First I'm going to say a little bit about what I would define as harassment or bullying. Harassment or cyber bullying, to me, would be a situation where the online nastiness that one is experiencing overflows into your real life. For example, doxxing is a great example of what I would define as ACTUAL harassment. Putting someones info such as their address and phone numbers on the internet and then having large numbers of people make calls and mail all manners of horrible bullshit is disgusting behavior that could only really be defined as harassment or bullying.
Also things such as DDoSing websites and such I'd define as actual harassment because if you're a content creator that relies on your site to make money (and maybe even a living) then you're directly harming them in some kind of actual way that they can't prevent.
However, saying nasty things to people on social media or in video games is NOT harassment and it's not bullying. Even if there are large numbers of people doing it, I disagree with the idea that you are being harassed by randoms on the internet. Almost every website, every social media outlet, every messenger service and every app has a block feature and an account removal feature. If people are saying stuff you don't like then block them and if it becomes too much, shut down your shit, it's that simple. Surprisingly, even in 2015, I'm pretty sure you'll be OK if you don't have to log into Facebook every day.
I'm sure there are people who are affected quite badly by people saying horrible things to you on the internet but I'm quite cynical of these people because, as I said before, I speak from a great deal of experience of being "harassed" and "bullied" across my life. Allow me to tell you some stories.
In my high school days I was rather unpopular (nothing's changed lul) and I'd get bullied a bit at school. As a young child I discovered MSN Messenger and on there I would talk to the few friends I did have and have a grand old time. Occasionally, the bullies from my school life would appear to say nasty shit to me but I didn't mind it so much online because that was the one place where I didn't have to take their shit. Without responding or even really reading what they said to me, I'd block them in a heartbeat and get back to living my happy life. At home, on the internet, I didn't have to take that shit and so I chose not to. Now we have a lot more avenues for communication like twitter, LINE, Facebook, Snapchat and all that shit, but I guarantee that they all have block features so you can avoid having to hear shit that upsets you from randoms on the internet looking for a reaction.
I'm aware that some people who are "cyber bullied" may then come off Facebook and face that shit in real life but when it gets that far, to me, it stops being cyber bullying and falls into the realm of just straight up normal bullying, right?
Now what about online harassment? Things like emails and stuff that I hear people talking about so often? Well that's bollocks too. A long while ago my wife bought my Hatsune Miku Project Diva F2nd. Since I'm a website that talks about games, I announced how pleased I was with the gift I had received with a little picture of the box on Twitter. Not long after I made that tweet, I received an email telling me, in short, that I'm a horrible person and my wife is a traitor to women who should kill herself.
Pretty horrible thing to have to read right? Well yeah, but it was sent by someone I didn't know and quite frankly, I don't give a shit about what anons on the internet think about me or my wife. The criticism leveled against the two us wasn't constructive and the tone of his or her email was nasty so I just deleted it. I received one more after that with similar words about me and no mention of my wife and did the same thing.
If it was continued assaults, there are features in my email thing to block addresses and filter shit as spam or whatever, so I could have just used those but I've not received one since and I refuse to let stupid shit like that get to me.
As for gaming there's been a sad change in what qualifies as harassment. Back when I was younger, playing games online was an almost guaranteed way to hear something nasty. Comments like "you're shit" and "fat nerd tryhard" as well as much wittier stuff was commonplace, it was just the rough and tumble nature of playing competitive online games and still is. They don't know anything about me and they say stuff just to get a rise and 90% of the time it doesn't come from a place of malice so there's no need to get upset.
The problem is that nowadays, the definition of harassment has become silly and maybe that's another reason as to why I'm so cynical about it all. Harassment on twitter can now be defined as disagreeing with someone or re-tweeting something that they don't like. People like to use the word harassment to deflect legitimate criticism. For example, if someone says something and you respond with like "well, you didn't really do enough fact checking, here are some sources of stuff that says you might be barking up the wrong tree.." the person will just use the H word and large numbers of people will come to defend despite the idiocy behind the first statement. I've also seen people use the word harassment to talk about calling someone shit at a game in an in game chat, which is just ridiculous.
All this said, there are large numbers of people and large groups dedicated to stomping out or supporting victims of harassment and cyber bullying, so I'm more than willing to admit that maybe I just don't understand the whole issue. If there's anyone with experiences they'd like to share or ideas they would like to put forward to try and tell me that maybe it's not all complete bollocks, I'm open to the idea that maybe I'm wrong on this.
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