on internet hatred: please inquire within.

I only ever had the chance to see you once. It was so far back, almost ten years ago, when you opened for Panic! at the Disco. But I tell you what… I remembered you down the line. and there is nothing better than finding out that the person you saw so long ago is still awesome.
People will always hate each other and there isn’t any getting around that. The hate on Tumblr has driven many to suicide and there has been nothing worse to witness in my lifetime. Would you believe that people take pleasure in causing the death of others? I hope that if someone ever wishes for my demise, it will be because I have found something to fight about. After all, they say that if you have enemies, that only means that you have something for which you stand, and in which you strongly believe.
For as much negativity as you saw tonight, there is ten times as much love. Do you want an army? You’ve got one. You’ve got an army of faces to combat the faceless force of fearmongering and hate.
And… you have support. From more people than show up here. So, yes, keep your chin up, and remember that we are all together and none of us need be alone.
Love.
-Ashley

I think the only advice I could possibly offer to anyone being bullied is to listen to The Mountain Goat’s song ‘You Were Cool.’ Darnielle says it best, and he didn’t even need to try.

Well, that may sound a bit callous but when I was a teenager I used to tell my self: “they are nothing but protons and electrons.” Depersonalizing the people hurting you made things seem like a meaningless computer simulation where nothing really mattered. Then I got older and the trick wasn’t needed anymore. But it helped for a while.

Oh, geez, I don’t think I can add anything worthwhile to this. I mean, I’m seven kinds of wet paper bag when it comes to criticism. I only know about this from the other end of the telescope.

But I reckon being one of those irritating highly sensitive person is one of the reasons why I have developed such a rich inner life, and it’s been such a solace to me, so I totally get when you say that it terrifies you “more to imagine what i WOULD have been like if i’d grown
up without ever knowing what it was like to be disconnected from
everybody.” Oh, fuck, yes. The kingdom of heaven is within and all of that sort of stuff.

I think the ultimate thing for me in the end is what you have already said here – of taking the “Emperors New Clothes” approach to things, by realising that even the emperor is scared, and the best space to learn to be (but which I fall out of 70 times a day) is in that open and vulnerable sort of space where the little kid lives, who voiced what he saw when the emperor’s willie was floating on the breeze right in front of his eyes.

I reckon if I had any kind of overarching theme of what I would consider to be a “successful” life for myself, it would be learning to answer back those voices on the inside that try to cut me down to size. Those voices are scary. I guess it’s why I’ve run from them for so long. But it’s spun me out what happens when I actually speak to some of those voices. Man, they’re scary, and then *they* end up being like wet paper bags as well. Bullies and cowards really until engaged with compassion, and then they change. As within, so without, I tend to think. And so I would love to be able to be compassionate on the outside as well, respond with a bit of class to people who haven’t matured any further pyschologically than projecting their own unowned shit onto other people. But that’s a lifetime challenge, I guess :)

I got so much bullying in High School it actually gave me PTSD. These people tried to kill me in school and outside of school. But the one thing they never did was internet bullying, instead they posted my phone number around school and other places telling people to call me if they wanted to have sex with me. They also used to call my home phone and pretend to be my friend to my parents, before telling me to kill myself over the phone, or just laughing in my ear and saying I was a loner and hanging up.

To all the kids out there who are being bullied or who have been bullied, please don’t give up. I will not lie to you and say that it instantly gets better, these scars are more then just physical, the suicidal thoughts don’t just go away magically, but you need to be strong. Because we are the ones that are going to survive and come out on top, we are the ones that are going to make something of ourselves because you know what, fuck the haters, who are they to say what we can and can’t do, who we can and can’t love?

My biggest piece of advice is find a band and cling to their music, listen to that album so many times that you can sing every single line of it, even when you are asleep. Grab hold of that one song, the song that speaks so powerfully to you that you can’t let it go, I have two and one of them is Bad Habit by The Dresden Dolls. Because it speaks to me, it lets me know that someone else is feeling the same damn thing I am, that someone else knows how I feel when I hurt myself because it’s a bloody release.
But it’s not the way to live your life, hurting yourself just to feel something, just to get some control of your life back. Believe me, I have no control of my life, I live in my room in complete terror unless my parents force me to leave it.
Only one problem. I still live in the town where my bullies live, I see the people who hurt me when ever I go down the street.

And babies you just have to be strong. Because at the end of the day, we are the stronger ones because we have lived through this and we are going to live through this. We will carry scars and they will harden us, but do not let them harden you so much that you can not love or be the person you once were.

Anxiety, Depression, Suicidal, PTSD, Self Harmer… These are just labels, because the main thing that matters, no matter what you come under, is that we all hurt, and we hurt together. And we need to band together in order to make it.

And maybe what I wrote doesn’t make sense, it’s rather hard to type with tears falling down my face. But I just want to let you know that there are people out here going through the same thing, feeling the same things and they are as lost and scared as you are. They want someone to stand up and help them find their voices, help them understand that you can come through this.

And I hope Amanda Palmer does that, because sometimes we just need that one person to cling to in order to survive.

one way would be to practice Mettā meditation on the hater.

I think of this kind of hate as present in more than just
the internet, it’s baked into everything that mainstream society produces, don’t
stand out, don’t be a freak. I’ve been trying to crack the riddle of how you do
it since I became your fan, how you’re able to refrain from taking in the judgement
coming from that cold and shitty world out there and my conclusion was that it’s
the people you surround yourself with, and your courage, and the fact that you
don’t own a tv. So I learned from you, and slowly started shifting my life
towards being closer to people like me, and get away from mainstream media as
much as I can (including harmful online content).

I used to have this argument with a friend of mine in high
school who was part of my we’re-artsy-weirdos-and-we-hate-you-all-because-we’re-better-than-you
group: she said that life is better lived when sticking to just being around
people who are like you, and I thought it was a form of escape, that if you’re
strong enough you should be able to totally be yourself in the most judgemental
of environments. We’re both 29 now and a few months ago I informed her that I
officially think she was right. Just connect to other like-minded people and stay
within that fucking world. It totally remind me of how you described what
cabaret means to you (in your old blog).

The pictures from your video and Amanda Todd’s video you put
up here totally tore me apart – I think that’s where visibility comes in, and I
wonder what would have happened if she knew about who you are, I wonder what
would have happened if she had watched Lana Wachowski’s amazing speech when she
received the HRC visibility award.

I really wish you were older, so that you would have existed
out there when I was a kid / teenager when I grew up, I had exactly 0 people to
look up to, and forming an identity without reflection is literally impossible.
So I had to do it years later, and you were of much help – thank you.

My coping mechanism for the first two and a half years of my hell of a high school experience was…let’s face it, it wasn’t a coping mechanism at all. It was simply allowing others to tear me apart and tearing myself apart as well. For the last year and the upcoming last semester of high school hell, my coping mechanism is and will continue to be wit. Pure, utter, sarcastic wit. “Have fun never getting any!” “Sorry, but…I do believe I’m getting more pussy than you. Har har.” Same for online. I get a hateful comment on my YouTube, I bite back. I don’t bully, but I don’t play nice. Simply rip apart the comment for its flaws and feel awesome about myself for being a MUCH smarter person than they are. Unfortunately, there are people who can’t simply ignore it and throw some sarcasm back at ‘em.

The world sucks. But you, AFP, and all of us do what we can to make it suck a little less. :)

(A little unrelated, but I wanted to thank you because…I sort of went from being a casual listener to a bit of an obsessor this week over your music and I was inspired to write my first song in four years because of you after years of saying that my writing is shit. Thanks. <3)

I tend to talk to a good friend that will let met vent. When there isn’t that around I play my ukulele(learned that lesson from you) or guitar or whatever. I sing whatever comes to mind. Or sometimes I simply scream into a pillow. Sometimes a good cry helps too, no matter how weak you think it is, ya just gotta suck it up a bawl.
That’s what generally comes to my mind when this happens!

I think a lot of internet hate, especially toward artists and creators, is latent envy. People often feel trapped in life. By a job, by a spouse, by inhibitions, by whatever… they just have something that keeps them from being who they truly are. People like you, Amanda, probably remind them of their stagnant life as they watch you pursue your desires, your dreams, and your inspirations… and I think it drives them nuts.

So they hate. With all their might. Why should a “freak” be allowed to have success where they cannot? Why should you get to enjoy everything you go after when they have to suffer the hell of a boring, monotonous life? They just fail to realize that you’ve put in the effort while they tried to live without facing failure. Thing is, when you fear failure, success is difficult to find.

The internet plays a role, too, in the sense that anonymity breeds the safety for them to lash out without consequence.

But this is the trend in them all. A want to avoid consequence, to live “safely.”

The thing to remember is what you’ve already said. No one is alone. We all suffer from anxieties, fears, and self-hatred. We just need to start building each other up to equal levels rather than trying to tear each other down.

I totally agree, I was bullied A LOT at school, it has left me with low self esteem even at over age 40 and I haven’t achieved what I might have done. But I am SO glad that I went to school in the 80s when they didn’t have that technology, like you, I could leave it behind. My nephews are aged 14 and 12, they are right in the age group for this right now. I am so glad they have great support at home and that they seem to be popular boys. My heart goes out so much to those girls cos I at least know some of what they went through but I could leave it behind at home and they couldn’t.

I just want to say that I love you Amanda ! You’re an inspiration for every person (not just teenagers) don’t you feel bad for what stupid people says/thinks about you.. you are yourself, and thats not a thing we see nowadays on must of the people
I’m thankfull high school is over, we were talking about that with a friend last night… Here in Argentina well… kids can get a little bit physical about it, but thats just what it happens, we fight and people forget (afortunely)
but still… theres always someone left behind… a shame.
(sorry for the horrible english) XO -Maggie

Moved to tears, my reply may be incoherent but I have to write down what I feel.

Every year I choose a word to focus on. A word that guides me through a year of adventures.

This year the word is love. The moment I focused on it, all I felt was the many ways I have hated myself in the past. One of the ways I hated myself was using comments others made about me throughout my life.

I also realized that I used this hatred as a shield against my creativity and vulnerability. Many days where I could have created I let myself be stuck in fear and doubt. 

And now there is love. I realize that the hate will still be there and it will still lurk around the corner as I create. It will be there to throw a wrench in the wheel of creativity me if I choose. 

I believe however that I can change the world by believing in love, by being art, by opening my arms and embracing those who feel unloved. That is why my heart aches for Amanda Todd. I wish I could have shown her that love is there for her in abundance. 

I can show it to those in pain now. I can reach out and say I love you to all. Including you. 

Amanda, please google “I love Amanda Palmer”. Don’t let the hate drown out the outpouring of love coming your way, including mine. 

How can there be good without evil, or light without darkness (or the gentle embrace of the night and the glaring heat of the day). Ignore the whispers, they’re just the wind rustling the trees and what the trees know they keep to themselves. Even those who know love know loneliness too, even a glorious fall day with vivid colors tells a tale of melancholy and death and emptiness. I saw a dead bird on the ground, another bird hopping around it, agitated and know birds mate for life. This is life, and even in the winter’s gray, bare trees stark against the snow there is beauty there too, and the fertile earth lie beneath in a slumber. Grapes live in desperation and squeezed into the wine we drink together before going off into our own slumber.

Life is not about being happy. Life is a series of experiences, momentary, sometimes disconnected, sometimes connected, sometimes a gentle surprise, or intensity, or desperation. There is no special purpose for us, we’re just motes in a vast universe, but we belong in that universe and we give it life.

That does not absolve us from rescuing those who are bullied, or bullies for being bullies, or the adults who numb themselves while wrapped in their own mounting misery. Love is a good thing, passion, faith, belief, curiosity. Bullying kills those, and betrayal real or imagined push us over the threshold.

I believe people choose to die when they recognize a pattern of unworkability in their lives, that when doors open for others magically, they close for you, and when others are loved, and cherished, and people save them when they’re in peril, but that a cold, cold presence decided that you will be ignored, unseen, unheard, unloved, and everything and everybody will fail you, but not so for the others. It is my most accurate description of what cruel world or the universe is working against me means.

It’s never one thing that causes it, it’s an unbroken string of things. When you’re bullied time and again and you cry for help but nothing happens and nobody intervenes, and it continues, you lose faith. When you lose faith, you stop crying for help. Sometimes it’s one betrayal, sometimes it takes 3, or 4, or 5. That’s the danger time, and the last chance to save someone.

Sometimes, that happens, but once lost, faith is difficult to regain, and often becomes a hole that like an abscess festers unseen over the years. I don’t know if there is a cure for bullying. Young people we believe foolish enough to commit suicide are also foolish enough to drive others to suicide. Maybe the best thing we can do is as adults make a commitment to justice for the bullied and avoid bestowing cruelty on the bully, instead, guide these kindling to grow their bark and mind their bites.

;>

I don’t know quite where to begin, but I will start by saying that you have kept me alive over the years. I was bullied severely throughout middle school. I was kicked out of the closet by friends I thought I had and it was a constant struggle. Some girls thought it would be funny to spray paint dyke on my locker. I was an easy target. And it didn’t just end at school, I was part of the myspace generation. Hate found its way to me constantly. I was told over and over to kill myself. Eventually I tried. I am thankful that I failed. I got through all of it by listening to your music. You were such a friend to me when no one else was there, a voice of reason and compassion. I am here today because of you. I don’t know what to say other than thank-you for all you’ve done and continue to do in keeping me on this earth. <3

I’ve been doing whatever the hell it is that I do on the Internet, in one form or another, for a bit over ten years. Lots of writing. Some music. Videos, now. In all that time, I haven’t encountered much in the way of malicious trolling. Which fine with me, and I regard it as not so much an indication of any particular brilliance or likability on my part as it is of the utter indifference of the Internet to whatever it is I do. Only once have I ever responded to such a comment, with a blog post. Like so:

[This Person] would like you to know…

…that this is by far the most boring, pretentious shit he has ever seen on the net.

At least, I assume he wants you to know that, otherwise, why take the time to comment?

Or…perhaps it was important to him that I know what he thinks. Yes, I think that must be it. He has seen my towering intellect and witnessed the breadth and depth of my creative genius, and knows that if he can manage to bring himself to the attention of a person such as myself, I might mention him in passing to one of my peers, and he hopes that, eventually, such mention might trickle down to his immediate betters and open doors for him that have hitherto remained closed.

Furthermore, [This Person] advises me to delete this site immediately, get drunk, and then get a life upon regaining consciousness. Sage advice, and not to be dismissed lightly! But it’s so much trouble to delete a site. I’d have to send an e-mail to my hosting company, maybe even make a phone call. However, getting drunk to the point of passing out is always a grand idea, so I’m going to get started on that straight away. In the morning I shall reconsider the meaning and purpose of my existence.

So, consider yourself noticed, dear [Person]! May my brief attention bring you the success you so
obviously crave and richly deserve.

I felt better for having written it…and even better because I never posted it.

That about sums it up for me. Sarcastic, hyperbolic self-confidence in the face of a smallness that is entirely unworthy of any further attention. And mockery.

Because what sort of person has the need to make a deliberate and conscious effort to inflict pain from behind a mask? How much weight are we to give the words of such a person? What value shall we give the opinions of such a person? How much regard should we have for such a person?

All commensurate with the size of that person’s heart and spirit, I should think.

None.

The power of attention is yours. Not theirs.

Story time. I am fat. I’m not a fan of being fat and have, in fact, struggled with it my entire life. I am now 22 and starting cosmetology school later this month. I have to buy all solid black, fancy work clothes because apparently my super hero t-shirts and Converse won’t cut it. Finding things sucks. And that’s just one thing I hate about being fat.

Although these events didn’t occur online, I have been bullied online many times from Xanga to LiveJournal to MySpace to Facebook. All had to do with my weight and my looks, calling me fat and ugly. Some were anonymous, some weren’t. I’ve cried many times over things people have typed to me, and although the below situation was the hardest to deal with for me, I think it is relevant here.

Anyway, I am, and always have been, very realistic about my situation. I was a chubby toddler who turned into a chubbier kid who turned into a fat teenager who turned into a fatter adult. I’m aware of what I look like because mirrors exist; however, people have always felt the need to point it out to me. How kind. It was great when a friend would be pissed at me, and their first insult would be, “well, at least I’m not fat!” Hey, thanks!

The worst was gym class in middle school. We had to change into our uniforms, consisting of shorts and a t-shirt provided by the school. I was always so uncomfortable. I never, ever wore shorts. Not even around my house. I still don’t wear shorts. Ever. And my family didn’t have a lot money, so my gym shoes came from Payless. Those shoes suck so much. They never had any traction on the gym floors, so I would slide all around. And my body would not slide with me. The black girls even made up a little chant just for me.

“Payless shoes ain’t got no grip, I hope that poor fat bitch don’t trip.”

Adorable.

Because there were so many kids in my school, there were four classes combined in the gym at a time with only two teachers. So the supervision was lacking, and not wanting to be a nark, I pretty much just laughed it off and pretended not to notice. At the end of class, the teachers would go into the locker rooms before us, and that’s when one of the boys, Austin, would absolutely terrorize me. I didn’t know Austin until my gym class, and I had never had a conversation with him. He threw insults about my weight, my bad haircut, my make up…everything, although they mostly landed back at my weight.

What was even more fun was that we all had lunch right after gym. At the same time. Even better, Austin’s table was right behind mine. He’d always mock what I had on my tray, calling me a cow. He’d back his chair into me and shove me into my table, sarcastically apologizing to me, saying it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t so fat.

One day, I finally had enough. I told him to shut the fuck up and stop making my life hell. He didn’t. I dropped it. A few weeks later, I was sitting at lunch, and he sat behind me, without bumping into me. “That’s right, bitch,” I thought.

Before the end of the semester, Austin killed himself. I don’t know why or how. I just know that we were all sat down in gym one day and told. I was shocked. This person, who I saw everyday, who said terrible things to me on a daily basis but never had a conversation with me, was gone. Forever. I didn’t say a word. I just went home that day and went to my room and cried all afternoon. I was trying to understand why this happened. That’s when I learned a very important lesson that most of us know very well. Most bullies are the way they are because of how they have been treated. They just don’t know any different. They don’t know how to deal with their emotions, so they lash out.

Austin’s death broke my heart, but it made me open my eyes. What if I had tried to just talk to him? Would it have made any difference? Probably not. But at the end of the day, we’re all human. We’re all broken in a way, and we’re just trying to feel whole. I try to understand where people are coming from, even if they are being horrible to me.

When I would get those mean messages online, I would instantly retaliate with something equally terrible and soul-crushing. After Austin, I didn’t do that. Sure, I can be an asshole at times when I’m caught up in the moment, but that’s most people. When you type something out to someone, you can’t take it back. And they can look back at it for as long as they want. They can delete it and move on immediately, or they can stare at it and dwell on it.

So my only input is to try and realize that when someone is bullying you, online or otherwise, their words mean nothing. They are probably going through some kind of hell you are completely unaware of, and that’s just how they deal. And even though it is upsetting and can really piss you off, think before retaliating. They are probably just as easily hurt as you are.

And honestly, Amanda, people like you–and well, you–are who have helped me grow as much as I have. Sure, I’m still fat and not happy with myself. I’m trying to change that and will keep fighting until I finally lose enough weight to be healthy and content. That’s just who I am and what I want for myself.

But when there are people like you, who are different and weird and awesome and loud and proud, it makes me hopeful. You were brave enough to get past the negativity and become a public figure, a voice for those of us who are still trying to be okay with themselves. It’s people like you who realize that bullying is a huge issue now that social media is so massive and say something that makes a big difference in how people handle these situations.

So, you know, thanks and stuff.

The BBC radio presenter Richard Bacon had a novel way of dealing with one particularly nasty troll – he decided to try and meet him, so he could ask him how he could have so much hate for someone he had never met. The story starts here: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17399027

I’m an English teacher in Germany. One of my 8th grade students is half-Filipino/half German. He obviously looks different from a lot of the other kids in the class. There are a lot of kids in my school from different cultural backgrounds (Turkish is the largest minority group in Germany and we have lots of kids with a Turkish background), but only he stands out as being the only Asian-looking kids in the school.

One day he came into class after lunch, tears streaming down his face. I made the rest of the do work while I pulled him aside and asked him what happened. He looked up at him, struggling for breath, and said 2 boys from the 7th grade came up to him and called him “Slit eyes” (Schlitzaugen in German) and made racist noises like “Wong Chin Chong” and asked him if he understood their “Chinese”. They had also posted horrible racists cartoons to his Facebook page.

I held his hand. What can you do in that moment, confronted with such raw pain and such ignorance? I told him to take a deep breath, to think about the fact that he is a brilliant writer. (He truly is. He writes in English stories that are pages and pages long. He loves writing and his writing is very advanced for his age). I told him the world is full of people who have hate/ignorance in their hearts and that he is a wonderful, unique person. I told him about how I was bullied in high school (a boy used to Moo whenever I walked by. A whole year long). How I know it hurts.

It felt a little like trying to stop a flood with a few handfuls of sand.

Eventually he did calm down. The tears stopped. I don’t know if my words really did anything but I did notice one thing. His grip on my hand remained tight right up until he stopped crying.

He is only one case. As a teacher of teenagers (8th through 12th grade), I see this way too often.

The only advice I can really give anyone who is being bullied is if it is happening in school, find a teacher you trust and talk to them. Teachers have the right to see what their students are doing online and can report it to the principal and parents.

I also told him to remove these kids from his FB friends. Why have anyone as a friend who isn’t? I also explained how to use the privacy settings to block people, just in case he didn’t know.

Moral of this long story: Don’t add people who you don’t like. And if possible, hold someone’s hand for a few minutes. Human contact helps.

–Sara

I’m trans, and a singer & writer, so I’ve had my share of abuse and bullying for being different. I have a pretty happy life now, but I honestly don’t know how I survived some of it, especially high school. The hurt is unavoidable, but I think on some level I just didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of killing me (emotionally or physically). I also knew that other people were watching, kids that maybe hadn’t had the courage to come out yet, and that if I let them beat me down for being open about who I am, those others would be afraid to ever be themselves too, so I had a responsibility to make it through somehow. I tried to find love in friends and in music and not keep it bottled up and not be ashamed of being hurt. Hurt goes away, but that feeling of being ashamed or humiliated, that’s what feels like you can’t live through it, and that’s what I tried to stand up through as best I could. Bullies want to break you, they want to make you ashamed for existing, and the only way you beat them is to keep existing, let your heart burn through it as bright as you can. And find humor in whatever you can because laughter completely kills that shit. And you know, whoever we are, we’re not the only ones who’ve been hurt like this. We’re never alone. We need to find each other, connect, share the pain and overcome it. As far as reviewer-type bullies, the only thing that ever matters is if you can make a real heart-to-heart connection with your tribe. Other people won’t get it, they’ll doubt you, they’ll tear you down and tell lies about you, but what you (or any of us) do is not for them, it’s for us. They’ll never get it and they’ll never matter and that enrages them so they lash out. In 20 years, the art will still stand and still reach people and still be full of passion and love, but the haters will be selling term life insurance out of a broken-down camper van and wondering where it all went wrong. Be strong when you can and let friends, music, truth and love carry you when you can’t go make it on your own. xx

Thank you for writing this.

