The saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” is one of the biggest lies. People can be mean and the venom that people speak — or type online — can be hurtful.
One of my favorite underground rappers recently left his previous label and made sure his fans knew the reasons why. He publicly blamed the manager and co-owner of the label and even wrote a song about it, which now has more than 2 million views on YouTube. The same day, the manager had a livestream to give his side of the story after many people bashed him on social media.
“Kill yourself.” “You can’t recover from this.” “You should be ashamed.” “You killed something great.” Those were just a few of the comments left to the label’s manager during the livestream. I do not understand how anyone can be terrible to people they do not even know. It’s not like the manager killed the rapper. In fact, the rapper said he still plans on furthering his career and created his own label. Thankfully, the manager seems to be a strong person and isn’t taking the comments to heart, but the next person to face cyberbullying may not be so lucky.
Cyberbullying takes many forms, including posting hurtful or threatening messages on social networking sites or web pages.
Growing up, we may have witnessed cyberbullying, but were (hopefully) taught that it is not OK to be a cyberbully. Many people may assume adults do not bully others because that is a “teen thing,” but that’s not the case.
About 75 percent of American adults have witnessed online harassment and 40 percent are victims of cyberbullying, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
Whether a rapper blasts his manager on social media, a family member wants to take his or her drama to Facebook or teens want to fight over Twitter, there is absolutely no excuse for other people to chime in and be so harsh to human beings.
As college students, we are adults and we should not only be an advocate for stopping teen cyberbullying, but also adult cyberbullying. We live in a society that has become accepting of many people, so it doesn’t make sense that people are still wasting their time being a bully and causing pain to others.
