Cyber Bullying in the Fickr World pt. 1

(The following names have been changed in order to secure the safety and integrity of this blog page)

A dear friend of mine, who used to be a member of Flickr, ended up deleting his account a while back, because he had become a victim of cyber-bullying.

JJ, the perpetrater, and his accomplice, SS, took great extremes to ridicule and mock Bob from everything ranging from his religious status, to his faulty English. When things got so bad that Bob eventually lashed back, JJ had posted the very last email that he had received from Vincent in the Christianity Discussion Group, and claimed that Bob was the one who was doing the cyber-bullying, and slandered his name there.

Upon doing some detective work, I finally found out the truth and brought it to light. You might want to read what I posted in the Christianity Discussion Group before I left:

I have been thinking long and hard about what I wish to write here, but I can no longer withold from this group what I already know, what I have just recently discovered, and while I can personally roll taunts towards me off my shoulder, I simply CANNOT stand and watch innocent people suffer while their names are being slandered with false accusations. The current admin might probably delete this thread and kick me out of the group for exposing this, but I don't care, because copies of this will be circulating in all other groups I am a member of (with the admins' permission), and I will be quitting this group before anybody does anything to me anyway.

You will remember that three weeks ago, a certain JJ had attempted to reveal to us the “truth” about Bob. JJ would have us think that he is the “victim”, that he is the one who is being abused by Bob. Recent evidence that I have collected have revealed otherwise. What JJ has deliberately failed to tell everybody in the group is what HE has done to drive Bob to this level. I intend on bringing this to light, based on evidence that I have gathered both from JJ and from Bob himself.

Upon reading about Bob's latest email that was posted in this group, I took it really hard. I simply did not want to believe that Bob was a cyber-bully who liked to play pranks on other people. So I decided to investigate as to what would have driven Bob to write such a thing and why he did it. I decided to email JJ personally, asking further about his dealings with Vincent, so that I could get a better picture of Bob's AND JJ's motivations. JJ was only too eager to supply me with information, provided that I didn't tell anybody (especially Bob) what I was up to. He ended up sending me various emails during the course of the three weeks since we were in touch, providing me with other “aliases” that Bob had supposedly set up, along with previous posts that he had sent on Flickr, as well as one about Bob's syntax and grammatical errors (well, English IS his second language after all). Some of the information he sent was useful, but a LOT of it was not, and upon asking JJ if he had any other abusive emails received from Vincent on hand, he replied by saying he did not have them any more. The only email he had saved was the latest one posted in this group thread.

Meanwhile, I had contacted Bob's brother Bill, and asked how Vincent was doing. Bill replied back in an email, saying Bob was OK, and why did I ask? I explained (without mentioning anybody's name) of my findings, which was why I asked if Bob was OK, as I was concerned for him. Bill ended up getting in contact with Bob and Bob was able to work out for himself who it was that sent that post, to which he sent me most of the correspondance (around 24 emails in total), in order to explain to me his side of the story. What I read shocked me to the very core.

You will remember that Bob used to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as the Mormon church). At the time he joined Flickr, Bob was still very new in his faith, and showed a keen interest in learning not only what the church taught, but what the opinion of other Christians were. JJ, upon hearing that Bob was a Mormon, had begun to criticize Bob's new found belief, and starting challenging his faith with emails such as the one dated on 8 December 2008:

“Dear Bob.
Even after two invitations to do so we have not yet been able to read your testimony as to your salvation. This is rather unusual especially seeing that you said that you are a "new convert" as usually a new Christian wants to tell everyone about Jesus and how He saved them from sin.
We feel that the reasons you cannot tell us your testimony, giving all honour and glory to Christ Jesus is either that you are still a Muslim following allah who is not God or if you are in fact a Mormon you cannot give full glory to Jesus as the "jesus" of the Mormons is just a created being and the brother of the devil.
Therefore the Mormon jesus cannot be given any honour and just like a Jehovah`s Witness all you could do is write something giving credit to a sinful man-made organization or forward some material that the sinful elder provides.
In any respect a testimony honouring the True God is not possible from either a Muslim or a Mormon.
Regards.
JJ.

And earlier on 10 October 2008:

“As it seems you cannot answer the question nor write your own replies, this last reply was not written by you, it is pointless to continue debate with you. If God is who he says He is, if Jesus is His Son and the same as God, and the Holy Spirit is also the same as God then you and the Mormon faith stand condemned and you WILL hear the words "I never knew you." when you meet the same Jesus whom you deny and mock.
Either you are correct or God is correct.
Having done all I need to do there will be no need to contact me any more, take it up with God or your elder.”