Hi there. People often think that it is only children who get bullied.

But that’s not true.

I am 38 years old. A grown woman. An artist, an activist, teacher. I am bullied. By former “friends” and their friends.

Sometimes my bullies get the best of me, and I cry. Most days I am able to tell myself that they are nobody, and that their words and actions mean nothing. But I have weak moments, and during those moments, their hatred seeps in, like a kind of poison. Especially the bits about about how they hope I will die soon, so they can celebrate my death.

I hope a day will come when they will finally leave me alone once and for all. I am strong… I’m not going to kill myself. But, I hurt. A great deal.

Stories like this really touch my heart.

Not only the depressing story of Amanda Todd, but it’s admirable that you, Amanda Palmer, have dedicated your very time and effort to sharing it.

I can’t understand why this older Chatroullette gentleman never served time, not only for child pornography and extortion, but for stalking and dedicating so much time to tear this poor girl apart.

Never have I encountered that much full-blown hate in a school, I guess it’s why I can’t fathom it.
It’s hard to believe that not a single soul stood up for her, there must be SOME humanity among us humans.

… Right?

I’m 38 now, but I really connected with this story when I watched Amanda Todd’s video. The teenaged me remembered. This, though not exclusive or definitive, is a compilation of the coping mechanisms that worked.

Make good friends.
Not a lot of them. Make allies, find comrades in arms, find solace in strange company. It takes time. Don’t jump into friendships with both feet. Know yourself, make trust and honesty a priority.

Learn to meditate, go inside and find what defines you at your core. Find your strength. Make a place, somewhere inside you can retreat to. Visit it often and drink from the well.

Make space in your life for yourself. Do things that make you feel good. For me it has always been running and yoga. But whatever it takes to give some love to your body and mind.

Read. Books.

Switch off your computer/phone/device when you go to bed. Leave it in another room.
Do something before you switch it on in the morning. Even if it is only the first trip to the bathroom. Don’t be a slave, be the master. It’s just a toy.

Nobody is any better than you. We are all trying to be ok in the world. Start the compassion, love the haters, they are only humans trying to deal with their own pain.

I wouldn’t have made it as a teenager living today, Amanda. I barely made it through 1990 when half the country still didn’t have cable, much less texting and internet social media sites…with real live trolls. If I could have OD’d on live feed streaming negative comments about myself back then, oh my fucking god! That’s all depression wants you to live on is the lies.
I’m 37 now, and I’ve seen a few of my kids and their friends through break-ups and drama. It always spills over into an RPG for their social circles online. ALWAYS. I make my kids disconnect entirely for a period, and help them through it in real time. All internet/ cell phone social media blackout. I’ve called parents of my kids’ friends who were going through similar things to ask them to do the same.
Parents to be present and aware. I give my kids enough freedom, but when I think sadness or depression, drama or bullying is lurking, I jump into the deep end. The kids can hardly help themselves from being addicted to negative feedback. Why? Who knows. I would have been, too.
Thank you for this for me, my kids, Amanda Todd and the prevention of future Amanda Todds ♥

In my final year of high school (in 2007) I had an ex-friend bully me over myspace. He and I had always gotten along and bonded over music, and then he suddenly turned and started calling me an “emo” and telling me I should kill myself, etc. He would also often post general things about self-harm, making jokes about it and I was so furious at him that I printed out what he’d posted and confronted him about it at school. He was terrified and although I didn’t really get through to him and I ended up walking away crying, seeing how nervous he was when confronted made me understand entirely that his motivation was fear (as you mentioned above). A couple of years later, completely out of the blue, he sent me an email about how often he thought about what he’d done to me, how terrible he felt and how he was sure I would never forgive him. He told me he only ever attacked me because he was scared his friend would find out that he liked the music that was classified as “emo” and attack him in turn for it. It was easy to forgive him, because we can all understand how terrifying judgment from your peers is when you’re a teenager. Especially if you want to fly under the radar and just get the fuck out of high school unscatched. With social networking how it is NOW, I would NEVER go back to high school, not even for a day. Young people these days seem to have a disconnect between what they say online and what they would say in real life, almost like they have two selves and the cyber one never suffers consequence. If only that were true.

I’ve gotten hate from complete strangers on youtube before, calling me ugly, etc. I often, like I did with the guy from high school, try to understand WHY people would say horrible things, and I feel rather sure that it’s because anonymous haters are unhappy and ordinary, so they need to make others feel worse than them to be happy. Far too many people seem to feel better by making others feel small. And I block them or report them. But then there’s situations like Amanda Todd, and I feel that people that keep going, keep pushing people down when they’re so obviously broken, must be broken in someway. And it makes me feel hopeless and scared for young people who don’t have support systems. Even though ignoring bullies is near impossible, it’s important to try and remember that everything they say and do is a reflection of how they feel about themselves or despicable character flaws. And try to remember the good people out there, and always keep an eye out for them.
I really look forward to the blog about this, and what everyone else has to say. This is something that I care about a lot, but gives me tons of anxiety because I feel so helpless in the face of it. Here’s to moving toward a solution! Love love x

I’d have been one of those teens if we did stuff like that 6,000 years ago when I was in school (for me it started in 4th grade). “They” can’t hate someone they don’t even know. They can think you’re fat, or your hair looks stupid. They can call you all kinds of awful names, or envy that you’re smarter than them, or realize that you are extraordinary and they will end up bored and unhappy for lack of any imagination at all. But they can’t hate YOU. They don’t know YOU.

What’s hard is learning when the shell is protection and when it’s keeping you from letting another extraordinary soul in to your life.

Having had a sheltered, untroubled childhood, the only help I can give is a quote from Community:

“Troy: Let me ask you something. People have been calling on me about this jacket since I got here but if I take it off to make them happy, that just makes me weak. Right?

Jeff: Listen, it doesn’t matter. You lose the jacket to please them; you keep it to piss them off. Either way, it’s for them. That’s what’s weak.”

About a week ago, on a night out, a girlfriend and I were asked to get this kid to talk. Just talk. His friends made a bet with him that if he says a single word within the next hour, he has to roll all their joints for the next month. So our job, as two drunk stranger girls, was to get him to talk. Game on. We started off with light flirting, but this boy was good, he just smiled and hid his face, not a word… It started progressing to the point that we were full on mocking him. Painfully. He laughed it off, shook his head sometimes but he didn’t say anything. We had no idea who he was, his name, where he came from or what he did but we were making fun of him. I realised, through all of this, that you can say anything, fucking ANYTHING, to someone who can’t talk back, or directly defend themselves. It’s a simple power trip: you can punch anyone in the face as long as they’re tied to a chair. It’s easy to bully someone online, you’re a faceless anonymous person with a repetoire of hurtful words and no one can hurt you back. It’s simple to say ‘just shrug it off, you don’t know these people and they don’t know you’ but if someone had to leave a mean comment under this comment, I would probably cry and change my name. Most advice won’t work, a revolution might though.

I am working on a college project revolving around film criticism and how adaptations work, and the drafting phase of this led me to a thought process that completely changed the way I’ve looked at all forms of criticism, including baseless insults. Because you get that a lot in (sometimes respectable) film criticism, and it has always driven me nuts. I realized there are, essentially, two kinds of criticism; there are things which are objectively wrong that could have been done better, and then there are things the critics disagree with from a personal/creative perspective. In terms of art, the latter is sort of like a classically trained musician criticizing jazz for being off key. Like, dude, come on, you’re missing the point. That isn’t jazz’s fault. Right now I’m a cashier at a grocery story, so I get a lot of hatred from the masses for no particular reason. It gets to me, and then I feel worse when I Get mad because I feel like I’ve failed as a customer service representative. But when people get crabby I always try to ask myself what it is they’re seeing, why they are acting the way they act, what they expect from me that I am somehow not giving them. And I smile and act nice and tell them to have a good day and move on to the next person. This doesn’t, strictly speaking, solve the problem. I’m not like asking these people what’s wrong, emotionally, how can I help you /as a human being/, there’s no time for that and it wouldn’t fly in that context anyway. But it helps me tremendously to keep in mind that my perspective is not the only one, and if people are being assholes it’s probably just because they don’t know how to fix themselves or their lives, or they’re just having a bad day. These people are endless, so you just smile and nod and wish them the best when they leave, and know that they have no idea who you are.

Also I would like to say I love the love that never fails to spill over into my real life whenever I am surrounded by all of you beautiful people. All thanks to one amazing woman.I may never meet any of you but your stories are beautiful and revealing and painful and you are all here to share them and that makes them hopeful as well.

I love all of you.

I was bullied through high school and primary school because I’m fat. Fortunately I went to high school when the internet was not a big thing. There was no facebook and myspace was new. I’m so glad social networking sites weren’t a big deal then because I don’t know what school would have been like for me otherwise.

The high school memories are fresher but the primary school ones are more painful. In primary school there was this once kid who would bully me everyday. He’d make fun of my weight, he’d get his friends to pick on me. He’d follow me around at break and tease me. He took every opportunity to hurt me. Even when it was my birthday when the entire class sings happy birthday to you he changed the words so that they were threatening and violent but I was the only one close enough to hear him.

He wasn’t the only bully but he was the worst of them and the teachers were almost useless. I read those tweets from the teacher trying to help her student and it makes me feel a littler happier because even if she can’t do a lot she’s trying to do something and I wish my teachers had put more effort into helping me.

They’d tell the bully off if they caught him teasing me but they never put effort into doing anything else. They knew it was a problem, they knew he targeted me but they never tried to do anything but the bare minimum.

One year I had a teacher who made us sit according to her seating plan. I ended up at the same table as the bully. She knew he bullied me but she sat me next to him because it fit her seating arrangement. When I finally said something she made me sit a couple of seats over. I was still close enough for him to tease me. I remember what she said as she told me to move. ‘Let’s see if it’s just you.’ And even now I remember thinking that by saying that she was implying it was my fault I was being bullied. In the playground I was being bullied one day so I went to one of the teaching assistants to tell them. Her response was ‘don’t go near him’. As though I was following him around waiting for him to bully me.

My parents tried to help but since the teachers were useless nothing could really be done. They couldn’t even sit down with his parents because they didn’t speak english. I guess a translator would have been too much effort for my lazy school.

Years later these are still painful memories. I still feel angry when I think about how apathetic my teachers were and though I’m not a violent person by nature when I think of him I want to do violent and horrible things to him. I often wonder what I would do if I ever saw him again. Probably nothing.

As for coping mechanisms? I didn’t really have any. I cried a lot. I told my parents what was happening. I asked for help. I bottled up the hurt and anger and rage but that was a mistake because I just lashed out at other people. I wouldn’t suggest doing that. I asked for help. I think that’s the only thing I can suggest doing.

As John Green says in his novel ‘Looking For Alaska’ – the only way out out the labyrinth of suffering, is to forgive. So at some point, you have to understand that the bullies are people with their own hopes, dreams, flaws and emotions. At some point, although it’s so fucking hard, you have to forgive them and move on.

Hi Amanda

Unfortunately, I did go to school at a time when the internet was really starting to boom. I was a Myspace and MSN kid, my friends and I all had each other added on these things and it was our primary source of communication outside of school.

I was bullied right through school, from age 5 to 15. I still struggle to accept that it wasn’t my fault despite being 23. I still feel like I must have done something to make people consistently hate me. I mean, I even moved COUNTRY and the people from different fucking countries hated me. I really didn’t understand, I’m outspoken now but I wasn’t then. I was different, I suffer from Dyspraxia which makes my thought and speech patterns really strange and I struggled to walk in straight lines/do gym class. It might have been that. It was more likely that I was just vulnerable, a victim. My father sexually abused me throughout my childhood and I think the vulnerability and general fear of everybody just made me an instant target.

Anyway, the girls in my group of friends turned on me. They did this a lot to people and I guess it was my turn. It was bad enough eating alone in the cafeteria, having nobody choose to sit with me in any of my classes, having nothing to do at weekends because I’d become something of a leper but then I’d go online to try and connect with people that knew me outside of school, that didn’t know I was a massive freak. I posted a blog on Myspace, it was a kind of meme that a lot of people that I had added were doing; ’50 things I like about myself’. When you’re 15 and the whole world seems against you, it’s hard to come up with 5 things nevermind 50 but I accepted, embraced and completed the challenge. I posted it up and within hours one of the ex-friends had commented with 50 things she hated about me. It seems silly and infantile and it was but even now, as a grown adult, I’d be devastated if somebody could think of 50 reasons to hate me. And that was just the beginning. I’d get strange accounts messaging me on MSN telling me I was a freak, I deserved to be a cutter, I’ll never amount to anything and on top of all of that I was apparently ugly.

Once the girls from my ex-group of friends stopped, bullies from school, ones that had always hated me found my addresses, my accounts and I was inundated with hate messages. I felt like I was in a neverending circle of hatred. I’d go to school, get bullied, come home, go online, get bullied, check my voicemail, messages of hate and I suppose I could have not gone online but… I was self-loathing and self-destructive and didn’t really want to protect myself. I’d run out of the strength to. I just wanted it to stop.

So I left. I was a clever kid who had no qualifications to prove it but I was finally free of them and for a long time it was fine, I had around 3 years of radio silence until someone in a new group of friends in a new city took a dislike to me and it started all over again. 3 people who were once friends were finding any way to contact me, to make me feel 2 inches tall and I responded. Which I shouldn’t have. Not feeding the trolls is hard to do especially when those trolls are people you actually know but responding gave them more ammo. Nothing I said got through to them, it just made them even more desperate to hurt me.

And now, 9 years after my first incident and 2 years after my last, I finally have a hold on internet bullying. I have had people from college do it, people who don’t know me, people hiding behind anonymous and it can be anything from ‘you’re really fat, you shouldn’t be body confident because fat isn’t something to be proud of’ to ‘you probably begged your dad to rape you.’

It hurts. It’s hard to escape when the internet allows for anonymity and endless ways to contact people- especially those who are very prominent online and base their whole careers around it. It’s hard to ignore the hatred and to be honest, I don’t ever. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t, however, respond. If someone thinks so little of me that they can say I asked to be raped, I’ll never change their mind on me and my words will just be used against me, no matter what I say.

And then I deal with the inner pain and there’s a fuckload of it. It brings back sad memories, it makes me doubt myself and my worth, it makes me doubt whether I’ll ever be able to get away from bullies (answer: nope). John Green said in (I think) The Fault In Our Stars ‘Pain demands to be felt’ and it does. I don’t hide my feelings or push them away at-all. I feel. I write. I cry. I listen to music (a lot of yours helps.) I scream out loud if I need to and then I speak to my mother, my boyfriend, my best friends. I don’t usually tell them what’s happened, I just know who to turn to for comfort.

I don’t think it’ll ever get easier reading cold words about myself, especially poorly constructed character assassinations but ignoring them does make a difference. They do give up, eventually. Just don’t ignore your own pain because that shit comes back to bite your ass.

And as I always, always say to artists, friends and family who are getting a hard time for being themselves or going against the grain even if, like me, it’s inadvertently. Or it was. ‘if you’re pissing them off, you’re doing something right.’

I love you Amanda, thank you for being part of what’s made me a stronger person who embraces being a freak. Artists like you, films like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, friends like mine, they make being a freak feel like a fucking honour instead of an ailment.

Take care of you. xx

I’ve been bullied in school. Mostly by girls in my class, and mostly by cutting me out, hissing at me, back-talking and back-stabbing. The first time it happened I was about 14 (a bit more than 20 years ago). I am an only child, my parents were always busy, absent, at work. I had no one to talk to. No one to ask the most disturbing question – why? what did I do? I had never heard of bullying back then. At one moment I snapped and tried killing myself by taking pills I found in medicine box at home. Luckily, it didn’t work, nothing happened, just a long nap, I was home alone, my parents still don’t know. I’ve been through bulimia, depression, apathy, suicidal thoughts. Then I started building my “armour”, I’ve grown stronger. I’ve learned not to rely on other’s opinion of me. People were given tongue, so they use it, some for good, some for bad. I am what I am, regardless of their opinion. The most important advice I could give to my teenage self would be – soar above it, this too shall pass.

Sadly, I can’t ever see a time when bullying won’t exist in one form or another. So I think the best and only solution is to focus on the victims, teaching them more effective coping mechanisms and making them feel comfortable enough to reach out to the support networks available to them. Likewise, we all need to get better at looking for signs of distress in our friends/family/classmates/etc. It’s been a few years since I was in school, but it doesn’t seem like much has changed – most of the focus is still on trying to identify bullies and punish them. But it’s not working. If bullying really is cyclical, where bullies are also victims, then by putting more effort into helping the victims we may also be breaking the vicious cycle. Or at least we might save a few teenage lives, who will hopefully graduate high school and realise there’s a whole world out there beyond the classroom, facebook, twitter, etc, and it’s definitely worth living.

As a mother and teacher of teenagers I believe the best strategy is to talk and to listen. Always. Share stories. Use your sphere of influence – however big or small – to ensure people know they’re not alone.
And never, ever accept bullying – either directly or by being a silent bystander. So often there is a very fine line between bully and bullied. Both need support. The bully needs support in developing empathy. Hearing and seeing their effect on others. If a young person hasn’t developed this empathy, it’s not their fault. It’s the role of society and communities to ensure they do and to ensure we don’t give up on either party. Then we may have hope for raising the kind of compassionate adults we all wish to be surrounded by.

Hi Amanda. This is the first I have heard of amanda todd, and that alone makes me sad. Coming from a high school experience where I was the target of bullies and creeps I think I can understand a small part of the hopelessness she felt. I too wish that someone could have reached out to her and let her know that she was not alone. There are a lot of us “weirdos” out there, and we will understand and accept her FOR WHO SHE IS! Maybe someone should start a blog/wiki/skype/internet support group where we “society fringers” can get together and lend support.
I’m an art teacher in an elementary school and I see hundreds of kids each day.

I am going to use her memory to further inspire me to help those I see struggling, and offer them a friendly smile, or a pat on the back, or just an acknowledgement that I notice them.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I will not let her story be forgotten, and I will try to use this tragedy to inspire a little change.

Every bit helps right?
Keep being Amanda Fucking Palmer. She is pretty fucking awesome!

Best advice I have is support ANYONE & EVERYONE you see being bullied. We can & will lessen the number of bullies out there, but they will always be present in some number & some way. THE best thing we can do is PROMISE to stand up for anyone you see being bullied. In the end it’s not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends that most breaks our hearts. Like Amanda Todd, bullied people feel alone & sad, are looking for & NEED support from kind people. When they don’t find it, they are overcome w/ hopelessness, sometimes driven to suicide. We can show love to our fellow human beings & lessen their suffering, while also standing up to, defeating & weakening the numbers of bullies causing true suffering. We just have to make a pledge to do so.

I’m not sure if this will help or is even what you asked for but I want to share something that I find helps me: For every hateful/mean/negative comment that comes your way, do something nice for someone else. It can be as little as sending a text to a friend you haven’t spoken to in awhile that simply says, “Hope you’re having a great day!” (sending this message to people on tumblr, facebook etc works too) or even just donating your loose change to a charity. Find something that you’re comfortable with doing and do it. Doing something to make either the world better or just someone’s day better can make you feel so much better.

Thanks for this, Amanda. I’ve been online since 1996 (just turned 50). I haven’t really had to deal with internet hatred yet (other than arguing with trolls on FB, which feels more like swatting flies than anything else). This new writing thing I’m doing has me wondering when it’ll start, though, because I’m more public online now than I ever have been before. My coping strategy? Besides my own awesome support team, my “real self” (so to speak) has her own locked-down journal. Kind of a safe neighborhood wherein I can center myself and only people I trust are allowed.

I’m twenty four. I’ve lost friends and family to all sorts of terrible things from ovarian cancer to car wrecks and to this day I could cry more over thinking about junior high than some of those tragic deaths. Not because they were unimportant to me, but because thinking back to junior high also transports my squishy feelingy guts to a time when I was completely vulnerable and completely torn apart. You know that old torture thing? Where they would tie each limb to a different horse and make them travel in opposite directions? (Was that a real thing or am I making that up?) That’s how it felt. And I was lucky. I didn’t come home to Facebook. I had supportive parents whose hearts hurt with me. They also thought it was a part of growing up. And maybe it is, in a sense. People will attack us and reject us for all of our lives. I’m not saying it’s right, by any means, but we all have dealt with it.

As a child, I was an escapist. I read. Obsessively. Anything I could get my hands on and extra points if the hero was tiny or bullied and finally stood up for himself. And then I moved on to other things. Art. Performance. And over time I became good at it. I learned to deal with rejection. A scathing review could probably make me collapse any day, whirl me back to junior high, except I also have a brilliant support system of artists and friends who fight for me to keep fighting every day.

Now kids can’t escape bullying. It follows them. Or it’s in their homes. so many people have been taught they’re worthless and that is the greatest tragedy of all. No one is worthless.

I love this “how to deal” kind of idea but I think, more than anything, kids need an online presence specifically for them. Run by someone older who can be there as a mentor. A community of all ages that can be a haven when they come home from bullying and go online to bullying. Not an attack group, a haven. I’d be more than willing to start one if I knew the best social network to use. I’m drawn to Tumblr but that’s not very…community presence, except for the following.

I wish I’d seen her video before she killed herself–and I wish the same for anyone in pain. I’d like to reach out and talk, let them know that someone out there cares and wants to help in any way possible, even if I don’t fully understand it.

I’ve only been that low once, and it was actually just over a week before Christmas. I felt like most of my core group of friends hated me at worst, didn’t want me around at best.

I’ll try to be brief.

