Cyberbullying

     1 year ago, on my way back home from school, I checked the Twitter app since I noticed some notifications. I figured it's just the usual: some likes on some replies I made, maybe even casual replies. But instead, it felt like a whole attack. I saw a bunch of people reply to a tweet I made, in which I took a joke they made to offense. Let me make this clear: I wasn't in on the joke. I wasn't aware that what they said was out of pure sarcasm. Even despite that, they went ahead and replied, mocking me, teasing me, and calling me a troll (when I wasn't, I was just unaware). I wish I could've just taken it in and laughed it off, but I couldn't. I tried fighting back, but they kept teasing. I tried to make them stop by expressing myself, but that was obviously a dumb idea, so they didn't care. So I decided to just go private for a few days, started to vent on my account to people who followed me and actually understood me, and disabled notifications ultimately (and still have them off) so I wouldn't have my heart racing in worry again from another case in the future.

I’ve had to deal with so much these past 2 weeks and now these mfs are ganging up on me so I could hate myself even more, I can’t fking take this anymore
Privating soon pic.twitter.com/hTkASQYB1Z

— • • • (@SaltehTSS) January 19, 2022

    I've been fragile my whole life, and I'm not even exaggerating or trying to victimize myself. I've been so sensitive to so many things, and I sometimes find it hard to live in the world we live in today. This leads me to sometimes prefer spending my time with the online world, where I can meet nice people with similar interests so easily and discover new things. Being in online communities with cool people gives me comfort. But along the way, I'll sometimes alert people on accident and suddenly become a target for saying something not at all inappropriate, there's so many cases of me doing that. After a while, I've come to realize that the online world is sometimes like the real world I know. I carry my fragility and sensitivity from the real world to the online world and just can't help it, which is why I feel the similarities. I know other people will say that cyberbullying isn't real, I've seen screenshots of a Tyler, the Creator tweet in which he jokes about how cyberbullying isn't real and how people should just walk away from the screen and close their eyes, and though I believe he's right about how people could avoid it, it's hard for some not to feel offended by it, myself included. Like, whenever I've felt like I've been attacked, it's made a mark on me mentally, and I find it hard to forget about it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. I just wish more people were aware of how the things they say could effect people online. I've known about so many popular people on the internet who've had a hard time dealing with cyberbullying and eventually ended it all for themselves so they wouldn't need to feel anything anymore, I don't want to bring up any examples for I feel that it wouldn't be too respectful, comparing my experiences online to theirs. I just wish there were more people who took stuff like that into consideration.

    Last month, I watched the 1998 anime series 'Serial Experiments Lain' and I loved it, it struck out to me so much. It perfectly encapsulates and displays the dangers of technology, the online world, its effect on others, and how some treat it more seriously than others do. I wish more people could maybe take stuff like that into consideration, because some will treat the real world and the online world as the same.

-Anthony “Salteh” S. • • •