhaps.

I have had penis cams sent to me and was sexually harassed twice at work first was a gay guy and the second was a female boss. I never made complaints nor cared really.

[Stickinator]

I might have been...not really sure.... I usually dont listen to people so that might be why

[Twoddle]

How can you be harrassed online? Does someone hold you from pressing X or not reading the text?

Yup. If you make yourself vulnerable because that's your thing you have to take into account that you will be harassed. I don't understand it really, I don't harass and I've never been harassed (yet), either that or I handle it well.

[MrKnubbles]

Have you ever actually played in a group? People throw out insults all the time. They will tell you to uninstall and kill yourself. Yes, that is harassment.

[Deleted]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

It's really cool that some of you guys are ultra tough and don't care about anything and wouldn't care if someone said such-and-such or if they found where you worked and started calling you at work or at home, or spamming you with dick pics or whatever else. I'm glad that you don't feel like these things would upset you and that's great.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) not everyone is a clone of you. Some people really do not want this stuff. That doesn't make them a bad person, or stupid, or whatever, it just means they feel strongly about different things to you. If that makes them over sensitive... so what? Is that a problem? The world would be a boring place if everyone was the same. Telling someone to get off the internet because they don't want to see pictures of strangers dicks is like saying "don't go outside if you don't want to get raped". It's ridiculous, it's victim blaming, and it needs to stop.

And the "grow a thicker skin - it's only harrassment if you let it upset you" crowd: You can't just "grow thicker skin". Having thick skin comes from a place of security, and you can't just choose to feel secure. Especially while you are being harrassed and stalked.

I know it's the cool thing these days to be all untouchable and to not care about anything and blah blah blah because that's what you see in movies and videogames and people try to emulate such characters but please understand that not everyone is the same as you, and there's nothing wrong with that, and being different to you and finding different things to you upsetting isn't a bad thing and nothing about it invalidates those feelings.

[Twoddle]

Have you ever actually played in a group? People throw out insults all the time. They will tell you to uninstall and kill yourself. Yes, that is harassment.

How can you let that get to you though? I had that all through my WoW career.

[Sevyvia]

Okay, so being a straight white male myself, I can't believe I for once have to say this most hated of expression, but: Check your privilege, OP. Seriously. You are -so- obviously a dude. In connection with my job, I have several pen names, some of them female, and the experience of being online is -entirely- different. I'm actually glad I had and have that experience, because it puts things in perspective for me a bit. Harassment is very much possible online.

[Deleted]

It is possible and I heard the news the other day in China, two people were knife killed by a guy. Simply because those two guys were always head-shot him when they were playing CS. The dude firstly harassing them online by cursing and such, then the dude tracked them down in real-life and murdered them.