I’ve been friends with most of them since high school, and the group includes two of my cousins. Gradually, I’d started to feel a bit bullied by some–I was regularly made fun of and put down for everything from being a vegetarian to being a writer. While I was with my boyfriend one weekend, who was then living three hours away, I was iPhone surfing and found they were having a party for the oldest cousin’s college graduation–a party I was not only not invited to but which was kept completely secret from me because said cousin didn’t want me there. When confronted, he blamed me for trouble in his relationship, criticized my concern over his sister’s possessive boyfriend, and said I hurt another friend. I was unaware of most of this and was told no one confronted me sooner because I would’ve just denied it and blamed other people (I still don’t know what, if anything, that conclusion is based on) and I needed to “own up” and talk to everyone I hurt. I later found out he left out his real motivation (a single frustrated tweet about feeling ignored, which he and his boyfriend blew up into me not caring about anyone but myself). My friends knew all of this. I know horrible things were said about me behind my back, but I don’t want to know what. I was expected to carry on as if nothing happened, but I was tired of being treated like shit and I decided to ditch my cousin and his boyfriend, at least as close friends. While I know not everyone liked this and feels terrible and understands how hurt I was, I still get insecure. They still sat and watched it happen. Makes me wonder who I have on my side, which leads to over thinking, loneliness, and tears. Basically, this one event managed to do more emotional damage than almost anything else I’ve gone through in my 23 years. I’ve never felt more betrayed, disregarded, and alone.

One of them saw a Facebook comment I left on a status complaining about bad friends. I expressed my decision to cut people out for my own mental health and had no regrets, which was held against me. I was criticized for using social media to be passive aggressive and vindictive. I was told I treat people like they have no feelings and displayed “blatant disregard” for feelings (ironic, given the situation) and I brought all this on myself, more or less, and deserved it. After all, the intention wasn’t to hurt me–never mind the fact they knew it would and did it anyway. I was told I was playing the victim, being immature, and my pain came from my own insecurities and not their words and actions.

I said I deserved better and wasn’t going to put up with being treated like shit, so we parted ways.

A month or so later, I criticized Lana del Rey on Tumblr (worth noting that it wasn’t particularly harsh, especially compared to your communism friend, and was a reblog about racism and not my own words). What did this guy who’d accused me of and criticized me for being passive aggressive do? Made passive-aggressive attacks on me on Twitter, calling me a “gullible crusty” who was perpetuating a nonissue for the sake of my own self-image and…that I was bullying Lana del Rey. I’d hardly consider a discussion of someone’s problematic music video bullying. Yes, critics often take that turn, but I didn’t. And who’s the bigger bully here? The girl saying, “What a minute, that’s racist” or the boy spewing very clear hatred for her?

Within about 10 minutes after the tweets went up, he blocked me from Twitter and Tumblr. I do wonder if this was an attempt to keep me from seeing them.

I’ve also made appearances on his blog, most notably when he called me a “vicious creature.”

Hurtful as this has all been and even though I’ve already stated it led to a particularly sad, lonely, and unhealthy evening a few weeks ago, I know that this is tame compared to what others face. I feel most of this isn’t actually about me, which is usually one of my consolations. It’s more about him and how he deals with things–or doesn’t deal with them. He’s angry, and his own issues are surfacing throughout all of this in why and how he attacks me. And I know that he’s often a bad, mean-spirited person.

I’ve made mistakes. That’s on me. But he was willing to forgive and even accepted an apology until I also explained the friendship had mostly left me unhappy and I was unwilling to return to the way it had been. He was at his meanest after that.

My other consolations? I have had other friends to turn to, and nearly everyone else–including mutual friends–agreed cutting ties was best. I have a wonderful boyfriend who has been supportive (and never liked this guy anyway). And I even had your music and fans I connected with. This started in early May. I got a Kickstarter party on the internet shortly thereafter. The full falling out was in early August. I got your album the following month.

And THAT’S how I cope.

As you’ve noted, it’s not just teenagers, and it’s not just high school and it’s not just minorities (though they’re often more vulnerable for lots of reasons), it’s regular grownups who rock the boat, too. Here’s my story:

Here’s the background. I’m a librarian — a library director, an administrator — at one of the small SUNY arts colleges. We have a great music school, and an historic teacher education program, and a liberal arts and sciences backbone. The library has to provide information resources to support the work of all those students, from scores for the Crane performance majors to middleschool textbooks for our student teachers to academic journals and monographs for about 40 distinct subjects. We’re a little SUNY — 4000 students — so our funding is pretty tight, given New York’s budget situation. One of the hard decisions I had to make as the library’s administrative leader was on what to cut from our ongoing subscriptions so that we would come in under budget this year — prices rise and rise, and my budget continues to blow. So I cut the American Chemical Society package, which was hugely and egregiously overpriced. They have a monopoly on the information they provide, and they’re the best there is for chemistry stuff. I worked with the faculty, and they agreed that this was the best we could do, even though it sucked.

And then I wrote about it on the internet. It blew up, in the small circle that is The Internet Of Academic Librarians. The American Chemical Society responded, initially, by saying that since I had a track record of profanity, they would not respond to this discussion. Standard “sit down and shut up, you uppity woman” tactics. I didn’t shut up. I wanted other libraries to know they could make hard choices, and it wouldn’t break them. It got picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education, by American Libraries, and by the ACS’s media arm itself.

Largely, the feedback was positive — “a brave thing to do”, “a real leader”, lots of glowing accolades. Right up until I corrected an interview I did, saying that 71% was the wrong figure, it was 41% price increases for the period in question. I was ashamed that I’d made an error, but I wanted the record to be clean and correct. So I corrected it.

And then the blog comments started to turn. Now I’m seeing “what, she can’t do math?” and nasty personal attacks about my skills, my professionalism, my character, and suggesting that my bosses by told about how terrible I am… and while I know intellectually that I should ignore them, let them go, trust myself…. they hurt.

All because I declined to pay 10% of my budget for 42 library journals, and then talked about it publicly.

(Anyone who actually thinks this sounds interesting can find my writing at http://attemptingelegance.com, and a summary and linkdump of the kerfuffle at http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2012/10/01/around-the-web-suny-potsdam-vs-american-chemical-society/)

But long story aside, I have a very specific coping tactic. I remember two things:

1. How important my internet community actually is, and how important having a voice in that space is. I have helped people. People have helped me. I have a side gig doing speaking and workshops for librarians because of it, and it not only pays me extra but is incredibly rewarding (I’ll be in AUSTRALIA in 3 weeks as a result; no small life reward!). There’s a world out there that wants to connect with like minded people, to have challenging conversations, to learn and grow and experience the world. And a bunch of haters aren’t going to keep me from being a part of that.

2. Hate is fear. The people who want to anonymously (or not) tear me down online are doing it because it’s a way to punish me. And they want to punish me because I’ve threatened something. I’ve threatened their corporate reputation and value. I’ve threatened their understanding of how their profession works and functions. I’ve threatened their perception of the role of women in media. I’ve threatened their understanding of how decisions should be made by the powerful. I’ve threatened their faith in the validity of decisions they made. Something. And their fear reaction shouldn’t drive my choices. Someone else’s fear is something to be pitied and soothed, but not by subjugating who I am and what I need to their emotional reaction.

And I know that my professional struggles aren’t the same on the emotional scale as being endlessly and viciously bullied for your identity. It’s never going to drive me to suicide. But it’s still THERE. High school ends, yes, and the top comes off the pressure cooker, but this piece of modern American society still exists when you’re an adult. The nasty kids in high school are now just nasty coworkers and music reviewers at the New York Times. So learning to cope *matters*. It’s a set of life skills that you will always, always need. Build them early, if you can, because it makes it a lot easier to stand and take the shit flung at you by monkeys if you’ve already figured out how to shield yourself from it.

I love you all. Seriously. Even though I may not know you, or even know your name, I love you. With all my heart.

There is an XKCD cartoon where stick figure one uses the excuse, “SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET” (http://xkcd.com/386/) to refuse to go to bed. The sooner you realize that trying to correct, or even address all of the wrong on the internet, the better. It is trying to empty the sea with a spoon.

Also, I was teased and lonely in middle school, but not in high school. What changed? More kids. I was different and it took a critical mass around 2,000 for there to be enough “kids like me” for me to be part of a community. College was 40k and even better. The internet – awesome beyond belief. If your peers suck, find new peers. It’s not you that’s broken. My friends now are my friends BECAUSE of my oddities.

I have never really liked myself all that much. I really preferred school to home, because people could be mean, but at least I had SOME friends there. It was difficult at home. I felt hopeless there. I spent all of my time holed up in my room with books and movies and sketchbooks. There were days I’d come home from school and not leave my room again until it was time to go to school the next day.

I’ve been depressed, and I’ve been suicidal, but I always found a way to cope. I had good friends, and although I barely ever told them what was going on, they were always there for me. And I had stories and art and secret places to hide from all the bad shit around me.

Some people don’t have anything though. I’ve had suicidal friends and I just never really know what to do fro them. I try to be there for them, maybe recommend a good book. But I always feel kind of useless in comforting them and I really wish I could do more form them.

Mostly I just try to be nice to everyone, because everyone is living their lives and there are ups and downs. It’s hard sometimes, and there are times when there is not other option but to fight, but it shouldn’t be the first thing people do. All the hatred and fighting really tears me apart. And I don’t really know what I can do to stop it.

I think we need an “It gets better” type of campaign for EVERY bullied kid. It DOES get better. After high school things were a lot better. And after college, better still. Putting young people in these weird forced nearly-adult-free environments for their whole childhood is so f*cked up. It’s like Lord of the Flies. And the internet is even worse. I worked as a moderator on a big internet forum and the stuff that goes on is unbelievable. There was a group of grown, adult men, with kids, with families, who spent their leisure time ganging up and picking on people and harassing them, following them around the site (and to other websites when they could) and trying to make them quit the site. Just for fun. It’s so damn pathetic. Classic case of people who feel powerless needing to make someone else feel even worse. Like racists and bigots, they always need to have someone to spit on so they don’t feel like they are themselves the dregs of society.

What really works on the internet, though, is that on most websites (and with e-mail and chat and everything) you can block people. Blocking them is not “letting them win” or “letting them get the best of you.” It is YOU winning, by choosing what people to surround yourself with. YOU get to pick your friends. I’ve had to do this a few times and after a while you won’t even remember they exist. You can often report harassing behavior to the site, too, if they are really being nasty. On the site I moderated, all the mods hated those people and were always looking for a valid excuse to ban their butts from accessing the site. Most of them ended up banned eventually. But you have to file the complaint for that to happen. It’s not “tattling” and it’s not wrong. Block them and report them. Those are the tools you have at your disposal.

If you can’t block them, what really drives them crazy is ignoring them. Have a conversation with your friend and pretend the haters aren’t even there. Completely ignore anything they type. I know this is not easy to do, but you can do it. This shows them that you have control over your own life. You do not have to respond to the nastiness, it is words on a screen that you can choose not to even read if you don’t feel like it. You can carry on your life as though they were invisible. Don’t read what they say. Don’t acknowledge it. They will give up eventually.

There are occasional true crazy stalker types who don’t give up ever, and you might have to call the cops on them. But most internet a$$holes are just in it for fun and they will stop bothering you if you block and ignore them.

This sort of thing works less well if you are a famous rock star getting stupid articles written about you, but in that case you probably have to learn to take the good with the bad… :-)

Interestingly enough I had written pretty much on this topic, and how you saved my life just two days ago but thought it would sit in the files of my laptop. Instead it is posted on my blog now: http://katmarieh.tumblr.com/post/39759270173/all-about-my-love-for-afp-my-brother-and-new-years
I was abused, bullied, and turned into my own worst enemy. Then I listened to your music, and I started writing my own things, and I pulled through. Thank you.
The majority of my abuse was off-line, though I saw some of the internet type. I would say that my strategies were finding people who inspired me, and writing.

What I’ve always told my students is “It doesn’t have to be this way. YOU can change things. Middle school and high school don’t have to be awful. Stick together, love each other, find your strength in community and collaboration.The way to triumph is to survive.”

I think it’s as true for online life as it is for offline life, and for all of us. I have not been bullied online, thankfully, but I’ve had students who were. They trusted me enough to tell me and they were fortunate enough to have supportive parents and friends who could ameliorate, improve or stop the bullying.

The key is that we can’t triumph and survive alone. We don’t necessarily need an army, but there’s strength in numbers as well as safety; there is a comfort and strength in a group of people who know you and love you and TELL you that as often as needed.

“Shared pain is lessened.
Shared joy is increased,
thus, we refute entropy.”

–Spider Robinson

So many,many years this has been a lingering question for me. I’ve been heavily accused of being a “damn hippy” “love-sick-fool” and all the other ways people try to tell me that loving EVERYONE, no matter who, what, or why, makes me weak, stupid, or lesser than. The struggle was not short, nor easy. I’m NOT weak, I’m very opinionated, well read, and quite strong. My own story brings people to their knees in tears, when I choose to tell it. THat, however, tends not to be often. Why? Because this fucking life is SO short, so fast, that I can’t seem to care enough about all that bullshit back there to waste the precious moments I still have (like this morning, reading your thoughts and feeling so….understood). Love looks so different in words, and that’s the fight we’re fighting Amanda. We are attempting to use words to fight a war that hurts souls, and that requires a strength that’s new. This cyber-world we now live in has caused us to evolve, and now we need a new filter, a new way to shield out the bullshit, the trolls, the hate. These idiots that say things just to hurt us? They can now TOUCH our minds, simply with a keyboard. Take it from someone who lives so much of their life in this cesspool known as the “Internet”, there are SO many more out there that are good and decent, and there is also an unending supply of pain. Love where you can, never forget who you are, and use the shield of those who appreciate your art, your soul, and YOU. I know I sure as fuck do. <3 To quote you from my card "From one Amanda to another" … may YOUR year be filled with Love and Rock… and to add my own…. may it be filled with more REAL :)

Capulets’ Crippled Self Esteem OR, An anecdotal guide to quashing interwebz hate.

I had the same group of friends for the seven years. They were my friends through high school, and those friends bled from adolesence to the brink of adulthood. Whatever adulthood may be, I’m there now in age, and that group of people are not.

An important thing to understand about internet hate is this: No matter what you have done, whether you have kissed someone you shouldn’t have kissed, you have taken your clothes off to the wrong person (or people), if you have said something nasty or simply don’t look the way someone else thinks you should, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Nothing is acceptable about bullying. That is the first rule to this guide – it is NOT your fault. And that is how I survived, because I was sorry for any hurt feelings I had caused, and I expressed that, the treatment afterwards as not my fault.

Being called names on a blogging site – You don’t deserve that.
Having people discuss your life over facebook – You don’t deserve that.

Having the above done and you AREN’T able to defend yourself – You don’t deserve that.

Feeling afraid to go out because it might inspire a hateful comment – You don’t deserve that.

A lot of people don’t realise that vauge ‘oh my god SOME people are SO SELFISH’ sort of posts on facebook and twitter constitutes as bullying. People get involved in that, they ask who it is about. There is usually a base group that knows EXACTLY who it is about and discuss it at length on a public forum. That is bullying.

Everything above is bullying.

2) You call them out on it, if you can.

If the people who are writing nasty things about you are people that you know personally, then call them out. If you are safe and feel able to, I think this is important. They want you to be passive. They want to zap the power from you. They want to make their pain or their lives more important than you. Well, they’re wrong. Tell them that. Don’t get personal. The best thing I did after reading a nasty blog post about me was send a simple text that said outlined that person was demonstrating bullying behaviour that was unacceptable and would not be tollerated. I discussed that I had made any apologises on my side that were necessary and this person was being unreasonable, and no action I had done deserved it. If they were to continue, the matter would be taken further.

The post was taken down. The person said their piece, and that was the end of it.

The same night the same thing happened with another girl. She made an excuse, but the tweet was taken down.

3) Tell someone.

It’s cliched and the last thing you want to do, but it is also the best thing to do. Because it’s not your fault that someone’s business is so messed up they’re trying to make you feel bad. We do enough of that to ourselves anyway. We don’t need any more of it. I told my family that the people I used to be friends with had taken our fall out to a personal level, and they had done that online. They supported me. I told other friends and they supported me. I told colleagues, and they supported me.
You’re not alone in this. When you do someone, make sure you don’t leave out any of the gory details from how YOU have reacted either. Threatened, upset, shamed, it can make you do things out of character. Accept you might have said or done something in retaliation if you have. I was honest about my short commings and no one turn their back on me.

4) Get your feelings out.

I cried on my kitchen floor for a day and then impulsively bought a hamster to ease my loneliness. You might want to try something else. However you vent, make sure you try do it in a healthy way. Cause like I said, if people aren’t being nice to you then don’t be too harsh on yourself.

5) FOR GOODNESS SAKE JUST UNPLUG THE ROUTER, DO IT, DO IT NOW.

I deactived my facebook account and focussed solely on work. When I was ready to rock the online world again I made a NEW account and added people I wanted to, staying away from those connected to the ones who bullied me. Be strict. Be selective. Don’t invite pain into your online life. Keep it all private. Keep it secure. It is yours. Be safe.

6) Accept an apology, but never forget.

Over time, if the bullying has settled down (and it WILL, I promise you it will) some of the bullies who don’t realise that they were being bullies might crawl back into the cracks of your life. And because they were nice, or you were unaware of their part in events, you might let them in.
In my experience, they want to settle their own guilty conscience and they are contacting you without considering your feelings. Ditch. You don’t need it. You’re a rockstar. Fuck ‘em.

7) Be kind to yourself.

All the cliches are true. Love yourself and things get a whole lot easier. When your self esteem and identity are being locked on and targetted the MOST important rule in all of this is to just be kind to yourself. Look after yourself. Make sure you’re eating properly, having enough sleep, doing activities that get you away from the computer and even outside for a while if you can stomach it. Do your thing, do it till you feel at peace, and then write down how much of a badass you are. Frame it. Love it. Kiss it. You should kiss every inch of your body and you should work up a sweat when you do.

It’s obvious, it isn’t fullproof but it is how it got me through. Along with a couple of hangovers, terrible artwork and poetry about rotting carcusses. But I’m here, and I don’t feel alone anymore x

I always hoped bullying ended once I grew up. It doesn’t (for me). I get comments about my big, ugly-ass nose still.
From men: Ew, Good God! Damn, your nose is big. You so ugly.
From “friends”: Honey, you really need a nose job.
From little old ladies(!!!): You’d be pretty if you got your nose fixed.

And so I have a beauty blog, where I show people how to be beautiful on the outside.
I wish I was.

adopted (cue instant feelings of abandonment and rejection from that alone) into a family who viewed mental illness as just not trying hard enough to get along and do the things one is supposed to do and bisexuality as the devil’s bidding. grew up and married a boy like i was told to and ended that 15 year relationship when he refused to stop drinking, cheating, beating, and convincing me to end my life because it was worth nothing. since then i have been homeless off and on for four years because i couldn’t afford a decent lawyer who would have fought for me and the divorce resulted in the foreclosure of my home which is the only place i have ever felt safe in my 36 years on this earth.

how do i survive? fuck if i know. i am amazed each and every day that i am still here when i so desperately want to not be but every so often i stumble across beauty and humor and love from jenny lawson aka the bloggess or from amanda fucking palmer or allie who wrote “adventures in depression” and in those moments i am placed in a bubble where no harm can come to me. where i can cry and laugh and just be. then i hope to jebus effing chris that it will last through those moments when everything goes dark.

of course that’s a quick summary of my life but you can read more about it here: http://www.petponygirl.com/ which is probably what has kept me going the most in the recent years. having an way to get whatever is inside me out that is trying to take me down.

it’s strange how a person you have never met can make you feel so worthy of love and life when the person staring back at you in the mirror can’t seem to. thank you amanda for being you and i will try to continue to be me for as long as i can.

How to cope…I don’t know exactly. I suppose the best way is to go all Atticus and walk around in their shoes for a minute, or a month. Remembering that everyone is carrying a heavy load, and not everyone carries it well. Also, usually the amount of bile people spew out is usually in direct correlation to their own insecurity. And, sometimes, people are just really cold and small.

It’s exhausting to run in the human race: doing it well requires giving and receiving kindness. Maybe the best way to cope is to sneak away from the pack, and just walk around in the woods alone for awhile.

All the best to you, Amanda. On the surface, I am quite possibly your polar opposite, but I think you’re amazing.

As an all female band I think we get picked on the most for how we look. Especially Jenn and I. Lesbian and fat. Alot of people won’t give us the time of day because of what they see first. Even music critics etc. How do we deal? We are just happy that we do play music and that we do have fans. That people like you and Morrissey and more can appreciate and understand what we do. So we keep going and understand that music is us no matter who can accept it or not. Jenn and I are shooting a documentary as we speak about being an all female group and being treated different. Even by your own peers. You just have to stay strong and know what your doing is important to someone.

I’m a Google-able person. A creative person. The kind of person who has a million and one ideas, and some of them are actually good. I fought for, and won, a job in which i could be wildly creative, and support and promote the wild creativity of others. A job where I could make a big difference to my community. I began the job with an incredible amount of hope and optimism.

At first, no noticed my work, so I worked incessantly promoting myself and the other creative people I had under my wing. And I got popular, far more popular than I ever intended. People wanted me to speak at conferences and give workshops. People wanted me to review their books and music and events. People wanted to be my “friend” for status or be associated with me professionally for a juicy bit to put on their resume.

And the negativity came. People called me fat a lot. I was sent an image of my picture with a pig’s snout. When I pointed out impracticalities or made reasoned criticisms I was branded as an “angry girl.” People sent me passive-aggressive notes about how I was “obviously” a disturbed person and need to be less “angry.” I was threatened with lawsuits for stating my opinion of PR stunts or ethical questions. I was subjected to hateful e-mails by people who felt I wasn’t working hard enough because i didn’t respond to their 1 AM e-mail within 5 minutes. Campaigns were waged to get me fired from my job. An hour long podcast discussing my “pro-lapsed vagina” was created simply because I warned someone against jumping to conclusions.

While this wave of negativity washed over me daily, my employer entertained all my haters. Even when I proved I could accomplish amazing things, they refused to stand behind my ideas, and sometimes claimed credit for them while still telling me my ideas were full of shit. I worked remotely, only interacting with my colleagues via the internet, so it was easier to dismiss me. They would do things behind my back to undermine me, and make me look like an idiot, and not even care when I pointed it out to them. And as a start-up, sometimes they didn’t pay me on time. Sometimes they didn’t pay me for months, even when I was putting in 60 hours a week. I lost friends and missed opportunities because I had this great job, yet I couldn’t make appointments and events because I wasn’t getting paid. I sat through performance reviews in which I was told I was a good employee who exceeded expectations but obviously I sucked at my job because my haters said so. After the third performance review of hearing my haters words coming out of my boss’ mouth despite exceeding at my job in every way, I decided to quit.

