Bullying
agrrrfishi requested this thread after attending an assembly at her school, probably prompted by the case of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old girl in Massachusetts who was bullied for several months and finally committed suicide. Here is what agrrrfishi says:
Today during second hour, all of the students in my school were called down to the auditorium. All of the lights were off and everyone on the stage was wearing dark colors and looked solemn. After everyone was seated, a presentation came on the screen that we had set up onstage.
They showed a slideshow of dozens of horrible, rude, degrading comments posted on Formspring, Facebook, Myspace and other messaging sites. They were made to hurt the people who received them, saying things like†you’re a fat whoreâ€, “nobody likes youâ€, and “why don’t you just dieâ€, and those are just the dumbed-down versions. At the end, the presenters revealed that all of these pictures of comments were screenshots, taken from the Formsprings, Facebooks, etc. of girls from our school. I had had an idea that that was what they were, but I never thought they’d show up.
After that, we had an open-mike session, in which time I heard about twenty stories from girls who go to my school. There was some really tough stuff, some terrible experiences with other peers making fun on them, putting them down and driving them even to the brink of suicide. There were some girls who had been bullied for their entire lives. I just felt really bad because I knew that I had been mean to people before, and was so afraid that I could have had this effect on those people and never realized it…I know that bullying is bad and happens all the time, but the assembly effected the majority of our student body in a detrimental way.
I’d love to have a thread to discuss (if we don’t already have one) bullying, whether online and in person, where people can share their stories, get comfort, and so that we can discuss ways to try and eliminate backstabbing and hurtful behavior, if not only within our own circles of friends.
Date: April 29, 2010
Categories: Life, Non-Muse news
thanks. Nice to know that people somewhere know that I exist, and even somehow manage to think that I am an amazing person.
