Have you or a family member ever been cyber-bullied?

I'm truly alarmed at this Facebook crap. The Internet never forgets. Once your personal info hits a website, you never know who had copied it thereafter and archived it for eternity. Even worse than "cyber-bullies" are employers. Why do kids today not understand that employers will be looking all of that info up when they apply for jobs?

I urge people to get the f*ck off of Facebook and shun those stupid social sites. I've never posted on such exposing sites. I certainly don't fill any site with a stream of personal details ... I see people using Facebook as some sort of daily Twitter.

Of course, according to my understanding, in order to play Farmville, you have to have a Facebook account. Maybe this is what Robert Downey Jr said, that you have to feed the little addictions in order to keep the bigger addictions at bay. LOL!

As for my cyber-bullying experiences, I've had two of note. One, due to my statements against some realtor, a reward of $500 was offered to find me. (They did not succeed.) Two, due to my postings against the war and the Toledo Blade, some guy named Paul at the Blade tried to get the proprietor of the Distillery to deny me service. Yes, he actually called him. (He also did not succeed.) This is on the adult side of things, probably. I'm sure your children aren't going to have such problems ... they suffer from peer pressure events instead, or other situations of personal embarrassment as experienced by the "Star Wars Kid".

Facebook and Twitter are for attention whores who need constant affirmation. See a psychiatric specialist or your family doctor and live in the real world, I don't give a rats ass what you are having for dinner or what you are going to watch on tv.

Live life, don't spend all day telling people about it.

He posts.

"I don't give a rats ass what you are having for dinner or what you are going to watch on tv."

I don't understand. You would only know those things if you were following those people on Facebook or Twitter. Those status updates don't appear in my Moleskine notebook.

I love facebook and twitter. It's a great way to network with friends and family, and also get the word out about projects and events. I just added my restaurant last night, and already have 100 followers. It's going to be a fantastic way to share specials and new menu items with our fans.

As for cyber bullying, it's a sad state of affairs. I'm friends with some of my highschool aged cousins on facebook, and the kind of offensive back and forth they have with their friends can be shocking at times. To them, it's no different than shit talking on the playground, but to do it in a public forum where it's a somewhat permanent record seems like a bad idea to me.

One of the worst stories I've heard is that the deputy Attorney General of Michigan posted a bunch of negative things about a college student president that was openly gay. Slamming gays etc all over the internet. Apparently since michigan does not have a cyper-bully law, there is nothing being done. It was on CNN.

Upso....what is your restaurant ?

Grumpy's Deli. Downtown Toledo. )

upso:

Any hours of operation at Grumpy's beyond 2pm. M - F ?

I understand why, but just wondering if there are any evening or weekend hours. Dying to try the infamous garbage salad.

Aside from Ryan's puerile sniping, I have never been cyber-bullied.

From GZ: a reward of $500 was offered to find me

So who was it that offered the reward? Just curious.

I can just imagine Jim's reaction to Paul's request to refuse to serve you.

Besides staying off social networking sites if you or your child is being cyber-bullied, a parent might consider hiring a cyber-mercenary to deal with the problem. I assume such people exist.

foodie, just breakfast and lunch M-F at the moment
but we do do deliveries! :)

and corky, sorry for the derail!

upso-

Are you guys hosting a corporate dinner next Friday around 6:30 pm, by chance?

yup!

Don't expect the school to do anything. Go to the kids house who did it and tell his father what he did and you want it corrected and stopped immediately. If they give you any shit tell them they have been warned and if you have to come back you'll have a bat with you. Make sure if they don't act like they care, start yelling and lay some mother flucks on them.
You have to make them not to want to see you again!

I haven't personally. Thought I do like facebook. It's allowed me a chance to get in touch with friends I hadn't seen in over a decade as well as extended family members.

Granted there is the old "stop by or pick up the phone" sadly people come in and out of our lives and even if we still like or love them distance or life issues can keep people from spending time together.

I was really surprised to see a large portion of my dad's side of the family on FB and love getting to share pics and keep in touch.

It can be useful if used properly.