Just because I quit, didn’t mean my haters quit. There are blog posts and tumblr threads full of people hating on me. People who don’t know me. People who don’t know what I sacrificed for my job or what difficulties I endured. I took the job because I saw an opportunity to do something amazing for my community. Now I’m completely broke from the job, from their owing me money I will never see and from spending my income to make awesome things happen. I can’t read anything relating to my community anymore without seeing the names of my bullies and haters in the comments section. I can’t comment on anything without haters coming out of the woodwork. Now that I don’t have a job, my haters have decided I’m more vulnerable. When prospective employers look me up they find all this invective, alongside all the amazing writing I did.

I have my fans. They are amazing. They want me to write. And I do. I’m working on a book and a television series script. But I work slowly, because I know the haters are there, and after my bad job experience I can’t imagine anyone wanting to support or be involved with any of my creative projects. When I finish a project, I don’t publish it, because I know the haters are there. I know I owe my fans, but I just can’t take the abuse anymore. I don’t even trust anyone anymore. Too many professional friends and colleagues have attacked me when I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them something they they wanted from me. I’m a “sell-out.” A member of my community only because I was “being paid” to be a member. I’ve been treated like a leper or a Machiavellian schemer.

I’m an excellent writer. I’ve been published, both fiction and non-fiction. But now I’m a hermit. I’ve shut down most of my social media and all my websites. I’m no longer a member of any organization. I’m alone, and I’m wounded, and I just want to curl up in a cave and lick my wounds. Hope for healing.

Since I quit my job my few close friends have said I look and sound happier. I find this bizarre because i have verged on suicidal these past few months. But I don’t correct them. I’m afraid to reach out for help, because the last thing I need is for my haters to crow that they were right all along and I’m mentally unstable. I’ve had enough cruel people commenting on their fevered imaginings of my mental state.

So here I am, a talented writer afraid to publish, and a smiling depressed person just trying to pretend everything is alright, and that she isn’t afraid to open her laptop.

This is not very big of a deal, but here is my experience with bad reviewers: I write stories and novels and put them on Smashwords, which puts them everywhere else. In my writing I use a bunch of Finnegans Wake-inspired alternative spellings and punctuationings. In every review I’ve gotten so far, the reviewers has said “Omg he needs to learn to spell.” Which makes me insanely mad and sad, because it means that my experimentation is falling on deaf ears. So I went back and added these “ALL SPELLINGS AND MISSPELLINGS AND ODD PUNCTUATIONS INTENTION” disclaimers to all my books. Which makes me feel like a wasted fraud, or like that equally unhappy woman from a year ago who kept commenting on bad reviews of her self-published book. I don’t really know what to do about such stuff. I don’t have answers. But this is my experience.

I was always a loner, and always different..I did not choose this. I was bullied constantly at school and could not really cope with my parents divorce (still love them though) It made me who i am in both positive and negative ways, i am glad i am not generic, but i am also constantly on the verge of giving in, quitting reality…..a few things have kept me going and you and neil are a couple of them…..i feel ashamed to be 40 and still feeling like a lost child…

I started getting bullied around the age of 9. I used to swim every week and was skinny, then I broke my wrist (falling over a basket ball of all things) and never went back. Without the routine exercise I unsurprisingly put on weight. I wasn’t very fat, but enough to be a target. Generally wasn’t so bad, bit of verbal stuff, nothing physical.

It kicked up a gear when I started secondary school. At secondary school I met some of the greatest people I have ever known (one of whom is going to be my best man) but I also met various people who thought it was fine to abuse verbally and physically. Over the five years there I was called everything under the sun by a broad selection of people in my year. One year word got out it was my birthday which somehow entitled people to hit me once for every year I had lived. This particular year I had P.E. (physical education, and the irony has just occurred to me). I got dragged into the other end of the changing rooms and beaten senseless. Another occasion someone leant out of a classroom door and threw a two pence piece at me. It hit me directly in my eye. That really hurt, to this day I have no idea who threw it.

Secondary school was not a fun time for me. I left and went to sixth form which was fantastic, the vast majority of people who had made my life a misery had suddenly disappeared and instead were intelligent people and I spent two happy years there. Went on to university, for the most part enjoyed it. Life was good.

Last year someone added me randomly on Facebook. I didn’t recognise the name or picture so looked into it and found it was someone I had been at secondary school with. She hasn’t done any of the bullying but she had annoyed me at various occasions such as claiming her views on religion were more valid than mine as she had been raised a Christian and I hadn’t.

Anyway she was organising a reunion for the tenth year since we had left. I ignored the invitation for a while then one of my friends messaged a group of us asking if any actually wanted to go as he certainly didn’t. We all agreed with him, the idea was repellant. The people confirming they were going were the ones who had made our lives difficult for years. It brought it all back, the hated, the misery I had felt, everything.

I bumped into one person from school a few years back in a takeaway after a night out and she apologised to me. I couldn’t believe it. One of my friends received a similar apology randomly from someone else a while ago too. That is good, if I bumped into others I doubt I’d get more apologies, would be nice but I doubt it.

Many people like to put things in the past and move on. Forget. I don’t forget. I remember and come to terms and it helps shape who I am. I never want to see those people again. I am happy, getting married, have amazing friends and although my experiences helped shape me I could have happily done without that bunch of bastards hitting me and calling me things for years. I haven’t had things as bad add others but it still makes me bitter and angry to this day.

I was only made fun of in elementary school but that was because as soon as I went to high school I was placed in an Accelerated High School (Read: Where the people who are expelled go OR the people who want to graduate faster. I was the second.) That was pretty much like sitting in a cave of wolves all the time. How did I deal with it? I realized that they weren’t making fun of me they were just trying to blow off steam from their lives (or I hope they were) and getting all bent out of shape about it wasn’t going to do anything to the world. Feeding hate only makes hate stronger and hate was not what these kids wanted in return. Did it upset me? Yes, who wouldn’t be upset at a constant barrage of their character. But over time I learned to not look at the comments and knee jerk react to them like a hormone driven teen. I learned to take the comments, see them for what they were, and let them go. Dwelling on it would only make them stronger and I wouldn’t let that happen any more.

I like to feel that I was lucky to find the wisdom and a shield against hate at that time and I’ve done my best to be as calm and thoughtful in my adult years (it’s often hard. Adult life is so different.) and it is always sad to see friends and strangers alike who just couldn’t handle it and ended their lives. It would do well to remind people that there is always someone on the other side of the screen and that hateful comments do have consequences.

Much love, always

P.S. I’m reminded of the Phoenix show you recently did when you were reading the comments left in the box of dark thoughts and that guy yelled out “They probably deserved it” and everyone boo’d him. There are good people who won’t tolerate hurtful things in this world and they shouldn’t be forgotten either.

That part about, walking through high school and wearing the comments as a badge was so me. The worse the comments got the more out there I got and Amanda you got me through every single day. Each time I felt like caving in I stuck on a DD album shaved of my eyebrows and created something (even if it was just a myspace pic) that made me feel better. Now I am older and wiser I cope by spreading the love and remembering every bit of hate comes from fear. People are scared and get defensive but it is always their own insecurities they are projecting. So take them by the hand and show them how safe the world feels when you truly love each other <3

HI there Amanda,

Usually I don’t answer to this things. I read, absorb, and move on. 288 comments, mine will be just one more. But let it be. For I know what bullying is.

I’ve been bullyied for all pre-high school and high school time.
And what I was here got me really scared.
You know why?

Because when my class mates beat the crap out of me, called me names, made me feel the worse animal in the world, I could get home and close up in my room and cry. And inferno was only at school. Of course, I didn’t have any friends out of it. I was a teenager for goodsake. A teenager life is school. But the bullying crossed over through my little town. Everywhere I was bullied when my parents weren’t watching. And you know what they said when one day I got the courage to speak to them?

“You will grow up”
“They don’t mean nothing.”

and

“You’re useless. You don’t even answer to them!”

OK, THAT hurt more than all the names and punching and isolation.
Of course I got depressed and I thought of suicide.

And then I thought… what the fuck? Why? Why should I kill myself? So they can keep calling me names and call me a coward? They can’t get in my ROOM. My world. Where I used to sit for hours writing and reading. It hurts, of course it does! I wasn’t fat, I wasn’t ugly. I was just the smartest girl of class and the most grow-up because I had to take care of situations those guys never did in their life with that age.

But I didn’t have internet.
That probably saved me too.
That is what got me scared reading this now. You want to cope with it? Don’t feed the throlls. Don’t read them, don’t listen to them. They bully you because they can’t understand you. They fear you because you are different than they are. They can’t make things like you can because they are so into “being accepted and normal” that they can’t see anything past their little brain cells.

I do believe in karma and sometimes karma is a real bitch.
Now my bullying classmates have miserable lives. Tiny little sorry lives. Good for them. They can keep their noses down because someone was a lot meaner to them now that ever they were to me. One of them, as it came to me, died of a overdose. Can’t say I pity the creature. I simply don’t care.

I had several other bullying episodes in my life. Specially with guys. One, not accepting a NO for an answer, came after me for two years. Until I showed him the police and said: keep doing that and I will have the pleasure to tell them all you have done. He got a nice ass to go around and left me alone. But internet was to blame on this guy. And I knew my path. The only mistake I’ve made was to have met him. So I will not cut myself for it. Or kill myself. Maybe I needed to know that guy to understand there were more fucked-up persons in high school than me. I had a maturity (that I didn’t see at the time) that he would never have.

So how to cope with bullying?

Cut it off.

Don’t search for it. Don’t feed it, don’t see it.

We humans do have the tendency to search for this type of things.
Don’t. If you can’t do it, eat an apple, read a book, go for a stroll.

But, if it comes to you don’t run. NEVER ever run. Stand it up. Face to face. Try to see what is wrong it them. Because lots of times they can’t think. They do it, because they fear you to their guts. They fear you so much, they hate you. And they think they are strong because of it. If you don’t run, they you are showing them that they aren’t strong, you are.

And then, I know it hurts, it still does. Go to your friends, have hugs. See the good side of life for a while.

And don’t pity them. They are in that hate hole because they don’t know better. They can’t be better. So focus in their little lives and worlds that revolve in bullying what they can’t get… an identity.

To all you teens that are out there:

I’m 31 years old. I’ve survived bullying alone. I had no friends and no family support. If I did it, you can do it too. No matter how down you are. No matter what they say: YOU FUCKING MATTER. Be better than all of them. Be who you are. Don’t go down to paths of waste. It won’t be easy, but you will be a fucking warrior. You will have an experience that will make you better that all those shit-holes that are trying to fuck your life.
Don’t turn inside.

Find your haven and be there as long as you need. Heal.
And please, don’t come to the internet. Don’t expose your life there.

And most of all:

BELIEVE.
In yourself.
Always.

Thank you all that will reading this.

Amanda Todd has a memorial page, everyone you should go and like it, and we should show our support to all who knew her.

Her story is a lesson to the world. To open their eyes, ears and hearts.

http://www.facebook.com/rip.amanda.todd.9696?ref=ts&fref=ts

In answer to your question Amanda, I really wouldn’t know how to go about dealing with internet bullying and hate messages. I think your man is right in saying don’t read it! But sometimes it is impossible to avoid, especially if people have gone out of their way to make sure you see it.
I guess stay strong and always believe in the power of good people.

I’m in a band myself and a few people have gone out of their way to make new youtube accounts just to leave us a nasty comment and a dislike,

but I just thanked them kindly for going to the trouble as it meant a teeny bit more prs for us ;]
And when I saw all the positive words from kind people it boosted me up and I just carry on soldiering forward

People are so quick to judge people they dont even know. My Auntie got a terrible review in the NME in the 80s, they said she was a drama school queen and spoiled brat or something to that effect, none of which was true, she didn’t even go to drama school (!?) but people believed it.

Best thing to do is surround yourself with supportive friends :] and dont read bad reviews/magazines/blogs

Internet bullying reminds me of the press. The way they can just lay in to people, create scandal, exaggerate stories and frame people for things they haven’t done

Trouble is, you are right in saying ‘we are the media’

but sometimes maybe that’s not such a good thing
At least in papers and magazines its to celebrities with teams of people trying to protect them

but on the internet, anyone is fair game, even a young teenager with no hope

Amanda, this post makes me love you all the more. Thank you. My contribution:

So, like many, I was bullied in school (and online). Ever since I was little I felt like an outsider. I was always the type susceptible to bullying because I felt worthless; I felt like I deserved all the shit I got. I got upset about it. It made me hate myself. And I never fought back, because what right did I have? I felt like I deserved to be abused at school because it was done to me at home too. My depressed mother neglected me and abused me emotionally and sometimes physically. My dad had had an affair and left home. He wasn’t interested in seeing me. When he did see me, he’d be ashamed because I wasn’t a “cool” kid. He was only concerned with reputation and what other people thought of him. Later on, When I was 9, my mother got re-married. My stepdad was abusive emotionally, too. One of his daughters had a massive jealousy problem when it came to me and my mother “taking” her dad away from her (and was a couple of years older than me) so she picked on me as an outlet. Then I got picked on all through school. I had stuff thrown at me, people tried to trip me up, I got called names (including “boffin” just because I liked learning and schoolwork was my outlet and the one thing I enjoyed), I had rumours spread about me. I was ignored. I was laughed at. I was called ugly, worthless. By the age of 12 I had started cutting my arms. It got progressively worse. I dreamed of death most days. I used to hide in the school toilets crying and cutting myself, especially in P.E. lessons because they were the worst for the bullying. By the age of 16 I had people saying things to me like, “who would ever want to be with YOU? Ewwww.” I felt that because I had been picked on at pretty much every stage of my life, I must be a fundamentally bad person. There must be something horrifically wrong with me for so many people to want to be horrible to me.

I knew that life didn’t suck this much for everyone, and I was sick of people treading all over me. I knew that through working hard, I could get myself out of this situation. I could go to university and meet like-minded people. I could be successful, one day. So I worked my butt off. I got good GCSE results (I’m English, btw). I got top A level results. I went to university. I wish I could say that I am the successful vision I had wanted for myself after all this time, but sadly it didn’t quite turn out this way. I still struggle with my depression (I’ve been on anti-depressants since the age of 16 and every time I try and come off them I fall apart). And, what’s worse, is that at 17 I became physically ill. It’s like in response to all the stuff I dealt with for all that time, my body shut down. I’m so weak and ill and tired all the time I just can’t manage much. But I pushed myself through my A levels and university regardless and got a 2.1 degree. Now, after all of that, I’m taking time for myself. I’m letting myself rest and recooperate, away from my parents and away from the place I grew up, away from the memories. I am having psychotherapy to deal with everything. I focus on the little things that make me happy. I am becoming more confident, and feeling like I deserve to be here. I’m sure I will get better one day and get to do the things I deserve to. :) and I’m damn proud of myself for persevering through it all even though I haven’t completely got to where I want to yet.

I’ve realized a lot since my school days. I’ve realized that I was interested in things that the kids at my age weren’t. Most kids at school liked pop/ RnB/ hiphop and drinking alcopops, and they hated school and learning. They thought “going clubbing” was the coolest thing ever. I, meanwhile, liked classical/ metal/ folk music, didn’t see the point in alcohol or going to these seedy parties and hated the other kids’ conformity and unwillingness to explore things that weren’t “the norm”. I hated their habit of picking on people weaker than themselves, and I purposely distanced myself from them, which they seemed to get offended by. A lot of people find those who are “different” insulting and confusing. That, combined with my inherent feeling of worthlessness, makes it kind of unsurprising that I wasn’t exactly popular. I was a good target.

There are a lot of things I wish I’d known through my bad experiences. I had no way of dealing with being picked on and I was totally alone. I had no support. All that got me through was a) the knowledge that some day, things HAD to get better and b) my love for things like reading and the subjects I enjoyed at school.

For all the people who are going through or have been through something similar, I’d give you this advice:

Why waste your precious time on meaningless negativity and hatred?

So what if someone doesn’t like you? There are infinitely more people who DO like you.

If someone doesn’t like you, it’s probably not because you’re a bad person, it’s probably because they don’t *understand* you.

I just think, the people who bullied me probably had shit going on in their own lives. That doesn’t make what they did okay, and it doesn’t make me hate them any less. But it means that I’m less bitter and slightly more understanding and forgiving towards them.

People who bully – people who consciously spend their time hating on other people’s faults (both real and imagined) – are clearly insecure. They are projecting their own insecurities on to other people.

Bullies pick on the weak, because they know the weak won’t resist. The weak won’t fight back. They will take it, feeling like they deserve it. That in turn makes the bully feel strong.

Focus on YOU. Focus on enjoying yourself and embracing the people you love, and who love you in return. Don’t waste your time on the shitty people who have nothing better to do than pick on you. It says more about them than it does about you.

I actually feel sorry for bullies. Why? Because if they one day become better people and realize the misery they caused others, they then have to live with themselves. If they don’t become better people? Well, then I feel even MORE sorry for them because they’re going to be shitty people forever. At least I get to be a good person and my experiences have made me stronger and wiser. Oh, and one day they’ll realize how much time they wasted bitching about people and not living their own lives.

Things CAN get better, and they DO. I’m so so so at peace with myself in comparison to how I used to be. Things are still not perfect, but that’s life. I feel so much more in control these days, and am excited about the future. If I’d let those shitty people get to me as much as I could have, I wouldn’t be here now to enjoy the things I do.

Much love to everyone <3

Couldn’t finish watching her video. Hard to believe that people can be that cruel. I guess the internet makes it easier for stuff like to happen. Why didn’t someone step in and stop the guy?

I’ve been bullied because I used to live in
a children’s home and was “fat.” It started when I was about 10, but at that
time I didn’t care about it. A few years later though, social networks became
more and more popular. Classmates were writing bad things about me; they wrote
stuff like how fat and crummy I was. They also often wrote that my parents hadn’t wanted me
anymore and that was the reason why I had come into a children’s home. At
school, they hid my stuff and didn’t lose any opportunity to make really bad
jokes on my behalf.

When I was 13, I got really depressed and
started cutting myself. I had skipped school more and more until one of the
nurturers found out. But I refused to tell them what was wrong with me, so they
sent me to see a therapist. I didn’t tell her either.

And then I realized that I shouldn’t show
other people my weakness. I went to school almost every day and deleted my
social media accounts. This didn’t stop them from bullying me, but I dealt with
it through drawing and music. Then, one day, I was diagnosed with PTSD. Not
because of the bullying, but because of other events that had taken place when
I was at home with my parents. I had to take antidepressants and sleeping pills
from that time on. Somehow, one of my classmates found out and of course the whole
school knew soon after. From now on I wasn’t only fat and antisocial, I was
also a psycho. I fell back into self-harming behavior. This time though, it got
worse. I tried to kill myself by taking an overdose of the sleeping pills.
Until then I kept telling myself things that were worth living for, but after a
while they didn’t feel like that anymore.

After that incident, I finally told my
therapist. She helped me a lot and I managed to go on with my life. Now I know
that it is important to have a person to turn to. It’s also very important to
express your feelings; through art, sports, music, etc.

Every person is amazing in his/her own way.
People who are bullying others are just showing their insecurities; that makes
THEM weak people. And hating a person you know nothing about is just bullshit
and shallow, especially on the internet. I don’t understand how people can say
they hate a certain famous person if they don’t know him/her, only his/her art
and presence in the media. Besides, on the internet everybody can act up, but in
real life they’re probably cowards. It’s okay to say you don’t like the music
this person makes, but being mean because of his/her personal beliefs or media presence
is stupid. But famous people have the luck that they have a lot of supporters,
normal people usually not. I think that even if you only have a person you can talk to, you should do it. That person might not be able to stop it, but he or she will surely do the best to help you feel better.

Last night I was reading a New Yorker profile of Neil that included the line–Internet critics deride Gaiman’s fans as “Twee ‘Bisexual’ Goth Girls with BPD”—borderline personality disorder—“who are drama majors and who are destined to become cat ladies.” I read that out loud to my daughter. She said, “That’s you.” I must have responded with a puzzled look because I hardly fit any of those descriptions, at least not at the moment. Then she clarified, “No, I mean you have the same fan base. Neil Gaiman and you. That must be why you like him.” Yes, perhaps it is. In you and Neil the power to be different and that gives me fuel to encourage all the girls who describe themselves as “freaks” and “weird” or the boys who are pummeled for being gay or sensitive. I see a family that loves each other devotedly in your cute tweets about food poisoning, an engagement, a wedding, or a batch of cookies. It never crossed my mind that you will be the victim of Internet hate.

I teach high school, parent three children from 14 to 21, serve as a safety net at school for anyone who doesn’t fit in especially LGBTQQ kids. I am not sure what qualified me to be the one they come to. By all standards I look like a middle-aged mom and school teacher. I think the inner punk shows through though. I wish I had the courage to look as different as I feel, to be as bold as I dream about. Yet I know that I need to be there for these kids, and they really need me to look like a mom when they come tell me they are cutting themselves, like girls, want to go through with gender reassignment, think about hanging themselves, or have racing thoughts. I used to be very accessible to them on social media, but I got in trouble, threatened with my job. I scaled back my presence. They still know where to find me, but it is more difficult. Why is it easier for someone to attack someone on social media than to provide help, peace, support? Why do we protect that speech but fail to provide the kind of care we need to for teens who hurt? Why are my hands tied when it comes to asking for help for a student who is in distress? Why are there so many stigmas still associated with mental illness? Why do we have so many labels?

Write this blog, Amanda. I am trying to make a little difference in a little place. But you, you and Neil, have a stage.

I am weirdly in the opposite situation. I’m an artist, pansexual, married, female though genderqueer, Pagan, a geek and very open about all of this. I’m practically a target. But I’ve never really been bullied online. Mostly I just feel invisible.

