Becca greeted me with a heavy sigh. "I'm out of it today," she says, staring blankly at her screen.
"What's up?" I asked.
With an exasperated sigh, "The Geek has a girlfriend."
I've been following the story of The Geek for a few weeks now. They met through a mutual friend, he works in IT Support, etc. His most recent stunt was severely geeky.
"I found out about it from Facebook. He couldn't even tell me."
I repressed a chuckle. Are we really so juvenile that, as adults, we use social networking to do the dirty work for us? That's what got me thinking about all the passive cyber bullying: pictures of a new girlfriend or a status update, news feeds. And the security of changing names and blocking profiles! Hey, don't I have the right to see who's leaving these nasty comments on pictures of my hubby? Do I have any rights on the Internet? Or is this just an open tool for assault?
My very first cyber bullying happened in early high school, before cable modems and even before blogs. Someone took a picture of me and my then boyfriend, and under a false account, distributed the photo to several "popular" girls in the school and passed it off as, well, coming from me. NOTE: the fact that I majored in print journalism, non-fiction, and political science should alert you to my high school coolness factor, about a 3 on a 0 to 10 scale in which 10 was phenomenally cool and 0 was equivalent to pond scum. Was it embarrassing? Of course. I couldn't exactly cry to my mother about it, she didn't understand how a picture of me and Alex would end up on the Internet in the first place, she was more angry I let those people "find" it by having a website. My own personal expression used against me.
That was just the first time it happened, and I wouldn't even say it was passive. The actors had specific intent (to hurt me) and made a conscious decision (controlled distribution) to exploit (embarrass) someone less fortunate (read: not popular). Am I going to hold it against these girls? Probably not. They were immature, angry, and obviously troubled. I'm better than that... I hope.
More recently, I may have been the one doing the bullying. February 2007 proved to be an exciting time, and with only a few months left in college, I took to documenting each party and each outing to it's fullest. This included pictures of my *new* boyfriend, just less than a month after breaking up with my serious boyfriend of 5 years. I did what any college student would do - I posted the pictures on Facebook. Of course, I thought I was smart - I blocked anyone who wasn't my friend, I tagged only "public" appropriate photos, and I was very happy with how they turned out. Until after Easter break...
"Why'd you un-friend me?!" I IMed Brad. I was horrified. What did I do that he didn't want to be friends with me anymore? (Aside from breaking up with him, stomping all over his dreams, finding a new man, and advertising it heavily across the Internet...)
"I couldn't take it anymore," he said, "there's just so many pictures of you and him. I can't stand to look at you."
So no lie here, this started a 3 month feud that ended with a few nasty emails and name calling. I keep them saved in my Gmail to keep me humble.
Of course Brad would be mad. I was "In a Relationship" and there were pictures everywhere. *New* boyfriend wrote messages on my wall. *New* boyfriend was in my AIM profile under a set of lyrics that I don't remember with a less-than-3 (<3)>. Not only that, *New* boyfriend was my coworker, someone I mentored at school, and he was younger... So I see it now, how in-your-face the media was.
The only way to get away was to unplug from that person and from the cyberlife.
I walked around in my own ignorant bliss until I was on the other side of the screen. RTR and I broke up at the end of the semester, just a week before my graduation. I strolled around the city and the campus with a camera and an empty heart, but trying to know deep down inside that I would be alright. I returned to my creative loves, music and photography, and I sang songs to myself as I took pictures of my home. Some weeks later, I'd find a different picture of RTR and his new interest... I'd stare at my screen angry and baffled and absolutely devastated. I did what most people would do in a rage: I unplugged. I un-friended him. I deleted him from my messenger. I took him out of my phonebook. He was gone. Out of sight (sort of) and out of mind (only if he couldn't reach me and I could not reach him). I thought that over time, I'd mature enough to not need to act like a defensive child anymore.
But I see now that our generation is defining what will be considered appropriate Internet/social-media behavior.
And just when I thought I was over it, it still keeps on happening. After our engagement, Eric refused to publish our "new status" onto Facebook. Granted, it took us months to get our status on Facebook originally, this newer one proved to be more of a challenge.
Eric: "I just want to tell some people first before I make it public, is that alright?"
I waited patiently for two weeks before I asked again. "Can I add you as my fiance yet?"
Eric: "I haven't had a chance to talk to people yet. Ryan hasn't called me back."
Is that the only person, I asked? And there's others, a cast of old friends that includes an ex girlfriend. I'm sitting at my computer desk, turned toward the living room couch where Eric is sitting. I take a deep breath and try to not flip out, but I can't contain myself.
"Why do you care what she thinks?" and it escapes my lips before I have a chance to think how jealous this makes me sound.
To be honest with you, it's all really foggy. I'm positive her name comes up in two or three other fights after that, and I don't remember but it was somehow resolved. Whether or not he did talk to the Ex, I do not know and would prefer that it remain that way. I suppose Eric didn't want Facebook to do the dirty work for him, letting all those he may have loved (or loved him) know that a big change was on the horizon.
I suppose not everyone wants to live their life in the middle-public's eye. Then again, I don't suppose everyone has the courage to say that they've made up their mind, or even that they're sticking to their guns. To publicly display the courage of their convicitions. That's what this social-media does, it takes us one step closer to communicable idiocy and ten steps backward from civility without ever having to make a sound.