-----------------------------------

As for cyber bullying? Not entirely sure what it is. Hard lesson in life there are some bad people out there and if I had to pick between someone who tries to physically assault me or calls me x,y,z names online I'd pick the latter.

If you are going to have a Facebook account, please please please google privacy settings for Facebook. There are several tech blogs that give step by step instructions on how to secure your account... and you need the step by step because Facebook, by design, makes it really confusing for people to really set the privacy well.

Also, there are a ton of people I see adding complete strangers as friends, which is ridiculously stupid. I sometimes get requests from strangers... and I don't care if you have 30 or 300 friends in common with me. I don't know you!

barfly - I gotta say that you made my night. "lay some mother fucks on them" cracked me up!

Prior to this incident we went over to their house for another incident. There is no dad in the picture and we tried to talk to the mom, but she didn't think her baby does anything wrong. Clearly we didn't lay enough "mother fucks on them."

99% of the time you get the "oh my baby is a perfect angel and cannot do anything wrong", and usually they are the worst problem kids in school. My parents ran into this problem when my brother and I were in high school, and I've encountered it a few time myself with my kids.

if I had to pick between someone who tries to physically assault me or calls me x,y,z names online I'd pick the latter.

That's because you're a real wuss.

I wouldn't expect the school to be helpful as there's nothing in it for them. I think barfly has a good idea, but since there isn't any father available you won't get far.

Have you talked to your attorney about a civil suite?

If you don't have any connections outside of your immediate area, social networking sites are probably worthless. I've resisted them in the past, but they're great for my profession and for my hobbies, in which I have to communicate with people around the globe. It's free and it builds/strengthens relationships. Really, it's probably stronger than a bunch of strangers posting on ToledoTalk.

As far as the cyberbullying, good luck to you and your child, corky. It's amazing how much has changed in such a short period of time.

That's because you're a real wuss.

I don't think a single person is convinced madjack wouldn't turn into a 3 year old girl in any sort of real-life confrontation.

madjack: I'm 6'4" and can carry over my weight :) I'm not "afraid" of a physical confrontation. Just saying what someone says online is meaningless to me.
Something > nothing.

Though that probably comes with some hard years under my belt. Kids are a lot more sensitive and still growing emotionally so guess it would be harder on them.

If I was in conky's position I'd probably just sit with the child and explain to them that there are mean people out there. No matter how good you can be some people will still be rude, mean and generally unpleasant to you. That the child's individual character and how they represent themselves in school and their peers is what ultimately matters.

Then again I don't have kids and might change if you have to look into their eyes and see them crying cause of what someone said.

I don't have a Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn account. Makes it difficult when friends say "we posted our party invitation on Facebook--didn't you get it?" Umm, no--I don't choose to post everything about my life for everyone to see. Guess I'm just a privacy nut.

I'm glad those of you with FB accounts are OK with the FB Terms of Service which state that anything you load on FB becomes their property to do with or dispose of as they wish. Pictures, text, whatever--all legally theirs. It is also a little disturbing to get the automatically generated e-mails from FB accounts of friends that have their picture and a lot of other mutual friends pictures who are also on FB. I'm pretty sure they didn't give their permission for use of their image for marketing purpos....oh wait, they did: it's in the terms of service.

As far as kiddies on FB/MySpace, it's getting out of hand in some cases. Here's how crazy it can get--some girl's MOTHER drove a kid to suicide over MySpace posts:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html

(FoxNews haters--keep it in your pants--this was just the first link that popped up in Google!)

So, going to talk to the parents may not be the solution because the parents may be entirely complicit in the situation--thinking it's not a big deal because it's "just on the computer". But these types of things wreak huge emotional consequences for a lot of kids. It's no different than the "mean girls" or "tough boys" making your life hell when we were in school--except (as a previous poster pointed out) the internet is forever. Somebody who labels you "X" will continue to do so forever on the net---it's always out there. It doesn't go away easily.

Oh, and all those "friends"--I wouldn't say anything too stupid on your site to your "friends"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/25/earlyshow/main6331796.shtml

We were able to get FB to remove the post and eliminate this kid's account. We're talking to a lawyer, but there are very few lawyers who are familiar with this stuff.