God that video was sad :s I wish i could have done something. High School is hard…and i feel where she’s coming from so much…i’ve overdosed twice now, the first was when i was in sixth form and i remember going down to the train tracks and telling myself it was the only way to stop hurting everyone and then i came back in and just wandered around the common room bawling my eyes out and what killed even more was not a single person looked at me or asked if i was okay. Then i went to the toilet and passed out when i went to go to a sink and got found by the best friend of the girl that bullied me for years and years, nice touch life, very nice. Naturally she told the teachers and i got carted off to hospital with the entire school watching as i left, that was horrific even for a performer like myself lol. And do you know what i fucking hated that girl for not leaving me there, but i forgive her now finally after 6 years because life does get better, theres not many joys in life and my god is it a tangled mess most of the time but i know now ive got more to give than lying in a hospital bed and running away from everyone and everything because it scares me. There are those rare people in life that make it worthwhile and you will think you’ve found them so many times and have not but eventually you do and they’re worth the wait and you pull through the shit together. In a nutshell my dear amanda we fuck the haters with the support of others and carry on spreading the love :P

Posts like this one are the ones that make me love this artist called Amanda Palmer. We need more artists that are capable of make people feel, think and question themselves the way she does. It’s not only about the songs. It’s about these words, the feelings that shaped them and about the 342 comments (and counting) they are generating.

If I believed in God I would thank him for her. So thank you, AFP.

And to all those being hated: Hate comes out of ignorance and fear. The problem is not within you. The problem is within them and their incompetence on dealing with their fears.

One of the sentences in the post made me think about a quotation by Kurt Cobain that I used to wear on a shirt and it was my personal mantra: “You laugh because I’m different. I laugh because you’re all the same”. The funny (or stupid) thing is that I was often laughed at for wearing that.

Some humour: “Haters gonna hate. Potatoes gonna potate”.

Be strong, people, and laugh at your haters. Laugh at everything.

Oh Amanda, you’re so right about so many things. We should stop being so cruel to each other.

I have a lot of different experience with bullying – my dad, a jealous co-worker, high school WHY IS IT ALWAYS HIGH SCHOOL and university and myself. I bully myself and punish myself.

but i didnt and don’t deal with that shit very well, although I’m trying.

When I was a kid, however, bullying washed off me like water from a duck’s back. Introducing Little Laura – she wore glasses, PURPLE GLASSES from the age of 4 – didn’t care, quite liked them. She was so nerdy – such a bookworm, pedantic, She made huge drawings of the Tudors for a project – another project about France she taught French vocabulary until someone shouted out “YOU’RE BORING!” to which she said, “I AM TEACHING YOU STUFF’, looking back she was massively weird.

I miss being her.

And of course, all the boys hated me. Well, I dunno if they hated me, they said mean shit. In particular one.

Ross the Bully “I’m going come round to your house and smash your windows in.”
Little Laura “You don’t even know where I live! Silly billy!”

Ross the Bully “You look like a grandma in those glasses.”
Little Laura “I’m eight. What kind of grandma is eight?”

Ross told me I was going to die when I was 30. Nice boy. A few years later, I was walking back from high school and, after a few years of never seeing him as we went to different high schools, I walked past him. And I recognised him and him me. And he gaped at me. Mouth dropped, eyes wide. I looked behind me after I walked past him and there he was behind me, staring.

I don’t know why. Because I’d got contact lenses, my short bob from age 11 was now long blonde hair? Because he had been relentless cruel and felt bad about it? And for some reason, I started laughing. Because he had tried to hurt me so many times and he never had. I had won. I had never been mean to him, the school I was at had been very anti-bullying but had done nothing OF COURSE, so it was just me versus him.

Of course, as puberty hit, severe acne, puppy fat, massive insecurity, depression all came with it. And I was very unhappy and sometimes people’s words cut so deep it felt like they were physically branded on my skin. I was painfully shy, I had no confidence…I was knee deep in self loathing and I’ve only just sorted myself out.

Little Laura seems like such a different person from Laura now. I had such confidence in myself as a kid, Ross’ meanness meant nothing to me, because I liked who I was. Of course, not all bullying is as mild as his was…and I’m not suggesting we just have more confidence in ourselves and everything will be perfect. We need better support systems. Schools and families need to do more about it. Bullying stems from bullying. And I know I have to try and be nicer, kinder, more loving.

But…from now on when I feel whenever I feel crap about myself, because someone has said something, or a wave of self-hatred has washed over me, I’m going to think of Little Laura and what she would do.

And I hope…I hope the bullying stops. Sometimes you have to make it stop. Reach out – there are free phonelines to call. I don’t know the American ones I’m afraid, so you’ll have to google it. Talk to people online. Talk to real people! Do stuff that makes you happy, don’t like the bully win. Kill them with kindness, and if that doesn’t work, tell people they’re a bully. Confront them, confront the teachers, the admin, everyone who stands by! Because you are not alone. And life can be wonderful.

Amanda, this post makes me love you all the more. Thank you. My contribution:

So, like many, I was bullied in school (and online). Ever since I was little I felt like an outsider. I was always the type susceptible to bullying because I felt worthless; I felt like I deserved all the shit I got. I got upset about it. It made me hate myself. And I never fought back, because what right did I have? I felt like I deserved to be abused at school because it was done to me at home too. My depressed mother neglected me and abused me emotionally and sometimes physically. My dad had had an affair and left home. He wasn’t interested in seeing me. When he did see me, he’d be ashamed because I wasn’t a “cool” kid. He was only concerned with reputation and what other people thought of him. Later on, When I was 9, my mother got re-married. My stepdad was abusive emotionally, too. One of his daughters had a massive jealousy problem when it came to me and my mother “taking” her dad away from her (and was a couple of years older than me) so she picked on me as an outlet.

Then I got picked on all through school. I had stuff thrown at me, people tried to trip me up, I got called names (including “boffin” just because I liked learning and schoolwork was my outlet and the one thing I enjoyed), I had rumours spread about me. I was ignored. I was laughed at. I was called ugly, worthless. By the age of 12 I had started cutting my arms. It got progressively worse. I dreamed of death most days. I used to hide in the school toilets crying and cutting myself, especially in P.E. lessons because they were the worst for the bullying. By the age of 16 I had people saying things to me like, “who would ever want to be with YOU? Ewwww.” I felt that because I had been picked on at pretty much every stage of my life, I must be a fundamentally bad person. There must be something horrifically wrong with me for so many people to want to be horrible to me.

I knew that life didn’t suck this much for everyone, and I was sick of people treading all over me. I knew that through working hard, I could get myself out of this situation. I could go to university and meet like-minded people. I could be successful, one day. So I worked my butt off. I got good GCSE results
(I’m English, btw). I got top A level results. I went to university. I wish I could say that I am the successful vision I had wanted for myself after all this time, but sadly it didn’t quite turn out this way. I still struggle with my depression (I’ve been on anti-depressants since the age of 16 and every time I try and come off them I fall apart). And, what’s worse, is that at 17 I became physically ill. It’s like in response to all the stuff I dealt with for all that time, my body shut down. I’m so weak and ill and tired all the time I just can’t manage much. But I pushed myself through my A levels and university regardless and got a 2.1 degree. Now, after all of that, I’m taking time for myself. I’m letting myself rest and recooperate, away from my parents and away from the place I grew up, away from the memories. I am having psychotherapy to
deal with everything. I focus on the little things that make me happy. I am becoming more confident, and feeling like I deserve to be here. I’m sure I will get better one day and get to do the things I deserve to. :) and I’m damn proud of myself for persevering through it all even though I haven’t completely got to where I want to yet.

I’ve realized a lot since my school days. I’ve realized that I was interested in things that the kids at my age weren’t. Most kids at school liked pop/ RnB/ hiphop and drinking alcopops, and they hated school and learning. They thought “going clubbing” was the coolest thing ever. I, meanwhile, liked classical/ metal/ folk music, didn’t see the point in alcohol or going to these seedy parties and hated the other kids’ conformity and unwillingness to explore things that weren’t “the norm”. I hated their habit of picking on
people weaker than themselves, and I purposely distanced myself from them, which they seemed to get offended by. A lot of people find those who are “different” insulting and confusing. That, combined with my inherent feeling of worthlessness, makes it kind of unsurprising that I wasn’t exactly popular. I was a good target.

There are a lot of things I wish I’d known through my bad experiences. I had no way of dealing with being picked on and I was totally alone. I had no support. All that got me through was a) the knowledge that some day, things HAD to get better and b) my love for things like reading and the subjects I enjoyed at
school.

I still look back on this time and think: wow. I was really fucking BRAVE to keep going through all of that. I really don’t know how I did it.

For all the people who are going through or have been through something similar, I’d give you this advice:

Why waste your precious time on meaningless negativity and hatred?

So what if someone doesn’t like you? There are infinitely more people who DO like you.

If someone doesn’t like you, it’s probably not because you’re a bad person, it’s probably because they don’t *understand* you.

I just think, the people who bullied me probably had shit going on in their own lives. That doesn’t make what they did okay, and it doesn’t make me hate them any less. But it means that I’m less bitter and slightly more understanding and forgiving towards them.

People who bully – people who consciously spend their time hating on other people’s faults (both real and imagined) – are clearly insecure. They are projecting their own insecurities on to other people.

Bullies pick on the weak, because they know the weak won’t resist. The weak won’t fight back. They will take it, feeling like they deserve it. That in turn makes the bully feel strong.

Focus on YOU. Focus on enjoying yourself and embracing the people you love, and who love you in return. Don’t waste your time on the shitty people who have nothing better to do than pick on you. It says more about them than it does about you.

I actually feel sorry for bullies. Why? Because if they one day become better people and realize the misery they caused others, they then have to live with themselves. If they don’t become better people? Well, then I feel even MORE sorry for them because they’re going to be shitty people forever. At least I get to be a good person and my experiences have made me stronger and wiser. Oh, and one day they’ll realize how much time they wasted bitching about other people and not living their own lives.

Things CAN get better, and they DO. I’m so so so at peace with myself in comparison to how I used to be. Things are still not perfect, but that’s life. I feel so much more in control these days, and am excited about the future. If I’d let those shitty people get to me as much as I could have, I wouldn’t be here now to enjoy the life I do.

Much love to everyone <3

P.S. I haz a YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/chemilyx88/videos?view=0&flow=grid

I actually feel this way about you, a lot of the time my love <3 I'll see the posts that rip you apart and people jumping on a bandwagon and I'll just make this UUUUUGGGGHHHHH sound that fills up the whole room.

A person's a person no matter how small, or big. No matter how much you see them, or you don't. I was assaulted at 14 and called a kinky goth slut for most of highschool even though the thought of a boy touching me sent shivers down my spine until I was in my late teens. The things I did to cope, to keep smiling, to make people comfortable…shit, if I had eyes on me like I would've if I were famous, I cannot even imagine. I'd explode. I'd punch babies. I'd have killed myself because the people I loved seeing me that way was hard enough. I just narrowly avoided the generation of cyber-bullies. But as a writer and blogger who's nearing 30, I see the trolls and I gush tears for others. Take any tweet Miley Cyrus makes, and look at the replies. You want thick skin? You'll find it in a 20 year old popstar, who posts a picture of herself with her new puppy and gets 50 messages back that say "FUCK YOU UGLY CUNT YOU DON'T DESERVE YOUR BOYFRIEND GO KILL YOURSELF."

I was at the last Brighton show you did and I confessed to you about my nervous breakdown. Your words meant a lot to me but I continued to spiral downwards for quite sometime. I still have the ticket with the message you wrote me, it’s stuck on my wall. For the last year I’ve been fighting a pretty hardcore depression and it’s slowly getting better. A lot of the time I feel so lost amongst everything, but other times I don’t. I always look forward to those days the most.

Great blog & wonderful reaching out to use love for those in need. The Brooklyn vegans! Ha- that must be the Boston talking ;D Am w/ you on luck being spared online bullying back in the day- I went through some knocks too & think it comes w/ the turf of being a creative “different” kind of a person, which like you, eventually became a badge of honor. Deflecting the negativity of others is certainly a battle tho, no matter your age. It can happen online. It can happen at work. It can happen wherever you encounter insecure, unbalanced, and wayward people in disharmony- which is all of the time, everywhere. People don’t exercise, eat well, they’re doing drugs & boozing at all times, popping pills for any old pain, etc. etc. and all of this leads to seriously unbalanced energy. The first mistake is to assume these people are coming from the same place as you- their madness is theirs & yours is your own. Buddhist detachment works wonders for me. I keep on the middle path & lead where the spirit says go, not what swords the ego/ Athene wants to rip out. It doesn’t work. As an artist, if I get a bad review or cranky putdown (definitely on a smaller scale than NYorker), I figure in part it’s my job to allow them their opinions & take whatever good might be in the poison arrow to improve, then leave the rest. Right now I’m channeling a lot of mental dick energy from some haters into a new book & I’m exploring dynamics of what brings out this awfulness in people, and have lately landed on Scarcity. Not having enough brings out the animal in people. Whatever they’re putting out there is far harsher to their inner selves- so you’re right about representing love. It’s hard- I get thrown all of the time, but this is the center that keeps coming back, where engaging is the worst action. Pulling back & maybe going in another direction might be the new calling. Peace love- wonderful topic!

I was probably one of the last few high schoolers to graduate before Facebook exploded. But I also spent a ton of time online, despite pretty severe anxiety about actually interacting with anyone. But you saw it then too, the bullying. It just wasn’t always people you know.
I was bullied as a kid, too smart, too short and a little too pudgy, oh and I rarely talked. Talking to people scared me. But going home for me wasn’t a disconnect from that, home, despite my mom’s best efforts could be a somewhat volatile place.
I learned how to shut things off, shut doors, write shit down. Even if I was just screaming at a piece of paper. I’d find allies, sometimes friends, sometimes teachers. I’d give them pieces of my story to keep safe. Or to save me from.
I think bullying on the internet is the same. Shut the damn thing off. I know it’s a train wreck and as humans we can’t look away… but we have to learn how to. We have to find the people we can cling to that tell us we aren’t alone.
I don’t know if I’ve even got it figured out, other than hold on to hope, and learn how to use the power button. Some days I’m still a mess, bits of brokenness in between what’s slowly turning into a beautiful life. But even though I’m still young (26) I’m starting to realize that no one actually has this figured out, we’re all making it up as we go along, adults can break just as easily as teens and kids. We’re all just human, we all get scared, and some of us were never taught to deal with that feeling. I mean, this is a culture that tells people to “man up” – which yes, sometimes just needs to be done… but we ignore fear and say its a bad thing. We don’t deal with it.
I’m rambling on now, so I’ll stop here, but thank you for thinking to write the post that you’re looking to write. We need to have more people helping spread lessons of humanity and coping. <3

I really just have a few questions I suppose. You see, most of the hate I get is from myself. I am constantly comparing myself to others, putting myself down etc. I have been struggling with self harm and suicide…stuff since I was…I want to say 12. I’m very insecure about my art and my music, and I don’t really have a solid support system for when I start slipping down into my depression. I have been clean from self harm for 3 months, but the scars still kinda haunt me. I don’t want to get drawn back into that downward spiral. How do I keep my head above water, even when it feels like I want to drown? Also, Thank you for just being you and for creating the powerful art that you do. (ps, last October I went to a show of yours with Jason Webley and afterwards gave you a letter/long poem/thingy. You may not remember, but I just wanted to know if you still had it) anyhoo…
Much love,
The Mad Duke

Not to detract from the seriousness of the post, but the “Amy Pond” that beats you in hatred is in fact the fictional Doctor Who Character.

Thank you. This does mean so much and you have made a difference. As a writer-artist-sensitive, words have the power to just tear me up. Words have power, to wound or to heal.

Growing up, my mother married and moved us to the Bahamas. Fantastic,
right? Except she married an abusive alcoholic. Physically, emotionally,
sexually abusive wanker that was terrible when he was angry but even
more terrifying when he was in a “good mood”. I was the only white kid
in most of the schools I went to. When I moved to the States, I joined
the male dominated Navy. I’ve been on the wrong end of so many sticks
it’s become a joke now. I want to help. Tell me how I can help. I’m a
SAHM with so much free time on my hands it’s ridiculous. I’m also a part
time student studying to eventually become a Child Psychologist. I
didn’t get my childhood and that sucks. But if I can help just one or
two from something like this, then I will count it a good life.

There was this boy in my English class. He was gorgeous. And he was popular and everyone liked him, and he was obsessed with that.
But he was very obviously interested in me. I was weird and wore too much eyeliner, but he was. And i think back now, and i realize that if he had let anyone know he liked me, he might have lost that popularity he so craved.
So he was mean. He was awful. He made me feel like life wasn’t even worth living because of how terrible he was.
I wish that someone had told me that it got better. I thought it was only going to get worse, until it would be better to be dead than be this sad. But, truthfully, it got better.

It gets better.
It will suck now, and it will be hard. Life will push you down, and you will be sad, but then you’ll stop being sad.

Things will stop sucking.

It will get better.
You will be happy.

I’ve been incredibly isolated for 4 years since being left literally holding the baby.. I’ve had time out from the crazy big world of media, events, tv and general circus of mayhem I was a part of..I can only say the internet has been mostly my only company.t Amanda and Neil have an amazing, kindhearted presence, one which reaches virtual handshakes and warmth almost daily. I’ve been out only a handful of times and two was to see them live, both positive experiences that lifted my spirit…I’ve been seriously ill, I’ve been crippled with shyness and low self esteem and in many ways the people I have met and interacted with though this cyber world have helped me in many beautiful ways..and I have managed to in turn help some people..it’s a circle of sorts. For every troll there is a heart beaming light and love. Thank you, all of you for sharing and for reaching out that beautiful sparkling cyber hand.x

It breaks my heart reading all these comments about people wanting to end it all, but then again, I can sympathize. I was bullied but I was lucky. It was never physical but psychological and by a girl I considered a friend. I don’t speak to her anymore. I hated secondary school and couldn’t wait to get out. I was so lucky to have an awesome Mum who helped me cope with the bullies and who has always encouraged me to do things my way. She is one of the strongest women I know and I am so lucky to have her; she told me it was ok to be myself. I have only one friend from my secondary school that I still keep in contact and she is one of the best people I know. She and my Mum are the reasons I made it through secondary school, along with my friends from my part-time job. They’re still a huge part of my support system and I don’t even work there anymore :)
But to the people struggling through high school right now; please don’t give up and don’t give in. Embrace your quirks because they make you who you are. Don’t fold to the narrow minded people who will never understand you. There are people who will totally get you out there. I found them on my travels and in University. Hang in there and if it gets too much talk. Think of all the good things. It does get better. Really.

The stories on here are inspiring just for the fact they haven’t given up, lain down and thought “fuck it all”, but a phrase popped out as me as I was scrolling and it was ‘self bullying’, and that really hit home. I’ve been bullied several times in various different ways and for various different reasons, and they’ve all eventually stopped, either by some sort of higher power (a teacher or the school) or just gradually phased out as the bullies lost interest, but what a lot of people don’t really realise or just think about is the bullying that goes on inside someone’s head. Bullying about someone’s looks can last weeks, months, however long, but it’ll eventually stop. What might never stop is that person not being able to look into a mirror because they can’t stand the reflection.

Another thing I guess people don’t think about is the bullying from the school administration. Not directly teacher-student but the boiling pots of pressure that some schools can be. I went to a high school that you had to take a test to get into, and because of that everyone there is smart. There are obviously different levels, but everyone is at least on this level or above. The administration didn’t agree – if you got A*’s (A+s in America?? Top grade anyway) then good for you…but you still could do better. A’s? Let’s analyse everything that went wrong. B’s? Your work is slipping and you’re not trying hard enough. Don’t even get me started on what happened if you got a C. It was so painfully obvious that only the creme de la creme were worth any of the school’s attention, and if you didn’t plan on going to Oxford or Cambridge for Uni then sorry, you won’t get any help.

When my friends and I were being bullied for being gay or GQ or trans or whatever, the school didn’t give a rats arse about it. When postcards were sent to *our homes, our parents* and our parents got mad, the school said it was our fault for them being mad because we hadn’t come out before the postcards. Seriously. They didn’t catch on to the fact our parents were mad, they just said it was our own fault. The only time they pulled their heads out of their arses was when one of the (anonymous) online messages mentioned the schools name. They gave an assembly for our whole year, not mentioning the bullying once, but lectured us all on ‘bringing the school’s name into disrepute’ and doing whatever we like as long as their name wasn’t mentioned. Their name was already in disrepute for those in the know – a school where depression and self harm are common, we had no counselor but we desperately needed one, where girls crying in bathroom stalls was a daily occurrence and when my best friend tried to commit suicide when she was 14, it was a school where it offered no support to her or our group of friends and I don’t blame her for it but it’s something that’s affected my friends and I’s lives in such a horribly negative way it’s still blatantly evident now, when most of us are 18.

Schools saying that they have ’0 tolerance on bullying’ means bullshit when the students know, not only will nothing be done or solved by telling a teacher, they might be openly ridiculed and patronised by the teacher and then badged about why they can’t get their expected grades.

One ‘tip’ I suppose I could say is ‘Don’t bottle it up’. When I went to counselling a while back the lady gave me a list of things I could do to let out my emotions; writing it down, punching a pillow, getting
headphones and blasting music etc, anything to stop cutting, and while Istopped the self harm I never started on the other things, and I now have a permanent headache from stress, even during holidays because there are so many things I want to say but I have no one to say them to. Just do whatever you have to do to let it out.

Reading all the other comments has really helped, and I’m sure reading the next blog post will too, because logically you know other people get bullied but that never matters and doesn’t even register when you’re afraid to go online or go to school or go home, or wherever the bullying is, and having a physical reminder that there are other people suffering too helps. Not only that but someone actually caring can make such a world of difference and it’s just indescribable, so thank you :)

This tragic story made me cry so hard, I had to stop reading and then restart. When I was young I never knew how lucky I was, not being bullied. I guess I was on the ‘winners side’ somehow, even when they called me a a punk. That’s what I was (actually a post punk to be correct) and I liked it.

Until now I never thought of typing “hate + my name” into my browsers search field. And I will not do so in the future. But I am a writer, people know my name, my whereabouts and some might not like what I do. I know that it could be me tomorrow, who falls victim to a hatred campaign.

It’s so saddening to see what becomes of people as soon as they feel free to do what they want … Once I felt that freedom for the individual was very important – I still do. But who will teach them out there, that one persons freedom ends where another persons freedom begins?

What do I do to protect my life? Not much I guess. But I talk about these things with friend an colleagues and I try to listen when they say, let your publisher read what they write about you, just write good stories.

“PUT DOWN THE COMPUTER AND COME TO BED!” Is a very nice way to avoid beeing hurt, if there is a beloved one waiting for you, too.

Wishing for everyone to have a soulmate watching over your fate.

