Facebook Ban - Facebook Terrorism

Facebook terrorism has become a pandemic in our society in the past few years. You may think that the use of the word “terrorism” is a bit strong, but this cyber-bullying is leading to a spike in teen suicide all over the world. Facebook Terrorism is more intense and blatant than warfare.

Facebook Terrorism is the public bullying of a person through the use of their facebook wall, newsfeed, and other aspects of the social networking website. There have been so many sickening examples of this in the past year that it has become apparent that some controls need to be put in place; even if that means a higher level of profile monitoring regardless of the privacy issues involved.

The most recent story I had read made me feel sick to my stomach. A 16 year old girl was drugged and gang raped at a rave in Pitt Meadows, B.C. As a result of the date rape drug, she did not remember the event until she found the photos and video of the rape on Facebook several days later. The photos were removed by the RCMP, but have resurfaced elsewhere on the internet. "This victim is having to relive it on a daily basis, because we get the photos taken off, and then all of a sudden they're redistributed and others are viewing it," RCMP Insp. Derren Lench says. If that’s not terrorism, I don’t know what is.

15 year old Holly Grogan jumped 30ft to her death after enduring bullying and abuse posted on her Facebook page. Her friend admitted that a group of girls would gang up on her and post a series of abusive messages on her Facebook wall. A 14 year old boy committed suicide after fellow students made comments about his sexual orientation on Facebook.

Facebook has morphed from a tool one can use to connect with people all over the world and a great promotional tool, to a weapon. This is a larger problem within the teen demographic, but it does exist outside of that.

A close friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver as she was working as a tow truck driver here in Winnipeg. Quickly after her death, family and friends created a memorial page for her on Facebook so people can share memories and grieve together. The driver of the other car was a young man in his 20’s and was in the hospital after the crash. His friends felt the need to go on this memorial page and write hateful comments about our friend who had died, in a way of defending him. Commenting on her sexual orientation, promiscuity, etc. etc. etc. This was a form of Facebook terrorism targeted at a large group of people, and imagining her parents and sister reading the abusive comments these strangers were writing is maddening.

Facebook terrorism ruins lives and is never acceptable. This is a pandemic that should not be taken lightly or without action to stop it.

Some more resources:

http://Cyberbulling.us

Cyber-Bulling statistics

Facebook Ban - Facebook Warfare

Facebook is an amazing tool. It can be used to reconnect with people, promote events, stalk people, and so much more. It can also be used as an effective weapon in the Passive Aggressive War so many people engage in. I briefly touched on some of this behaviour here, but this post will let us delve into the tactical genius of Facebook as a social weapon.

To be clear, I am not talking about full on battle royale's via wall posts or photo comments. Having a "screaming match" via Facebook is just embarrassing. I'm talking about the intricate dance of internet passive aggressiveness. an integral post on a third party's wall, a strategic photo tag, all these things are tactics in this online war.

What are the reasons one would be warring via Facebook you ask? Break-ups, friend fights, anything to do with the opposite sex etc. etc. etc. Any reason why you would be warring in real life would be a reason for it to trickle onto Facebook. You've probably done it and not even realized. Ever notice how many times you visit the profile of a person you're fighting with? Well, that's considered "gathering intel" my friends.

Even if you tell yourself that you are not conducting any of this behaviour, you know the correspondence between you and certain groups of people will show up on their newsfeed. You know that even if you are no longer Facebook friends, tagging a friend of theirs in your photos from that "great party you didn't invite them to" will pop up in their newsfeed...

Ah, the newsfeed. This is your medium. The Facebook Newsfeed sends you information on your friends, and lets you know of the activity happening on their profile. Your crafty posts with third party profiles connected to your victim will inevitably show up on their news feed.

Here's an admittance I have of warfare I engaged in. It was about 3 years ago, and I maintain this is not my normal behaviour. I had just begun dating someone, and their ex girlfriend had gone a little mental about that. She had approached me multiple times on the fact. So instead of retaliating publicly, or dramatically, I merely posted my "favourite" song on my new boyfriend's wall. I didn't hear from her again.

I do not condone the use of Facebook as a weapon in the Passive Aggressive War. It is childish, but people do it because it provides the perfect avenue for it. In my next post I will be talking about what happens when this war is taken too far...

Facebook Ban - The Descent

It's been almost a month since I've been back on Facebook, and I am still alive. I learned a few things during my hiatus, but the biggest changes came when I rejoined the herd.

I was hesitant to log back on initially. When the date and time came that the ban was lifted I was nervous about what would happen. I had been functioning happily without, but was curious about what was going on online without my constant presence and censorship. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, scared to type in my password. Then I stepped off the cliff.

The first thing I noticed was a complete layout change. Facebook allows you to sample their new layouts before fully committing. I didn't change over right away because I had bigger fish to fry, and needed a slow integration back into the matrix. I had almost 19 notifications, almost 30 messages, and 12 friend requests. How that happened in only 4 weeks is scary and surprising. It's not like I had been a hermit during my hiatus; I was out on the town more than ever reconnecting with old friends, sharing beers and cigarettes and dance moves.

Quite a few of the messages were from events so they don't really count. Almost all of the friend requests were from random men. Clearly they saw my most recent relationship status change, and hadn't read this post. I found the sheer amount of notifications I had to sift through overwhelming. I almost wanted to log back off and never go back. I had sort of enjoyed the peace and quiet. The simplicity of Twitter appealed more to me than the rabbit-hole that is Facebook. With Twitter there are no twists and turns that can lead you straight into stalking someone for hours. What you see is what you get, and I liked that.

After cleaning up my account from all the notifications, I decided I was ready for the layout change. Might as well make the choice before Facebook made it official. The whole switch over was overwhelming as well. The first week back on the drug I had no desire to check my profile. It didn't have the same hold over me as before. Maybe I had learned something from my hiatus?

Unfortunately that is wishful thinking. Classes started again and my lack of attention span led me to hover on my Facebook profile, searching for any form of distraction.

So the blog is back. No, I am not going back on another Facebook hiatus; however, I will continue with my social analysis of my generation's favourite pass-time. The following posts will include:

- Facebook Warfare

- Facebook Terrorism

- Pro Facebook

- Myspace to Facebook: The Renegades

If there is time, I will attempt a review on The Social Network, a movie about Facebook, and a commentary on how Mark Zuckerberg was given the title of Person of the Year by the New York Times for 2010. Up to this point I had refused to see The Social Network, as the idea of watching a biopic about Facebook made me uncomfortable; however, in the name of research I will watch it. The blog is back, so feel free to suggest other topics in the comments. I want to delve as far as I can into the social enigma that is Facebook addiction.