The Flip Side To Internet Fame Analysis

Michael Chazulle
WRT-101-118
Professor Petillo
Unit 4 First Draft
3 December 2014

Chased into Cyberspace People are cruel, this is nothing new. What is new is the decline of the traditional form of bullying and the rise of cyber bullying. Jessica Bennett in her article The Flip Side to Internet Fame explains the effects of cyber bullying using great examples and details. Instead of being chased around the playground young people have decided to take it to the Internet, where they can hide behind their screens and batter others with hatred whenever they want and with little repercussions. It’s not just kids who are bullies, but people of all ages are bullies as well. First off, there are many reasons why a person may become a bully such as
Real life bullying, or traditional bullying, is exactly like our story of Johnny and Billy. It’s a face to face encounter that usually entails physical, verbal and emotional violence that is generally one sided. A warning sign that someone is being bullied, for example, is if Billy came home from school one day with a bloody nose or a black eye. Cyber bullying never involves physical abuse because as the name states, it occurs over the Internet. The common method people use to cyber bully others is anonymously posting things about a person whether it is hurtful words or an embarrassing picture or video. Cyber bullying is especially bad because the recipient of the bullying is exposed to anyone that wants to see it because anyone with an account can view what is going on. In traditional bullying, the bullied is “only” embarrassed in front of the audience that is there to witness it occurring, saying only as if it isn’t bad enough. Therefore, cyber bullying is very embarrassing and arguably worse than traditional bullying. “Once unsavory information is posted, it’s almost impossible to retrieve,” says Bennett. This is sadly the truth; once someone posts something about Billy it is going to be on the Internet forever, and when someone Google searches his name that post is very likely to pop up. Cyber bullying is a very popular because it can be done so anonymously and usually
In the past, the government was responsible for publicly shaming people but now the government has little to no involvement in it, rather the people do. The way society today publicly shames people is in the media, more specifically the Internet. The methods that were used in the past were completely different, as Bennett explains, “Ancient Romans punished wrongdoers by branding them on the forehead—slaves caught stealing got fur (Latin for thief) and runaways got fug (fugitive). In Colonial America heretics were clamped into stocks in the public square, thieves had their hands or fingers cut off, and adulterers were forced to wear a scarlet A.” Some may claim that previous, historical methods of public shaming were worse than the Internet is but is it really? There is no doubt that the routines of shaming used years ago were utterly barbaric, but how many people were you actually shamed in front of…the whole village? Being put on the Internet literally allows anyone with a device and a connection to view you. If Johnny gives Billy an atomic wedgie and one of his buddies records it and uploads it to the Internet, people all over the world can see Billy with his draws stretched over his head. It is very doubtful something like that would go away. Bennett mentions a real life example of this with the “star wars kid.” Instead of branding names on foreheads or