Sense & Sensibility in the Digital Age



It’s time to connect the dots.
In London, a woman named Caroline Criado-Perez campaigned for women in British history to be honored on Great Britain’s banknotes.
Hardly a revolutionary cause, andshe was, lo and behold, successful.


On the day it was announced that Jane Austen would be the face ona newly designed 10-pound banknote, Criado-Perez began receiving anonymous rape threats on Twitter. So did the MP who supported her efforts.


A reporter at the Guardian this week wrote an article titled, “How to use the Internet without being a total loser.”The reporter wrote, among other things, that if you wouldn’t say something in front of your mom, perhaps it’s not a good idea to say it online.


She’s now getting bomb threats on Twitter. As are two other female reporters.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I’m trying to imagine what Jane Austen, whose novels of mannersso brilliantly captured the social behavior of men and women in her time, would say about this age’s behavior on social.


This week, Twitter is in the eye ofthe camera (and the eye of the storm).
An arrest has finally been made on grounds of harassment.The British police are also investigating the threats on reporters.
It’s clearly not just a Twitter problem. Facebookis grappling with how to manage pages and posts that are hateful. And so areany number of digital venues that, in the spirit of free speech, have made it easy for people to opine without consequences.

This unbridled online behavior is happening everywhere. New York’s poster boy for online abuse is, of course, Anthony Weiner, and his PR person seems cut from the same cloth.


In Italy, a 14-year-old girl committed suicide, humiliated by compromising videos posted on Facebook by her ex-boyfriend and the barrage of bullying comments by his friends. The Italian government has arrested the friends and is now investigating Facebook’s culpability for not responding to requests to remove the offensive material.

Some will, of course, continue to say that any attempt to limit speech is just the big scary hand of business or government clamped over the mouth of the masses.


But it’s time to get smart about this. Great intellectual debate moves us forward, makes us better and is welcome — at least by most. But the idea that we cansay anything with impunity is absurd. And sometimes even deadly.

These recent events may be extreme, but you just have to connect the dots.

And our community should be leading the way, not just making lame excuses.

Some interesting comments by erudite proffssionals

Rudolfbane: Gary Irving
Business Manager at Atlas Communications/Purple-ICT

We all know the problem, we've readabout them, seen them reported on every site & TV station, here in the UK a young girl ( 14 ) took her own life because of bullying on a site called Ask.FM, so we're all aware of the issues, now, How do we stop it? That's the hard part. Many of these lunatics hide behind keyboards & have no conscience about what they write, no regard for the mental & emotional damage they are causing BUT because in the case of Ask.FM it's completely anonymous HOW do we then stop those individuals? One step might be to make it that, if you want an online life, you must prove your identity to these sites before being allowed to post, that way there is no more hiding, if someone wants to tell a young girl to "Go kill herself" then let's make it that we ALL know who said that, not just"Groovyboy12245" but an actual name, address, tel number, maybe, just maybe then we will see these keyboard warriors disappear.



Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr., Sandie Ellis, Ken Francis, +1
Anthony Wang
Hate speech and threatening speech is not protected speech. Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social media sites should cooperate with the authorities to stamp this out. Most likely, it's going to be some joker living in his mother's basementwho's doing it, and who is not a real threat. Maybe a visit from the cops would scare some sense into him.


Veronica Gyllenstedt
Concept Art Director

We have laws for slander etc offline why not apply them online?



Jim Harvey
Head of PR at OpinioGroup

(some) People seem to forget that with rights come responsibilities. http://www.sharediaries.com/articles /we-re-all-journalists-now


Pramod Kumar Srivastava
Consultant-CEO, Trusted Advisor, Develoment Consultant, Physician of Organizations & Global Citizen

Virtual Behavior like social behavior has to be seen in perspective. For too much deviation, strict laws should be enacted. For moderate ones, the virtual society need to make some explicit and implicit rules. And finally, like in our social life, for simple aberrations, we should forgive and forget and move on. So Government, societies and individual all three pillars have to take part in making rules for virtual behavior.

Source: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130805162523-234814-sense-sensibility-in-the-digital-age




Final comments: This issue of cyber-bullying is even on Nairaland. Its so terrible considering the fact that not everyone has strong abilities to condone it. As i have opined before, its worst than real life bullying bcus you can't defend yourself. So all those who partake in it - Be warned as you don't know what you say might prompt someone (albiet weak) to take their own life and you'll consequently have murder on your hands which will plague you for life but you'll not know the cause.
And as usual, blame the Devil. Thankz for reading.