Love xxx

I was a terribly, terribly, painfully shy child. I was also small, and had unmanageable hair. My parents didn’t believe in using credit cards, so we never bought the “cool” clothes worn by other kids in our wealthy town. I had goofy teeth. I was very smart, and had been held back in school due to my age and some idiotic policy that said my age meant I couldn’t be in the same grade as the kids who were on the same “wavelength” as me in terms of sense of humor, vocabulary, and overall social skills.

It all made me a perfect target for the kids who couldn’t help but pick on others they perceived as weak or different. There were occasions, at least for me, in which a teacher intervened in an effective way, and there were occasions where I can only wish there had been someone in my corner.

The problem with being both shy and a target is you don’t know how to create a support network, because you’re not comfortable making friends, you’re too skittish to reach out or ask for help. There was a period where I almost killed myself, more than once – OD-ing on pills, almost jumping out of a moving car …. I was a cutter for a long time. For me cutting was suicide practice. I was determined to get it right. If I slit my wrists, it was not going to be something that could be patched back together. There would be no waking up in ICU with a billion people tsk-tsking at me for hating everything the world appeared to promise at the time, for wanting to make the misery end. There would be no awkward return to the hell of school, only to be taunted for trying to kill myself – or worse: surrounded by “pity friends” who would only befriend me for some kind of piety points.

I’m not sure exactly what made me go on, beyond simply being bad at suicide. I just did.

Fast forward many years later, I became involved in politics and blogging. It was the early days of the blogosphere when the first trolls began their attacks on what I wrote. I eventually stopped writing my own blog, but continued to comment and occasionally post on other people’s blogs. After a few years of reading comments all over the web, I figured out that most of the trolls are entirely uninterested in the person they attack. They attack us, not because they give one whit one way or another about us personally, but because something in their fucked up worldview is threatened by who we are. This was a huge revelation!

It made me realize this:

The only reason they spew that hate is because we are on the verge of making them face something about themselves that they simply can’t bear to face. The harder or closer the truth, the more cruelly they lash out.

It’s been a long, hard path to this realization, but knowing it has freed me of a whole pack of demons that used to haunt me from the fringes of my past.

There are some trolls who practice “shoot the messenger” to try to obscure a message (especially on political and environmental sites), but most are really just cowards, deeply afraid of something in themselves. I’m guessing Amanda Todd’s torturers saw some truth about themselves in Amanda’s struggle – a truth they hated.

I’m no longer bothered by trolls. If I respond to something they say, it’s only for the purpose of showing others who may be reading that there is another way to view things. I don’t ever respond with the intent to try to change the hater, because the hater’s only reason for being there is to try to prevent themselves from changing. They are in an internal struggle, and I have no interest of jumping into the morass of instability swirling around inside their heads.

I wish it were possible to pour that revelation into the hearts of today’s bullied teens: the haters are broken people who can’t bear what they are learning about themselves from you.

That and I’d teach them how the “block” and “don’t allow tagging” features work, and encouraging them to use both as often as necessary to keep the haters out. It’s got to be so much harder, now, in this 24/7 world, to escape that pain.

For my own kids, when they started using social media, I set up the accounts, and had the passwords. I set up the accounts to send us every email, every post, every comment sent or received. I didn’t read them, except for a snippet here and there to make sure no harassment was occurring in either direction. As they got older, and demonstrated that they knew how to protect themselves and not harm others on social sites, we allowed the settings to be changed. I wish more parents knew how to do this, and had the time and desire to help their kids navigate this new, much scarier, world.

Amanda Palmer I have a serious crush on you. Live long and prosper!

When I was in middle school, my best friend and I posted some youtube videos of us lip-syncing to really funny songs, and some kids at my school found them. I was almost exclusively hated (for reasons I still don’t understand), and this was even worse. Instead of being ignored or laughed at during school, I was openly made fun of on the internet. I never told my parents I was bullied at school, let alone on the internet and I dealt with it all on my own. The one time I went to a teacher saying “I don’t feel comfortable, everyone hates me” he responded with “It’s your own fault, you’re an intolerant person”. This haunts me so much, and I always have a hard time getting over what people say now.

Based on how I was treated in middle school, I shape my whole life so I DON’T have to deal with that pain. I have a youtube channel (where I’ve posted some AFP stuff ;) ) but my name is nowhere on it and I don’t show it to anyone I know. When people don’t talk to me (even if it’s not ignoring), I feel it says more than if they did talk to me and I automatically think everyone hates me. I know I can’t live like this much longer, but I’m still working on trying to get past it. I graduate high school this year and I’m praying college will be even better than high school.

I went to your last Boston show this year, and the people I met were THE NICEST IN THE WORLD. I had a long conversation with a woman at the concert about how this is the case at all of your concerts, people get along and are extremely good natured, and that’s not the case at all concerts.

Thank you for making this community (even if it wasn’t intentional) and thank you for your music, because it has helped me so much.

::Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me::

In all actuality, a more accurate statement would probably read something like ‘but words cut deep, pour silicic acid inside the compound fracture and stitch everything up pretty with a bow.’ But that’s pretty teen-angsty of me. Which at one point, I certainly was full of (now, I’m pretty full of boring adult-angsty stuff).

Where I grew up, sports dominates ALL, the population just reached 2000 in ’11 and local money is “BIG MONEY”. Just about everything else is frowned upon, including academics (unless of course you were the rare excelling-cheerleader) and ESPECIALLY any book-loving, cat-meowing, rainbow-haired teenager still playing hide-and-seek past the age of 6.

Until 7th grade, I was an honour student; I completed advance grade classes and I completed them WELL. And then, the light switch flipped: suddenly my grades plummeted to D’s and my insomnia became unbearable. My fear and rage twisted me into a living sickness that for many years, I willfully infected people with. Why? Harassment. Cruelty. Abuse. Abandonment.

Don’t get me wrong; I still and always will love learning. I yearn for new information, different information with a(n) passion (obsession) that even many a bibliophile balks at. But something singled me out after 6th grade. I don’t know what it was that suddenly triggered my classmates (many of whom I had attended K+ with) to decide I was a threat and required elimination.

There were days where I had lit matches thrown at me walking down the hallway between classes. I had a larger (reputed) reputation than Ms. L. Lohan. I had fractures from getting shoved into lockers, walls and to the ground. I had girls follow me into the bathroom and make puking noises any
time I so much as needed to blow my nose (even though I never did have an eating disorder). The sad irony is that many of those girls were, in fact, later diagnosed with EDs themselves.

Where were the teachers? Where were the counselors? They enabled every second of it. If it was not outright “kids will be kids,” I had doors, quite literally, slammed in my face. I was a teenager, begging for help and I was so much as told, I wasn’t worthy of it. The guidance counselor failed
me. The principal failed me and for awhile the rest of the world did too.

My pets, the sweet furry bodies that are as much an integral part of my heart as my much-less furry family, never gave up on me. I refused to let that hell break me. Every day, my heart and faith in humanity became a little more damaged; a little more broken. I found solace in my music and in my art and in the art and music of others. But most of all, animals carried me through.

With humans, there is a certain societal expectation of response. Some people understand that some situations, some hurts have absolutely no words to make it better but most people do not or care not. Sometimes there is no salve that can soothe better than crying into a warm, furry body
until all of the poison is depleted for a little while. My pets taught me perseverance and unconditional love.

I left school 3 days into my sophomore year. The harassment hardly stopped; in fact, when there were computer screens between all of us, a torrent of anger and hate was unleashed upon me. Cyber trolling met me every time I turned on my phone, opened my email, and e-socialized with
peers. People I didn’t even know apparently hated me.

That made me feel pretty important after many years of therapy and a single book (and subsequent installments) called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.It profoundly altered my view of my personal world, the personal hell I was choosing to live in and the larger world around me. It also taught me healthier ways to interact with people who are ignorant of the poison they ingest and
regurgitate faster than the zombie virus.

When I was at high school (2001-2006), Facebook hadn’t quite become a thing, and I didn’t have a myspace, so I didn’t have to deal with that sort of stuff that teenagers of today have. I was literally the lowest in the pecking order at my school – on my first day of second year, a first year came up to me and said “Are you Lucy?” and I said “yes” and he spat on me. I was fortunate to have a few friends who got some similar shit as well – all but two of them were gay, and one of those has social difficulties and is still a virgin at 23 and has never had a relationship.

My way of dealing with it was very similar to yours – completely the “you’re normal and therefore inferior to me” approach. In fact, I think that’s more or less word for word what I thought, and was a barrier to build. I used to say, “Normal people are boring!” which is still true IMO.

The internet is a scary place now, because while mistakes of the past used to be lost or hidden, now they’re digital they’re forever and can haunt people like that poor girl, who don’t know how to deal with it. However, the internet is also a wonderful place, where those same people can find other people who are like-minded, or something to occupy their minds.

One thing that has become clearer and clearer to me since the internet social network has become evermore complex is that I am precisely not alone, and I don’t think anyone is. I used the internet as a teenager to deal with the hate I got in real life by using it to locate things that I liked, because i figured that if someone else likes them, then the people who took the piss were incorrect because of ignorance.

Unfortunately, calls for help can sometimes be picked up on by arseholes who have nothing better to do with their bitter existence but to try and make others worse. I would encourage people who are victims of such arseholery to think about this:

People are more likely to do things that they like doing, and ignore the things that they don’t like doing. If someone didn’t like what you are doing, and they had half a brain, they wouldn’t give a fuck and would pay attention to something else. If however, that person enjoyed being a twat, they would find excuses to do so. Therefore, most examples of such vicious behaviour are emergent properties of the offending individuals being ignorant and bitter, rather than the integrity of the victim.

In elementary school, I proudly liked Pokémon and would play it after it fell out of fashion, and the other girls and boys would call me “sad”, or “pathetic” – because I was engaging in something they considered beneath them. It was hurtful to be rejected, yes – but then I thought, hang on a minute: What’s more sad? Continuing to do something you enjoy even though other people think it’s inferior, or denying yourself happiness in order to please others (who are all, undoubtedly, doing that)? So I thought, fuck it, and I wore my Pikachu slippers to school. Be proud of who you are, and what you like, and be true because it is much harder to be unhappy when you are enjoying yourself despite others. Laugh at them, because they’re missing out on their freedom of creativity, of enjoyment and of individuality.

Make mistakes. Make mistakes and then when people pull you up on it, make them again deliberately. Because they don’t have to be mistakes.

And never, ever ever worry about what you look like. I used to do that. In fact, I still do. I struggle with my weight and that’s a thing. It’s okay not to like what you look like, because everyone would like to be different somehow. But don’t worry about it. Because there’s not really such a thing as beauty or ugliness as one state. There’s enough variance in peoples’ tastes to suggest that everyone will be attractive to someone. But you can’t be unless you’re happy being yourself. I wear mens’ clothes, even though my gran keeps trying to make me “feminine”. For a whole year of my life, i wore feminine clothes that she’d bought for me because i couldn’t afford to buy my own, and i forgot how uncomfortable I was. When I had some money, I went out and bought some worn out jeans and a checked shirt, and immediately felt a ton of weight lifted off my shoulders.

Be true to yourself, be who you want to be, Do whatever the fuck you want to do with your hair or your clothes or your biscuit supplies or your spare time, and don’t give a shit about the consequences because life’s not about the consequences, it’s about the actions. (unless the consequence is jail, I don’t recommend that because it will severely limit your potential actions in the future…) Listen to “In My Mind”, that is the best fucking track. Be fucking fearless, because the people who bully other people have only fear.

Thanks Amanda, i’m glad you shared that. You should definitely do that blog.

The thing is, I’ve been blessed in my life; I have loving and generally supportive parents, a community I can count on, and a handful of friends that—though I may not share everything with them—I feel would listen to me when I need it. I may not have the standing to comment on the desperate, depressing, and unfortunate situations in which people find themselves.

However, I do think I can comment on the people, like myself, who aren’t perfect and who have some insecurities, but ultimately who carry on—diligently if not confidently despite the challenges life throws us. I was shy, bookish, and ultimately unpopular in junior high, and when I got to high school, I still couldn’t grasp the cliques and politics of school. Fortunately, I either never noticed, or was spared most of the egregious forms of bullying. That in mind, I still felt a chasm separating me from the seemingly happy people around me. There was a point in high school, that I won’t go into detail about, where I looked around me and realized that nothing I was doing or would do should ever cause me to hate myself or my life.What that point was is irrelevant.

The point is, as hard as it is, whatever one’s insecurities are, I had to find the thing (the people, the passion) that I could use as a springboard. The point is the journey —the struggle. No one can give you the confidence to look past your faults. Life might seem entirely hopeless, but the struggle and journey toward something better doesn’t end. You have to give yourself a path to follow; whether that path still appears dark or not, you must put yourself on a journey that will have ups and downs—but that is entirely yours. It’s yours to make of what you will. You might feel insecure, depressed, angry, threatened or uncomfortable, but you own it. That makes the difference; you own it.

That might sound condescending and the words of a fortunate and lucky soul, but I hope that people take them for a starting point. Best wishes to everyone out there.
Love,
Christina

What a truly awesome blog, thank you!
My story: I’m 38 now. I very nearly didn’t make it to 15.
I was bullied by my classmates for being different. Perhaps they saw that I was gay before I did, I’m not sure. Mostly, I had grown up in the States and then moved back to my Scandinavian “home” country. To an area that was very affluent and very static.
At 12, I was bullied for not dancing, not drinking at parties, not really being a teen yet. At Elementary School in the States, we were still bobbing for apples and eating candy at parties…
By 14, I was totally ostracised-and that was the good days. Beaten up, teased mercilessly, I frequently found my clothes “washed” in the toilets during gym, or got pushed into the side of the oven in Home Ec. At the Christmas party when I was a month short of my 15th birthday, several of my classmates (high on various things and drunk) raped me. I was already so damaged that I wouldn’t have told anyone, but the threat they enacted was sufficient to leave me with no hesitation in keeping it a secret. They were many, I was one. They were confident, popular, believed. I was just a screwup. I decided to kill myself that Christmas holiday, but the Universe had other plans and I changed my mind. We moved to the UK when I was 16 and I finished school in an American High School which I loved. But the damage was done. A total of nearly 2 decades in depression were my payment for 4 1/2 years of hell in my “home” country.
Then I found Broadband Consciousness. A concept that surprised me, that spoke to me, that truly made a difference. I learned that I could truly and completely love myself and that this was not only okay, it was VITAL! I learned that everyone, even the really popular ones, have that little voice inside their heads, the one that tells them that they’re not enough. I learned that that little voice isn’t me. That I don’t HAVE to listen to it, but that it’s okay to do so sometimes and it’s okay to feel bad. That we need to feel bad sometimes to have balance, to have the contrast, to appreciate feeling good. That feeling good all the time is impossible. Think of your favourite food. Now imagine only ever having that food again for the rest of your life. It’d be bliss for a few days, perhaps even a week or two. But after a month, you’d get sick to the back teeth of it. After a few months, you’d be craving anything, even your least favourite food, just for the contrast. Feeling bad is the same thing. :)
I no longer cut, I don’t need to. I no longer long for death, I adore life. I no longer beat myself up over feeling bad sometimes, because everyone does. I have a wonderful life and I appreciate every moment-even the bad ones!

I was never bullied online when I was at school, because the option wasn’t there. I graduated High School in 1992. But although the online bullying is another outlet for these things, there is also a lot of good online. It’s possible to access help groups, find others who feel the same, who have been through the same, who know how you feel. I have friends all over the world-none of whom I’d have “met” if I hadn’t had the internet. Locally, you can’t always find people to talk to, but there is always someone online who knows how you feel and who can help you.

I’m 38 years old, I was bullied and raped and it got much, much better for me. There is hope.

When I was still an adolescent and even into college, I used to self-righteously think that I had better character and that I probably gained a lot from all of the bullying I went through from the age of 5 until I graduated from high school. The worst advice I received was from my mother, who had been popular in school, and she told me that if I ignored them, they’d get bored and it would stop. She didn’t believe it was happening to me. I took her advice because I trusted her and it was the only advice I had to go on in 1st grade. It didn’t stop, it only got worse. I can’t imagine the teachers didn’t see what was going on even if my parents wouldn’t believe it. No one attempted to put a stop to what was going on, No one gave me any better advice, and I was a lot more concerned with getting my hands on the next Nancy Drew book than plotting pain or revenge on those kids. Life has never been about revenge, pushing others down, getting even, or anything like that for me. All I wanted back then was for other kids to play with, create with, talk to.

Now in my 30s, I’ve come to the realization that my life would have been better without that crap, and that bullying grants no special powers to people, neither the victims or perpetrators. It just makes people miserable. I do not have a better character than I would if I had not been bullied. In fact, when I imagine how things could have been if I had not been bullied, if kids had been friendlier and more open to working/playing together, I would not have spent so many years worrying about my personal shortcomings. I would have focused more on my talents. I would have thought more about making the world better. I would not have lived in fear.

Maybe that’s why I don’t have kids. I can’t imagine being a kid today with all the enhanced opportunities for harassment that exist. I wish I could go back as myself to those days and hold my own hand and tell myself things would be okay, that I believe in that little girl.

Yeah, I wore the badge back then too, and thought about how boring it would be to be normal. I still think it would be boring to be ordinary, but I give people a lot more credit now than I did back then. We’re all a bit weird, and more so as we get older, and isn’t that wonderful?

Amanda,

I’ve never really experienced direct harassment online. Indirectly, however, I’ve seen people making fun of what I am. People calling everyone who is Bipolar a crazy bitch that shouldn’t be trusted. Others stating that if you don’t have a thigh gap or have that bit of stomach pudge you can’t get rid of, you’re fat. Or, one of my personal favorites, that anyone and everyone who cuts themselves are nothing but attention craving whores who get off on pain and the sight of blood and that they should be locked up and separated from the rest of society.
Like I said. Nothing directed towards me specifically, but…
Recently, I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, just like my mother [by recently, I mean I haven't even been sent to a psychiatrist for a second opinion and a prescription]. One of my biggest fears. And here are people stating that people with my mental disorder are crazy bitches who will use people up and shouldn’t be trusted. It doesn’t help that my mother refuses to take her medicine, is unemployed, and can’t take care of herself. I hear from her every once in a while and a few months ago, I visited her in the hospital and saw her for the first time in six years. They discharged her and she’s back out on the streets again.
I’m not fat, but I’m not skinny. Years of bullying over my weight from grade school to high school have fucking up my image of myself. My boyfriend swears I’m beautiful, but I still can’t see it. Posts about thigh gaps and hip bones on the internet don’t help, either.
I’m a self harmer. I’ve been self harming for eight or nine years now, off and on. I don’t do it because I’m a masochist [it has nothing to do with my sex life]. I don’t do it because I love the sight of blood. It used to be to stop feeling. Then it was to feel. Now it’s an addiction I’ve been fighting. I think the longest I had gone without it was a year and three months, which I screwed up a few nights ago.

I shouldn’t let it get to me, but it kills me to see these judgements online. I always feel like they’re talking directly at me, telling me I’m a failure for not being the perfect little girl I should be. And that probably stems from all the shit I took Elementary through High School. It wasn’t until my Senior year in High School did people start backing off and letting me be.
I could go on about this forever, but I probably shouldn’t.

To be honest, one of the ways I cope with this is through your music. Your music has helped me keep myself safe and out of harm’s way through manic highs and depressed lows. I just put in my headphones or turn on my stereo and crank it up. You’ve helped me to not be so afraid of feeling my emotions, Amanda, and I thank you for that. I’ve always wanted to thank you in person, but I missed you in Houston when you went on your tour because I couldn’t get a ride to your concert.

Anyway, one of the best ways I’ve found to cope is creativity. Crank up the music, pull out my acrylics and paint. Sometimes all it becomes is just smudges on the paper that I get rid of later. Sometimes I come out with some pretty neat things that I keep and put on the wall. Writing. I write things out. I sing at the top of my lungs if people aren’t home.

Love this. People always hate what they don’t understand. I don’t want to put another sob story up. It’s not something i’m proud of. But as a suicide survivor it makes me smile to see someone who thinks, truly thinks, about depression and suicide.

I’m torn by this. At first, the expected emotions arose in me that left me even more concerned for my teenage daughter. Next, rage at the comments on the video and on the facebook page made for her. I couldn’t believe there’d be people (read: trolls) who would write that they’re glad she is dead, she deserved it, etc. etc.
Then, disbelief, as I read so many people saying she isn’t dead, that it was all faked and she is in a mental institution. Well, is she alive or dead?
Many questions I pondered while watching the video: Why did changing schools not help? Why wasn’t the original “bully/stalker” located and arrested? Why was this allowed to continue? Why did she protect the guy she slept with (whose girlfriend beat her up over it)? Why are girls so confrontational to the “other woman/girl” when in fact, it was their man who strayed? So why did no one put any blame on the boy?
And finally, let it be known that antidepressants have black box warnings that they have suicidal/homicidal ideation as side effects. I personally know 5 people who have lost children to suicide because of the antidepressants. These parents are now activists and speak out whenever they can. And I know the father of another person who, while on a recent increase in dosage of his prescription, held his class hostage with a rifle and has absolutely no recollection to this day of the event. Just woke next morning in juvenile hall. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed in that incident. His father went after the makers of that antidepressant.
So, whether or not this story is true, bullying is a real threat to our youth. But so are antidepressants and antipsychotics.

So…sorry you’re just finding this now. This Amanda Todd this is more complex than you even stated, but you hit upon something you didn’t later explore. Even after her death, She’s hated by a LOT of people. The logic behind this is a bit dizzying and hard to describe never mind justify. However I’ll try to explain. I’m not going to take the position of trying to defend bullying a girl to the point where she kills herself or to defend “hating” her even now after she has died.

As more facts about the case have come out, its become clear that everything that is said in her video is not in fact true and because of this, it hurts the overall case.

First, she frequented a social chat room called blogtv which despite my impressive knowledge of the internet was new to me. Although its intended as sort of a new version of the old AOL chat rooms, its instead a haven for horrible people. But its very popular amongst a pre teen crowd. For many its the first step for a teen into the adult internet.

Because young people are naive, they think they are mainly speaking to other 15 and 16 year olds, but generally they are not. As you’d imagine a huge collection of gossipy 15 and 16 year olds attracts 15 and 16 year old boys….and also 40-50-60 year old disturbed men. A favorite topic of conversation is getting the girls to show their tits. For a 15 year old, this is a gold mine. For a 40 year old, this is something else entirely. Regardless, It has been proven that Amanda frequented this site at first under the name cutielover. It didn’t take long but eventually she was goated into showing her tits too.