Bob tried his best to explain why he chose to join the church, often providing JJ with quotes from the official church website (www.lds.org) to try and explain his feelings, (again, pointing out that English is his second language, and was unable to express himself as he would have liked). He was attacked for copying those quotes and for his lack of ability to express what he wanted to say:

“Bob.
You did not write ONE WORD of that nonsense, all you did was simply copy some pre-written rubbish from one of your Mormon cult books or you forwarded our e-mail onto one of your elders to answer it for you. That is insulting to both you and us.
We do not want to hear from any of the elders, they are going to Hell because they knowingly lead people into sin and error, do NOT allow them to drag you down to hell with them.” (3 October 2008)

He was even at one staged accused of getting the missionaries to write all of the emails for him, to which Bob only responded:

“I never turn you to the elder for the disclose because the mormon elders can not use the internet for e mailing and mobile ,they have strict rules.this shows that you are totally lack knowledge of mormonism.” (3 October 2008)

To make matters worse, JJ decided to get another friend to help him with the bible-bashing. A man named SS then proceeded to send Vincent nasty emails, such as:

“now you are Jesus?

That is blasphemy in either your phony religion or in one that does believe in Jesus as savior.

Go to hell.”

SS (13 October 2008)

And:

“I have attacked your blasphemous false religion, not you personally. Get a life, fool.”
(14 October 2008)

Meanwhile, all of this was starting to get to Bob, and he was starting to doubt whether or not the things he had a testimony of were true, so he asked these people fervently for help:

“If you think I am wrong please show where I am wrong and please preach to me! You should convince me rather than condemning me....” (3 October 2008)

But instead of preaching to him, like he so fervently asked, the taunts and bullying continued, escalating from mocking his beliefs, to making fun of his English and general name-calling:

“Even though your miniscule intellect is just the same at least your spelling ability is slightly better.
My God has defeated your "god" and you are the fool for following the loser, you will go to hell because of your stupidity so get used to it.” - JJ, 16 Feb 2009

“I've been watching you. Why don't you just climb down a manhole and pull the cover in after you?
SS (17 Feb 2009)

And JJ's latest insult:

“And you are just a silly sinful spoilt little squinty-eyed brat, go and play in your piles of shit and fish guts.
Screw you, you can all go to hell.
This will be the last message I will see from you as we have asked the mail server to delete any further shit from you and to bounce back your crap.
Don`t eat too many dogs. Nice knowing you, loser. We are turning you over to Satan as the Scripture says to do.
When you learn to speak properly and communicate effectively with people who are intelligent way above your comprehension then we may show you some courtesy, an attribute you clearly do not possess,
You are silly and boring, we had fun letting you make a fool of yourself but now it is boring. Go and kiss your buffalo.” (17 Feb 2009)

When all of these pressures got too much for Bob, he obviously snapped and, as you can see, without thinking, wrote that email back in response to these taunts and insults.

Now – before ANY of you make any further judgements on Bob's actions, I must ask you..... CAN YOU BLAME HIM?! Is it any wonder that he chose to close down his account on his own accord, because of JJ's and SS's actions?! Can anybody in this group cast the first stone at Bob for writing this email to JJ, knowing now what had brought him to this stage?... The last thing Bob needed to become was a victim of cyber bullying, which is essentially what JJ and SS have done. Not only that, Bob's faith in God has been shaken so much because of these two people's actions that he no longer trusts or believes in God, and doesn't know whether to have a faith in anyone or anything now.

So congratulations, JJ. You have successfully turned someone away from believing and worshipping in God. Things might have turned out better for you, had you had kept all of your correspondance with Vincent to back your side up, but I'm afraid you didn't wish to share it anyway, because you knew all along that you really had nothing against Bob to convict him. And although I cannot prove it now, I know those other “aliases” had to have been created by you somehow. This I will discover in time.

Congratulations, SS. You have successfully brought someone down to the level where they have very little or no self-esteem left at all.

I hope you are both really proud of yourselves.

As far as my future with the Christianity Discussion Group is concerned: I cannot say this about the majority of the members who have joined (many of you have since become good friends of mine), but for the very few of you who enjoy spreading contention in our discussion threads and mocking other Christians for their beliefs, I have to say that I can no longer be a part of such a group that can tolerate such behaviour. It is for this reason, apart from the main reason that I have discussed in this thread, that I am now quitting the Christianity Group. Please do no try and invite me back, as I will only ignore your requests.

I hope that one day peace can be restored to this group.

Goodbye.

From was_bedeutet_jemanden

P.S. What I find ironic about the whole sad story is that I, myself, am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, a Mormon. I had thought that would have been evident by looking through my photostream. Why did you treat me with the upmost decency JJ, when you couldn't have done the same to someone else who was of the same faith as me?....





Cyber-bullying is not on. If you feel you have been a victim of cyber-bullying, either on Flickr or an any other website, you CAN do something about it! Talk to the admins, block the person who is cyber-bullying you, do whatever it takes to stop it, because you have a right to surf the net without having these sort of people hurting you...