What she had no idea is this network of pedophiles capture the webcam sessions and then trade them to one another. Amanda was quite popular amongst three of the most renowned people on blogtv, Kody, Viper and R0ra. Their reputation for “capping” and blackmailing is well documented in much the same manner that Amanda describes. One of these three people is likely the person who she speaks of in her video. ALL of them has videos of her and its a lot more than one time unlike what she says. I sadly know this to be true.

You see, there’s the infected asshole of the internet known as 4chan. It’s extremely immature and the worst imaginable people go there (in other words dont go). Well, as this hit news several people began calling bullshit on Amanda’s story. Mainly because they had photos of her or stories about how they had cyber webcam sex with her. Because it’s the asshole of the internet, they posted them all. Now its not clear if they were gotten on their own or if they were traded from the above three people, but either case, its was clear there were many more than one flash, which shoots her story in the foot. Again, asshole of the net, the general sentiment is that they didn’t know she was 15 and were pissed that they were 1) now pedophiles and 2) basically being accused of contributing to this girl killing herself. In typical fashion, instead of showing sympathy to the victim, she gets blamed, saying she did it to herself, she didn’t have to flash but she did, on several occasions. She was a “whore” and got what she deserved. I’m pretty much appalled that this seems to be the predominate “internet” opinion of her and not the “human” reaction that anyone here likely had, but I do suppose its justification even if it’s horribly flawed.

So this was presented in the order it was found and not in the order it was discovered, because here’s where this gets weird. The internet has an unusual sense of justice. After this made news Anonymous (the infamous hacker group) set out to fin out who caused Amanda to do this. They did their normal “doxing” of someone. For anonymous this means posting all relevant documents of something to pastebin and calling attention to it. Previously they have put stolen source code, Occupy stuff, Israeli military secrets and currently are posting all the personal info (passwords and the like) of all members of the Westboro Baptists. They are vigilantes. Anyway, They did research, found out all about Amandas past discussed above and found out about Kody…who they identified as Kody Mason living in Canada and allegedly an employee of Facebook. Was a winner of “Blackmailer of the year” from some horrible website called the Daily Capper which specializes in getting girls to flash, taking it and then blackmailing them. The girl he “won” for was some girl named Payton. Posted his home address his phone number, emails address and samples of chat conversations pretty clearly identifying him as a dangerous pedophile. The guy they pinned down was in court the next day for sexual abuse of a 16 year old. Seems pretty cut and dry, right? Thousands and thousands of people harassed this person in all manners they could. Problem is, some of it was inaccurate, namely the adrdess employment and phone number. The police questioned him but considering some of the info was inaccurate decided he was not of interest. Interestingly, Kody DID claim to know who WAS Amanda’s slatker and pinned it on Viper who he claimed he knew and was protecting Amanda from.

Lets back that up a second. The man admits to stalking underage girls on the internet, tells on someone else, but the British columbia police done think there’s anything wrong with that and let him go live his life, presumably stalking more underage girls. So, sort of licking their wounds, someone from anonymous posts all this info about Viper, who is no angel either. As far as I know there have been no charges about him either.

Now as you have two points to look at, you can see how they intersect with additional searches. Looking up both Kody and Viper shows they are friends, and have been for awhile and would have bounties on girls. Peyton is clearly mentioned and Kody is mentioned harassing Cutielover who’s name is later revealed to be Amanda.

So here’s the short version.

-Amanda Todd was no ideal little girl, but she got trapped into a much bigger darker world than she could have imagined.

-There are SCARY places on the web, 4chan, The Daily Capper, apparently Blogtv

-Pedophiles are apparently everywhere you’d expect them to be

-The internet never forgets anything…ANYTHING and everything that has ever appeared will reappear including shots of your tits and conversations of your chats where you talk about blackmailing 14 year old girls

-The internet by and large seems more likely to believe the accused rather than the victim.

-Police are generally of no help and cant piece things together

-You are not anonymous. Everything you do can be tracked down to you

-If you piss off the wrong people, your information will be posted everywhere

For more information about this
http://hypervocal.com/news/2012/amanda-todd-kody-maxson-daily-capper/#

I was bullied throughout high school – being from out of state, a non-Christian, and in the South, I was that “satanist dyke girl.” (Mind you, I was straight and pagan, but that didn’t matter.)

I thought that bullying ended in high school. It doesn’t. It continues into adulthood, often at work or in college, and most of all on the internet. I draw a lot, and sometimes my art gets commented on by folks who think it’s complete shit. Having something I put my heart and soul into shredded to pieces hurts more than someone tearing me down personally.

Then one day, I remembered something my mom told me when I was little and being bullied on the playground; the ones bullying you are doing it because someone bullied them. Usually a parent, or another, older kid, the pattern of bullying never stops. It’s a vicious, brutal cycle. So instead of being hurt or getting angry, I felt sympathy for my bullies. What was hurting them so much to make them attack me anonymously? I then think about all of the wonderful things in my life, from my family to my creativity to my friends, and I realize that there’s no way an internet bully can bring me down. Sometimes, I even try to bring them up.

Beautiful idea, Amanda. I was bullied, harshly, throughout elementary, all the way to senior high. It was a very, very long time to be bullied.

I’ve found that the healing was difficult, and learning to cope just a much, but there are things that help.

Compassion. I met people who were deeply compassionate, and their pat on the back and encouraging words mean THE WORLD. No love like genuine love.

Trust. Once you finally find someone who puts you at ease, it becomes easier to nurture trust and self confidence. At this stage, realize that NOBODY is better than you, or has any right to behave that way.

Learning to say fuck you, from deep down. You should always strive to be compassionate, but it is important to set boundaries. A very effective way, though difficult for us, the timid, to learn, is fuck you. A guttural, glaring, red hot exclamation.

Pride. Finally, pride is whatever makes you feel comfortable and proud. Often being you. Wearing all black, war paint, voodoo necklaces, head shaving – if it works for you, do it. These are the things that have brought me back on my feet.

Namaste.

I have to find the time to sit and read all of these comments. The ones I’ve read so far are amazing.

I was bullied in junior high and high school. I didnt’ want to be at school so badly I made myself sick. Not faking-it sick…I got strep throat 6 times my freshman year. The mind is a powerful thing. It was my defense mechanism. I went on independent study so I could stay home. These girls who had been my so-called friends (although looking back, they’d tease me “in good fun” when we were ‘friends’ for the years before too) once we hit high school and new girls came to join the fray, would do things like fight, in front of me, over who had to sit next to me on the bus to go to volleyball games. They ignored me and made fun of me.

This was 1987. I could go home and detach without the internet being out there yet. That was lucky. A new girl came to school and she called me to see if I was ok. We’ve been best friends since. She confessed there was a rumor I was dying and that’s why she started hanging out with me. The original reason doesn’t even matter of course. The girls who I’d hung out with for many years prior never called.

It’s been over 20 years since I graduated and I can still feel that pain. I skipped my 20 year reunion because I knew I would be miserable. My life is good now. I live in a beautiful place, I have a wonderful family, wonderful friends. I;ve had the honor of interviewing and continuing to be friends with people like Neil, Jason Webley, Alan Anton… I’ve done pretty awesome things in my life. I’ve traveled all over to see music and eat wonderful food (the 2 most important things to me)

I look at the lives of those who teased me…bullied me….and feel superior. They’re still in that little hick-town I grew up in, married to someone from high school. They might be happy but I feel like I”m better than them. That is not a person I want to be either. I don’t want to care about their lives.

I want to be the bigger person but deep down their words are still echoing in my head. Bruises can heal, words scar forever. I tell my 8 yr old son that when he says something mean. Words hurt more than he can know.

I hope everyone out there can find that friend who pulls them out of the muck and mire. There are horrible people online but there is love. Our world has changed and we have to find the good in the change.

You are better than their hate. Things get better.

Just because someone criticizes you, is angry about something you did, calls you out on it, and discusses the things they believe youve done wrong and how you can be selfish, or egotistical, ect, does not mean they are a troll or a hater. It seems that hater is now used towards anyone who’s got a pointed criticism of someone else. Because you are criticized, stringly, for what some see as your mistakes, does not mean you are some woeful victim. Your situation is not the same as Amanda Todd’s.

I was a teenager in the 80s. There was no Internet (thank God), but there was still bullying and meaness to be experienced. I am a small woman…no, a REALLY small woman. I was (and am) also unusual because I read and gamed and did geek before geek was cool. People treated me badly. I was put on the homecoming court list because it was funny, not because I was in anyway considered attractive or cool.

I was taught to let the ugliness roll off me. It wasn’t important. It hurt, but I learned that I was bigger than all that yaya. Then I went off to college, and I discovered something interesting—I was cool! I was pretty! I was smart and funny! I had survived, and with my chrysalis broken, I could learn to use my strangeness to fly.

Bullying is not acceptable in any form. I can only hope that what you’re doing here will help someone or several someones.

I love you, Amanda.

I’m not sure if my thoughts really apply. I didn’t go to middle school or high school with other kids. I went into Independent Studies, and graduated a year early. From the second semester of middle school through all of high school, I didn’t set foot in a classroom or have much (rarely any, honestly) contact with people my age. I pretty much lived online, but didn’t deal with bullying. Trolling on occasion, but nothing I can deem harmful in the slightest.

My closest friends and I consider hanging out being on Tumblr at the same time, them in their room, me in mine. I met my boyfriend online, for fuck’s sake. My only life off of here was my relationship with my Mom and close family. I went into hermit mode at the age of twelve, and haven’t shed enough of it to be happy quite yet.

Let me state very clearly that my life up to then was fucking traumatic as hell. The earliest memory I have is of being raped, which (along with PTSD from both the event and other anxieties that hadn’t gotten quite as bad ’til then) is why I left public school to begin with. My home life was atrocious from the time I was born. I’d been self harming since I was very small, long before the rape and leaving public school behind. My story is far from typical. However, it still matters.

Part of what a lot of kids need to understand is that a lot of what they’re feeling is because of their current stage in development. So fucking much happens between puberty and adulthood, holy hell. Nobody is immune to it all. You don’t have to be part of the gushing wave of high school students sprinting to get the fuck out of class at the end of the day on Friday. You feel it no matter what.

The other half of bullying is self-invalidation and self-shaming. What’s-his-fuck calls you a whore, fine. Say you snap back, walk away without a word, whatever. It’s not a problem for you until you start believing it. They’re a jackass regardless, no doubt about it, but they’re only in this to make themselves feel better by hurting you and making you feel bad like they do. You’re succeptible to the bullshit they spew because you’re at the point in your life where you can be anything, you just ‘have to choose what.’ Which is true, in a way. I haven’t made much of a choice yet, and I’m 21, but I’m still at that fork in the road too, I suppose. I don’t know if anyone really chooses and turns out to be what they wanted to be back in the day. I dunno. Amanda? True/false?

Argh. Treebranch. Sorry.

Being hurt in the moment is pretty much inevitable. Catches you off guard, leaves a scratch on the bitchin’ Iron Man suit you’ve built yourself. The suit, really, is you, just as much as the fleshy bit underneath it is as well. The suit is what you show to the world, or what you show without realizing it. You when you’re just walking down the street, flicking through the music on your phone, hands in your pockets, heading home from class and cursing your professor for giving you an essay over the weekend. When someone says something mean (or nice, it goes both ways) when you’re just walking around in your suit-bubble, you’re not horribly on guard, even if you think you are. Especially if you think you are, really, because you’ve accepted their words enough to expect them. Which is where the self-shaming and self-invalidation pops in. It’ll get you at some point, if it hasn’t yet. Nobody is exempt from it.

Once it sinks through, you’re trapped. It’s not like you can turn around a new suit in a weekend, especially with that essay to do. Or not, the professor’s a bitch to begin with. College is too far off to worry about right now. Who knows if you’ll even make it, or be accepted wherever it is you want to go, if anywhere.

This kind of shit sticks with you for a long, long, long damn time.

I’m not 100% sure how I came to be self-invalidating and self-shaming. Could be from convincing myself I had to be strong so that maybe my Mom would just stop being manic and realize that I was right there, completely lost and left to somehow follow this thing parading around with her face. She had a manic episode a month after I was born. She’s bounced back and forth all of my life. I’ve dealt with it by trying to be the strong one, and maybe becoming the self-imposed control freak is what led to all of this.

I was one of the misfit kids in Elementary school. I was bullied, not a lot, but enough. For my looks, my hair, the fact that I paid attention in class. Not being ‘one of the girls’, for being female. I’ve always been weird.

After all of that, after I went into Independent studies, it didn’t get much better. Seven suicide attempts. Two institutionalizations. Heavily scarred flesh that will never be what it was. Finding out that I have the same monsters in me that my Mom does. The ups and lows of it. Flashbacks. Nightmares. Night terrors. I’ve survived all of this, by the skin of my teeth, but I legitimately believe I wouldn’t have survived high school.

I envy those who did, and mourn for those who didn’t. I never had so, so, so, so, so many experiences because I wasn’t in school to have them. My boyfriend has fantastic stories and really fucking cool people in them who still hang out with him and back him up no matter what. I don’t have any of that. I have him. I have the adventures we’ve had. I’ll never have what he has, or what you likely do. I want what you folks had, so badly, but I don’t know if I’d change it if I could.

I’ve always been hypersensitive, according to my family. People hurt me so easily, and always have. The tough chick exterior is genuine now, though it used to be a mask to hide behind.

To everyone in high school right now: You’re fucking amazing for getting as far as you have. The spring semester is about to start, and even if you just began this year, you’ve survived the first fucking semester of high school! Celebrate! You’ve done fantastically! However you managed, you’re still here. Congratulations, my friend. I toast to you, and tip my hat in respect.

I won’t tell you not to harm yourself, or not to commit suicide, or that tomorrow will be better. I sure as fuck won’t tell you to suck it up, or that what you’re feeling isn’t important, because it is! You matter, and so do your feelings. I won’t tell you to stay strong. Everyone has to be weak at points in their life. You’ll never grow and learn if you didn’t.

I will tell you to find friends if you can. They’re extraordinary and can be the best people you’ll ever meet. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. I didn’t have any until recently. I relied on myself and somehow fought through. I’m not the only person who has, or who can. Please keep in mind that my experiences and feelings aren’t invalid simply because I didn’t go to high school and don’t know exactly how you feel because you’re in high school. The base feelings are the same. Fear. Inadequacy. Self-shaming. Self-loathing. Trying to make yourself into something you aren’t to be better for someone else. Destroying yourself because you don’t feel like you’re enough, or don’t deserve better.

I know how it feels to want to die. I know how it feels to be dependant on a razor blade, a lighter, a substance, just to fucking breathe for a few more minutes. How infuriating it is to be told that it’ll get better, or that you’re overreacting, being stupid, whining, need to be positive, don’t do this, don’t do that. I know how it feels to hurt.

To everyone who has survived high school: Congratulations! Not to be a pain, but we’re all in this together. You remember how it feels, don’t you? But, thing is, you’ve come out the other side. You can help the people who haven’t. They sure as fuck need all the support and friendship they can get.

To everyone who has not survived high school: I’m sorry you suffered so much. Your pain was unbearable and cruel. You deserved so much better. You weren’t at fault, I swear to you. We failed you, you didn’t fail us.

Nowadays, I live with my boyfriend of two years (just celebrated our anniversary on 12/11, actually. (How the shit has he tolerated me for this long? Jesus.)), and am on an antidepressant, antipsychotic and nausea medication. The antidepressant makes me nauseous to the point of anorexia (not eating at all, and I have no desire to most of the time without the nausea med.), hence the necessity for it. It’s supposed to help migraines to, which I’ve gotten every day without fail with the antidepressant. I missed half of The Hobbit last weekend because I couldn’t fucking stand looking at the bright screen or the loud action scenes! It sucked. I’ve been using medical cannabis for the migraines without a problem. I won’t stop taking the antidepressant because it actually works as an antidepressant. I feel like a normal-ass fucking person for the first time in my life! I can function, I can go to college and not hyperventilate in a bathroom stall, not wake up thrashing every night scared out of my mind, love my boyfriend without my disorder getting in the way as much as it used to. Maybe I’ll actually be okay someday. I want to find out, so I’m gonna fight to stick around. At least for awhile longer.

I’ve suffered through a lot, but I still don’t think I’d survive high school. Think about that for a minute.

Done?

Alright.

Just how fucked up does that sound to you?

I personally deleted, unfriended, and unfollowed hate, negativity, and people who bash. I now have inspiration that lifts me up when on the internet. Love even your enemies, but don’t feed into hate. You know who you are and what’s in your heart! People like you will be drawn to you, surround yourelf with the ones who see your beauty.

I feel like my small and inadequate voice doesn’t have a place among all these stories, but that’s always my problem, and I’m one of the examples of what can happen to a girl who moves through a rough and cruel world and doesn’t quite make it through intact. This was mostly pre-internet, but I think that all examples of bullying and cruelty can help inform ideas about coping. Or, in my case, a plea that you avoid the way I’ve coped.

I’m 34 now. I have always been different – in a number of ways – and it’s not even important to talk about the ways I was rejected, mistreated (even by my own mother), and hurt by the words and actions of people who just didn’t like that I was different. But here’s what happened, among other things (cutting, etc.):

I froze. At some point, I just stopped in my tracks. I was so smart and dynamic. I was a dancer and a writer and a piano player and I acted and made art and did all these things that came from my soul and made me feel joyous, and at some point, I don’t know when, I just stopped. Because I became too afraid of being hurt more – of being criticized, of being ridiculed, of failing and proving them all right. So I stopped and hid and now I’m 34, overeducated and underemployed and underpaid, and living with my mother because I’m terrified of living any sort of life because it just hurt too much to be myself. My life has become miniscule and silent – because anything else opens me up to the possibility of conflict, rejection, criticism, ridicule. I am afraid that I will always be alone here, and it breaks my heart. I had so much potential. Something awful just happened along the way.

Amanda, you make me happy because you remind me of the girl who is inside of me and who would be alive if I weren’t so hidden and afraid. You sing and dance and make joy, and I wish I could do that instead of being frozen, paralyzed, and wasted away at 34.

So – there’s some advice you should give, Amanda: Don’t get frozen. Don’t give up on life. Don’t stop going just because they make you feel small and ashamed. Keep going. Keep moving. Don’t give up on yourself. Find others (they are out there) who are like you and who care and who will support you. Don’t hide from the world.

Also – it helps to remember that most of the haters are those who feel immense fear and doubt themselves, and are putting you down to try to make themselves feel better.

I started out a cute kid. Shirley Temple hair and cheeks. Everyone would stop my mum on the streets to comment on my cuteness.
I don’t know when it happened, maybe fourth grade. But I blew up like a balloon. I needed glasses too. I looked like a fat Harry Potter. Big circle frames covered my eyes. I had no neck. Just two big chins.

I was tortured everyday for it. I would come home and cry but it was okay because books existed and I would lose myself in them and they would keep me safe.

Then when I was in 7th grade my parents were sick and tired of my having-no-friends. They decided the best plan was to send me to summer camp. It was an artsy fartsy camp full of Jewish people and musicians. I fell in love there. I came back home after two weeks with confidence in myself and I came out as a lesbian. Whoahhh.
I started taking viola seriously and took up guitar. I got my first girlfriend and lost 50 pounds. I was so hot by freshman year. 130 pounds, taller, blonde curls, high cheekbones. Damn. I was super gorgeous.

Today I am a senior in high school. I am 170 pounds. I shaved my head for a cancer research fundraiser so my hair is slowly growing back in. I play ukulele and guitar. The viola hasn’t been touched in years. I am still lovely. Regardless of weight or hair, I think the best part about me is my smile. Cheesy as fuck but it’s been around a lot more lately and I love that.

But I want anyone who reads this entire comment to know, a few months my town was on the news because a boy named Kyle Stockford made a joke about killing another student here.

Kyle Stockford met me on a beach once when I was in my fat harry potter stage.
He and his friends circled me and pushed me around saying things like dyke, fatass, heffer, disgusting freak. Kyle is a year or two YOUNGER than I am. He is cruel. He is disgusting. He is an evil kid. He’s said terrible things to people and has had 0 repercussions regarding it.

Kyle is not sitting at home with his ankle bracelet. He is on probation. And has lost a lot of his friends.

Kyle is going nowhere in life.
Amanda, thank you for helping me through a lot of my senior year stress and bullshit.
Because I will one day be back to my healthy ole’ 130 pound hotness. I’ll probably keep shaving my head for fundraisers though. That’s something I care about and my shirley temple curls look much cuter on some little girl who’s hair follicles is being fried by radiation.

Fuck this turned into a long schpeel.
I love all of you. Whoever the fuckers are that are tormenting you, I promise you, they are going NOWHERE in life.

Dear Amanda & the World,
I am going to tell my silly and stupid story. It ends up happily, and I’m thankful for that.
When I was a kid, I was the center of every attention. I was an adorable child – the only redhead of the family, sassy and smart and bla bla bla. I loved dancing. But things got fucked up when I went to another school.
People hated me there, and I never did them anything. At least in the beginning. First, they hated me for being “ugly” and “ginger”. All of my nicknames weren’t flattering. Not even one bit. I was also a great student, and they hated me for that too. Soon enough, I became quiet, without any interest for studying, my grades went bad and all the shizz. I had few friends, but I never felt protected or loved. I went back to my old school, but all of my old friends were different. They were talking about boys and kisses, and I truly believed I was so fucking ugly nobody would ever want me. I remember that that silly hatred was carved so deep inside of me that I was 15 and a boy wanted to kiss me because he thought I was beautiful. I told him to fuck off and went insanely angry because I thought he was lying and making fun of me.
There’s a history of depression in my family, so suddenly I had a pile of self hate (that evolved to self harm) and I had no idea of how to deal with that. And my family is anything BUT supportive. They actually are the first ones to point their fucking fingers and tell me how fat, ugly, worthless, stupid, dumb and useless I am. They tell me that no one will ever love me, because I am fucked up and impossible to bear.
In 2011 I tried to kill myself. Thankfully, it didn’t work. I think I finally saw something wise within me that screamed “NO. YOU ARE GOING TO SURVIVE”.
And I survived. It’s been a year without self harming, a year with a lot of downs, BUT a year that the most amazing people in the world entered my life. I fell in love. Twice. Got rejected once, and the other one became of my best friends. And I learned stuff. I learned that I AM LOVED. That I need to keep struggling, need to survive in order to see my life change. I will be a writer. I will be awesome someday at it. One day people will read my stories and if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to make them stunned. I will love and feel loved, and people will throw shit at me and I’ll have to deal with it.
Life is difficult. I still fall, and I still have panic attacks and depressive episodes, and chronic anxiety, and insomnia, and self hate still makes my mind a filthy place. (this year’s beginning has been shit) But I am happy that I’m alive to see the changes. To feel the love. To listen to my favourite music and feel connected, sad, and have epiphanies about life. I’m alive to read, to imagine, to create.
My story is silly, but I hope it serves someone, somehow.

tip #1: recognize the difference between hate and constructive criticism. something i see a lot is people reading a message like “you fucked up with what you just said and here’s why” as hate, and it’s really not. this mostly happens on tumblr when things start to get really polarized and collectively awful, so if this makes no sense, disregard it.

tip #2, if you’re getting actual hate: don’t let it get to you. turn the tables, find a support group, use your existing support group as an army of self confidence who will remind you, when you get hate messages, that you are fine and beautiful and competent and undeserving of bullshit.

tip #3: if you don’t have a support group, find one. they are everywhere. the internet is dripping with communities that will accept you, and while they’re not always perfect, they can be your safe space. tumblr, for one, has wonderful communities centered around fighting bullying and fatphobia and heterosexism and cissexism and racism and ableism and pretty much every form of discrimination you could possibly experience, and you will no doubt find people who will support you there.

Amy Pond is a fictional character. Other than that great blog post.

I’ve had a recurrent dream of meeting my younger self on the beach. I’m 40, meeting my 16 year old self. 16 me thought my name was “fag” because its all people ever called me. If the internet had existing back then, guaranteed I would have been vilified as on-line as I was in the hallways of my school. 16 me allowed people to take advantage of me – anything I could do to keep and get a “friend” (even then that word seemed hollow). Although I did have a small group of close friends – rejects and rebels all – some of them never knew (and still don’t) how incredibly lonely 16 year-old me was.

Anyway in the dream I sit beside my younger self, look into my sad eyes hiding behind curls of red hair . Robert Smith t-shirt and black docs kicking in the sand. I look at my own 40 year-old feet – still wearing docs, will probably be buried in a pair. I laugh.

Then I proceed to tell my 16 year old self to hold on. It will be okay. My life is now filled with love – my wife, my kids, my friends. I call the shots and only do things that bring me joy. And those bullies? They’re pumping gas in the town I grew up in, and are fat and bald. I am going bald, yes – but I’m looking good while doing it.

I tell my 16 year-old self. “Your voice – its in there. It’s you, hold onto it, own it, watch it grow. Life is coming, beyond these halls and these painful words. Just hold on a little longer.

Sounds very “it gets butter”-ish, but its true. So for all of you reading this, writing here, tweeting your own pain and fear…Hold on, hold on, hold on. We love you, we love you, we love you.

I was never really bullied hard. But when i was it was always because of what i looked like. Yes, i have always been a little over weight, but that’s not really what people saw. They saw me for what was on the outside, because i look different to the other girls, not in weight but in skin. You see, i am covered in scars, have been since kindergarten. And for that i was picked on by the people who couldn’t use their heart to see me, who could only use their eyes.
And i hated them, i really did, until i realised that they picked on me, not because of my burns, but because i didn’t hide them. I didn’t let my accident become a way for me to let go, i survived and had complete confidence in the way i looked, because i knew that however much i tried to change the way i looked, i knew i never could. And in that moment i realised they picked on me for being confident and secure, whilst they hid from what they looked like out of low self-esteem and lack of confidence. In that moment i pitied them, and as a result, i stopped being picked on and i hope against hope, managed to help them realise that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to believe.

I don’t know if this is what you’re going after or not, or even if you’re going to read this, you know, since this has 500+ comments and all.

I’m not one to be intentionally bullied in real life and/or the internet. I’m one of those people you just sort of ignore, unsee, and forget. I remain invisible, like, 80% of the time. I know it’s not the same as being bullied and being called names and things, but it isn’t much better. I’m aware that I’m an introvert and I actually like the calmness and being left alone most of the times, but there are times when I want to be with people, hang out, or just talk, or just be with them. But they assume I only like being alone and thus, leave me alone.

I’m skinny. I don’t think enough people realise that being skinny is also as much a cause for self consciousness as being fat. Okay, in the internet, say, for example, tumblr, every now and then they boost the confidence of ‘people with weight issue’ but mostly they address it to fat people. They’re like “it’s okayy curves are great. real women have curves. curvy is sexy.” and a bunch of other things. I obviously don’t disagree. I totally agree with them. It’s just that sometimes it hurts being one of those “skinny bitches”. It’s like being insulted because I’m skinny. It’s like being skinny is wrong. I already have enough self confidence issue as it is, and being unintentionally hurt this way is not making it better.

Also, I’m sorry I don’t have solution or tips to not feel this way, because I still do.

Resting on my ideals has helped me the most. Believe in the “I’m ok, you’re ok” philosophy to the core. If you believe that all human beings posses vast inherent worth, deserve respect, and are entitled to the pursuit of love, life, and happiness…you know, the basics…then logically, these tennets must hold true to you as well. That takes the edge off and translates into a toe hold that can eventually turn in to something akin to decent self esteem at which point you’ll make healthier decisions and the bully sharks will smell less blood/fear on you.

For my part – I was picked on a lot. It was pretty harrowing. Some people decided to make it plain that they didn’t believe in my inherent worth, and they sure as shit didn’t think I should believe in it either. So I struggled for a long time with the question of whether or not they were right. I went back and forth and hovered in the region of “their right, I’m worthless and undeserving” for the better portion of ages 11-25. That’s a long time and I think I just got tired enough of it one day to say “who the fuck died and made (bully x) god? Why do they get to decide what I’m worth?” They don’t. Nobody does.

I still have the occasional bad day and it feels like a traumatic flashback, but I get over it quicker every time. Resting on your ideals takes practice. It felt like an impossible leap of faith at first so I started by merely considering the possibility…entertaining the thought. I let it grow on me. I was pretty chickenshit honestly. I don’t think it has to be this hard for everyone. I tried to get some quiet time alone so I could make up my mind for myself without the brutal external noise. That helped a lot and the rest seemed to follow, albeit slowly. I got braver when I realized that living the “I’m ok, you’re ok” philosophy made people feel safe around me, so I tried to do it for them.

I think the dealing with the internet hate problem isn’t only about self esteem though. Getting mad/sad/upset while rubbernecking at the atrocities committed against us online can double as cheap thrill and energy boost at the same time. Negativity can be addicting in that sense. I don’t say this to minimize the pain anyone has suffered at the hands of an online bully or even a random troll who doesn’t know you from Adam. The hurtful things that are said to and about us on line are indeed permanent and devastating. But we can block a lot of that out and we can definitely choose not to look for it. Maybe we should ask ourselves whether we’re looking for an energy charge. Great example – I like to run and while running, I sometimes find myself fantasizing about telling someone off over some unjust situation that never even happened. I realized one day that I do this whenever running up a big hill…I get myself a little angry and it makes it easier to get up the hill. Let’s be honest…getting upset can be cathartic. Maybe we feel static, and seeking the negativity pits of the internet at least makes us feel MOVED in some way. If we acknowledge that, we can probably find a better solution/catalyst…like art? So AFP, the next time you’re feeling the siren call of the trolls, consider whether your not really in the mood to write a song, but perhaps a bit tired and the gutters of the internet merely serve as a short cut, path-of-least-resistance alternative to breaking out your ukelele. :) And thanks for championing “you’re ok, I’m ok.” I know it’s made me braver.

I want to express something I’ve learned over the years: Everyone has issues.

I posted some of mine below, but I want to tell you about the girl I grew up with who was my best friend. Let’s call her B.

B when she was little had glasses, curly black hair, freckles, scrawny, and eventually got braces… she was kind of a wreck. She was teased, of course. We both were.

Somewhere around 8th grade, she bloomed overnight. Her mother took her to get contacts, the braces came off, and bought her make up and helped her learn how to do her hair. Also, she developed fast. She went from nothing to a C cup really freaking fast. She went from looking like a little geeky nobody to this teenage goddess overnight.

One would think, “Wow, she had it made”, her life must have been perfect after that. Oh boy, no. She went from boys telling her she’s ugly to suddenly getting sexually harassed. By sexually harassed, I mean guys walking up behind her and groping her breasts and buttocks without any provocation or invitation. Boys who didn’t know her and weren’t in any way friends/boyfriends. B just walked into a completely different circle of hell.

To top it off, she’d been told her entire life that she’s this little geeky nobody and still felt like that girl inside, no matter how other people saw her or told her what she looked like. So, queue terrible self image issues that will last her the rest of her life, eating disorders, etc.

The thing that makes me love her the most, though, is that she is the sweetest person you will ever meet in your life. She never turned into a Queen Bitch and tried to turn her new found hotness to make someone else feel bad. She could have also turned her back on me, tried to be one of the popular kids and completely ignored my existence, and she always maintained her friendship with me and never turned against me even though I remained a geeky nobody through high school.

B is in her 30′s now. She’s a gorgeous woman who works making other people look beautiful. She struggles with the self-respect, but she tries to be a strong and mentally healthy woman with good boundaries. She has good friends, good family, and, just over all, a lot of people who love and support her, including me.

She’s just another example. To look at her, you wouldn’t guess all the pain she’s been through in her life. She’s had some really fucked up days, weeks, month, years. She seen some of the ugliest shit humanity has to offer. But she’s still standing.

Amanda Todd reminds me of B. My first impression of her was, “Oh my God, she’s so pretty! Why would she kill herself?” But then I have to stop and remind myself, and it’s not just us overweight, glasses wearing, awkward looking, non-boyfriend having girls that had trouble in high school… Everyone has issues. We just have to learn as a society to not let those issues not turn us against each other and still be good to one another.

B could have easily become Amanda Todd. If we had the internet in the 8th grade, some perv could have talked her into flashing a webcam. Girls that age are impressionable. Hell, college age girls are impressionable, just look at “Girls Gone Wild”, it’s gotta be easy now a days for some asshole to talk little girls into doing bad things on the internet. Or, if we grew up in the age where every teenager has a cell phone, she could have been the girl who sent an picture message of a suggestive/clothing lacking picture of herself to her boyfriend on her cell phone just to have the boyfriend forward it to everyone they knew when they broke up.

Thank goodness we grew up in the 90′s in an area that really didn’t have the internet until 1997, and we were almost 18 by the time that we were dealing with people trying to get us to do stupid stuff we would later regret on the internet.

It’s a totally different world now than it was even 15 years ago. I feel sorry for anyone growing up right now. I seriously do. I love you all and want to give you all hugs and chocolate.

We’re all in this big bad world together, loves. Be excellent to each other.

I have become good friends with a lady that I work with and she has a 15 year old daughter that was being bullied horribly at school and even online on FB. At one point, I know she was eating her lunch in a bathroom stall everyday till it was time to go back to class. and she would call her mom from the bathroom on her cell in tears. Her mom went in and had a talk with the counselors and i believe even had a talk with the bullies’ parents. In the end,my friend ended up deactivating her daughter’s account and that helped tremendously. Me and another gal that I worked with at the time found her some nice fancy duds that the teens are wearing these days and that helped out her self esteem a lot. I think part of it was that adults she thought were neat were taking an interest in her and it gave her more confidence and she also all of a sudden had some punk rock cool shit to wear to school. She has a couple of really good friends now and I don’t think she gets bullied at all anymore. Things have really turned around for her. And I’m glad for her. She’s a really sweet girl.

Onto the “coping with bullies” part:

Where do i start? I was definitely not popular in school. In fact, me and my main friend were actually kind of like a magnet for the other unpopular people. Key thing to keep in mind is

#1)Suicide is a very Permanent solution to an extremely Temporary problem.
School will eventually end, so keep your head down and power through. it may suck and be hard to ignore the bullying, but that’s why you see so many “unpopular” people that read books. to have a little escape from their actual reality. (writing poetry and/or keeping a journal is extremely helpful. but never ever take it to school with you. leave that shit at home so it doesn’t get into the wrong hands). just remember “this too shall soon pass”. that is some of the best advice I have EVER gotten.

#2) Bullies are often making up for their own short comings. So, if you are being picked on, chances are they are jealous of you or they have a really fucked up home life and this is their unfortunate coping mechanism (and some people are just plain ol’ mean and get pleasure from doing stupid shit to torment other people, but most of the time it’s coping or jealousy).

#3) online bullying….ignore the trolls…there are some people out there that just take pleasure in floating around online trying to get a rise out of people. They are assholes. ignore them and block them if possible. that is the best possible way to deal with them. So glad i didn’t grow up with all the social networking that exists. That being said…pretty much all of the social networking sites that i actually use, interaction with me is completely impossible unless you send me a friend request and i accept, and even then, i have everything set up for people to see only as much as i want them to see. If they harass me or do or say stupid shit, they get blocked. and possibly reported depending on what it is that they have said. and never underestimate the value of screen shots. If it is someone that is harassing you online that you go to school with, make sure you show those screen shots to your parent so they can go to the parent of the kid that is harassing you. You can also show them to your principal or guidance counselor, because some schools have a code of conduct that they expect their students to live up to even outside of school and if they are violating them, they could very well be expelled for their bad behavior. If you are being bullied in excessively horrid amounts, then just delete your social networking accounts and stick to e-mailing back and forth with your Actual friends. and if some how the bullies find out your email address and get to you there, delete and begin a new account. it’s a pain, but it’s better than having to deal with constant harassment from idiots.

#4) Quality over quantity. Yes it’s Great to have friends! but remember, it’s better to have 1 Really good true friend than 100 fair weather friends that disappear when a thunderstorm is on the horizon.

#5) Friends are god’s apology for family. (not really bullying, but this is some tough shit to go through when you are a minor) So if you have some secret things that you are not sure how your family are going to react to (ex. being gblt) that’s where #5 comes in. Choose really great people that you can trust as a true friend that love you for who you are. i think i read in Amanda’s last blog or maybe someone made a comment somewhere about popular things are not always actually good…this was in reference to music, but i think it kind of applies here as well. just because someone is popular does not mean they are good (so you shouldn’t necessarily want them as a friend Just because they are popular).

#6) Take a leaf out of Neil Gaiman’s book (Amanda’s as well actually). No matter what happens, good or bad, make good art. There are reasons why so many tormented people make art. it is a Great release of all that pent up emotion. You can’t bottle that up, because it will eventually explode (I learned this the hard way when i was in school and had a slight breakdown. That is when i started keeping a journal until i finally was able to manage all the crazy emotions as a more stable adult and let me tell you, oh the art i did create. All that i could get my hands on in high school. Painting, drawing, pottery, photography, doing collages, writing poetry. It helped immensely in dealing with difficult emotions and situations).

That’s all i can think of as far as how to approach bullying. I hope something in there helps. There is Always a light at the end of the tunnel. There ARE people out there that care. and from what I’ve seen since I’ve been “following” Amanda Palmer is that most of them are her fans. So if you are ever feeling really down, her fan base is a GREAT place to start.
XOXOXOX & much <3 to all!

My experiences were pretty mild compared to many of the other stories here. I don’t have any good advice on coping strategies, I honestly can’t remember how I handled bullying, but perhaps can suggest what “winning” might look like. A few years later, someone came up to me saying they’d been at school with me and remembered me, it was only several days later when I actually remembered who he had been, and that he had been a bully, that I realised the real victory over bullying is when it becomes so insignificant to not even remember, let alone care about.
My life had moved on, been filled with other things, bigger, more interesting & better than some little person seeking self-importance.

When I was an introverted teenager, I didn’t even have a reprieve at home. My mother had married a moron and he had moved his moron children in with us, and they hated my sisters and me and bullied us mercilessly, often by pretending to befriend people who hated us just so that they could bring them to our house and everyone could have a good time mocking us.

Back in those days, I walked. Whenever I felt that home was horrible and school was dangerous and none of my three friends was available, I would just walk. To the park, around town, often to the library.

When I was at school, I engaged with my teachers, but not my peers. The teachers may not have been the most friendly people in the world, but they had way too much on their minds to waste things like snotty sarcasm on me. I would rather be told “Look, can we talk later? I’m very busy” than have someone fake an interest in talking to me just so that they could report back to their friends and mock me with it later.

I’m nearly 50 now, and I still remember how much high school hurt. I’m lucky in that I’m the biggest introvert in the world and didn’t mind that I didn’t have company a lot of the time. Honestly, that’s been my only salvation. If you’re an introvert, people will hate you more for it because it’s obvious to them that you don’t need them. It will take them YEARS to understand that they shouldn’t feel insulted because you don’t need them – they should feel happy when you do reach out. I was made to feel like a freak because I wasn’t social like everyone else – how could I not want to go to parties and football games and pep rallies?

If you’re an introvert, stop punishing yourself for not wanting to be around other people all the time. You’re not a freak, you’re not “socially awkward,” you’re not antisocial. Realize that other people are just punishing you because they can’t understand you. It’ll take you a long time to forgive them, but start by forgiving yourself.

I’m 41, and here’s what’s weird – I often wish I had HAD the internet back in my days of junior high/high school misery.
Sure, I had no friends at school. I was actively tormented. I cut up my arms (all sorts of self-harm, really), and tried every eating disorder in the book. I don’t know what exactly put the ‘kick me” sign on my back, but there it was, even from an early age. I was chubby, awkward, and oblivious to anything anyone else considered “cool”. My grades weren’t good enough for me to be embraced by the nerd clique. The days when I was simply ignored, and could blend into the woodwork, were the good ones. I hit 6th grade with a built-in tormentor – my father had a business associate with a daughter my age, and we were expected to be friends. Maybe we were at first. She was everything I wasn’t – popular, well-dressed, athletic, she knew how to make friends. Anyway, they moved to our neighbourhood, and this girl came to my school. Maybe I would have been just as miserable if she hadn’t. I don’t know. But from day one, she was on a mission to make sure I was teased and bullied as much as possible, that I spent more time crying in the nurse’s office than I did in class, and that anyone who might have been my friend would be defying her and risking becoming a target themselves. And everywhere I went, there she was – my summer camp, my weekend theatre classes, everywhere. My parents never did anything. I hated them, hated her, hated myself. Finding out later that I wasn’t the only one she tortured helped, but not a lot.
Anyway. I’m 41, I like myself, and while this evil bitch and her treatment of me left scars, they are faint enough to live with. I work with teenagers now, and all I want is for them to feel better about themselves than I did back then. I often feel helpless and don’t know what to say.
The internet is a strange thing. Everything is there, if you look for it. Back when I was a miserable, bullied mess, I think it would have helped immeasurably if I had had something like Facebook, where I could keep in touch with the friends I had from camp, or wherever. I could have come home from another awful day at school, gotten online, and been able to connect with people who actually liked me. Maybe even found some new ones.
I know I’ve been lucky. I have a personal rule about the internet – I don’t argue with people, and I don’t put anything out there that I wouldn’t want my mother or my daughter to see. So far it’s working. I have made videos and posted them on YouTube, and sometimes people have rude things to say about them. I delete them, and walk away. I turn off the computer. I disappear from LJ for a while. I disable anonymous asks from my tumblr.
I don’t know if this helps at all. My daughter is 7. Sometimes peers have been mean to her. I don’t tell her to ignore it and it will go away (we all know that never works). I tell her she’s awesome, and that those guys who don’t think so don’t know from awesome because they aren’t awesome, and we walk away. I tell her that someone being mean to her is NOT a reflection on her, it is a reflection on THEM, and how sad it is that sometimes people just need to be mean to other people to feel cool. I try to give her positive, to replace the negative. She’s only 7, but so far, so good.
The beauty of the computer is that it can be walked away from. You’re still carrying with you the shitty feeling of “someone out there doesn’t like me, and took the time out of their lives to say so”. I know that once I post this comment, I’m going to be all antsy and insecure that people didn’t like it, or thought it was stupid, or I should just shut up. Maybe I won’t come back and read any feedback, just in case. Maybe I will. Putting yourself out there in any way is taking a deep breath and jumping into potentially shark-infested waters. I think the secret (at least, for me) is as simple as what I tell my daughter – know that you are wonderful, and even if some other people don’t agree with you, SOMEWHERE, there is someone who will agree. The internet is a big place, and you can find connection and love out there, amid the sharks. When someone doesn’t treat you right, flip them the bird and go find someone who does treat you right – but I think the biggest thing is YOU, knowing you deserve to be treated right. Know you are wonderful, and somewhere, sometime, other people will too.
PS, sorry if this was rambling and kind of convoluted. I was trying to write without thinking, before I could talk myself out of sharing, and I didn’t want to go back and edit. I love you guys.

I used to be relieved that high school was over… Then I realized, even 8 years later, that it never really ends with a lot of people. I have dealt with so much bigotry, prejudice, and backstabbing at my jobs that it’s just ridiculous. My strategy? It’s cliche perhaps, but choosing to react in a more distanced manner and surrounding myself with people who appreciate/understand me the rest of the time tends to help.

the thing that i am most curious about is whether kids have always been as horrible as they have shown they can be today, or is it the internet that has bred the hatred? OR is it more that the viciousness has always been there but no one really knew because the internet didn’t exist, and the victim did get that reprieve of being able to go home and the bullying would end there, rather than follow them home and having it splashed AROUND THE WORLD.

someone can decide they don’t like another person for whatever reason, and they now have the ability to build an army of people from around the world to inflict pain on their victim. i think the internet has bred a bunch of cowards. they don’t see that words can hurt more than fists. bruises and broken bones can heal, but words can never be unheard. i think the whole sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me is just not true.

some people aren’t strong enough to hold on, and it isn’t their fault. i don’t know if i am going to get through all of 2013, i nearly didn’t make it through 2012…

if I have ever been bullied, online or off, I was to oblivious to know it. I’ve been asked twice in 6th grade if I were a lesbian, both times I was too sheltered to know the meaning. I was once teased on the bus and had my umbrella taken and opened on it, I snapped the arms off of it in response. for me, foggy ignorance was annoyed bliss. I recognized that they were being idiotic, but never recognized it as bullying. for me, once they realized I was the human embodiment of the honey badger, those familiar with me left me alone, and the new people learned quickly that to pick on me was a waste of effort. I wouldn’t know if the Internet is bullying me, since I’ve left such an unnoticeable mark in my school,but I imagine I’d ignore it as I always have. if they want to find something about me funny, that’s fine. Honey Badger don’t give a damn.