We talked to our son and he's a really stellar person. We explained to him that he's always going to encounter low-life people like this and it's up to him to handle himself in a way that doesn't make him a target and doesn't make him turn into them.

I've got a FB account (he doesn't) and I've got my privacy settings turned on to the highest settings. I'm amazed that most kids don't.

You can have a Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn account and not post everything about your life for people to see, you know? I never get any automatically generated e-mails from FB accounts of friends that have their picture. Strange that you do.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg embraces openness and sharing, so that's the direction the site tries to lead its users. I think if it was up to him, Facebook would not have any privacy controls.

On Zuckerberg's Facebook page, he lists his personal interests as "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism."

"For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people."

"The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open."

January 2010 story

In a September 2010 New Yorker story, Zuckerberg said:

"I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good."

I'm all about being open when I decide to be open. Out of curiosity, I wonder if Zuckerberg would endorse the same "open-ness" about him if it were initiated by someone else?

dhr - Another mother sent me the link to the picture that included my son. Thank goodness she did.

corky - I was referring to oldhometown's post. I'm glad the other mother was looking out.

dhr--I get e-mails saying something like "Person X is on Facebook and here are all the other friends you may know who are also on Facebook"...complete with pictures.

I was told these are automatically generated. Is this also a setting on someone's FB account I could ask them to turn off?

"I wonder if Zuckerberg would endorse the same "open-ness" about him if it were initiated by someone else?"

It appears that Zuckerberg is a shy, private person.

Another publicity-shy person is moot, the creator of 4chan.

While Zuckerberg wants people to use their real identities, moot is pro-anonymity.

Oldhometown - maybe those are invitations to join? I'm not certain, as I've never gotten one.

Keeping an eye on the privacy settings and being cautious about what's posted goes a long ways. Unfortunately for me, there's a person that is pretty active online that shares my name & age and is from near where I was born & raised. Let's just say we are very different people. I used to wonder if he would affect me negatively in some way.

oldhometown - when a person joins Facebook, they can choose to have Friend Requests sent to the people in their e-mail address book.

I didn't use that feature, because there are people in my e-mail address book that I wouldn't want to have access to my private Facebook page. But, I could see for some people where it might be easier than manually adding their friends.

Anyhow, that could be why you're getting the e-mails - perhaps people have been trying to submit friend requests to you, and since you're not on FB it shows up as an invitation to join. Whereas someone like dhr would just get a Friend Request, because he's already a member.

Anyhow, I think Facebook can be a very good tool if used properly. I attended a very large university, and most of my college friends are scattered across the country. Also have family members and high school friends that I don't have the chance to see very often. Its a good way to share information with them.

I'm pretty careful about what I post - I don't say or put anything out there that I would be uncomfortable with anyone knowing. (And I can be a very private person about certain things - I just don't discuss any of it on FB, or even in person for that matter.)

P.S. I had a friend pass away recently. His death was sudden and unexpected, and he was only in his late 30s.

His family was unsure how to reach all of his friends to let them know of his passing. He had lived in a few different cities/states in his adult life, and had friends from all over the US and other countries.

Using Facebook as a tool, his family was able to locate his friends and inform them of his passing. Many of those friends traveled great distances to come to his memorial service, and thanked the family profusely for notifying them. If they hadn't used his Facebook account as a tool to reach those people, they would have missed out on the opportunity to attend the memorial.

I absolutely agree that FB can be improperly used and people should be cautious about what they share, but on the flipside it can be very useful too.

people who get e-mail invites from FB get them because they are in the e-mail contacts of the person the e-mail is from. Facebook gives the option to scann your hotmail, yahoo, google, and I believe outlook contacts to see if any of your contacts are on FB, it also sends out invites to peolpe who are not. FB will continue to put that search my contacts in front of people even after they have done it. So the invites come because your friends clicked yes to the search and invite. I've used FB to contact and be contacted by a wide range of old friends that I have lost contact with, however I never post anything myself, I'll use the chat feature or FB e-mail to converse but I don't just post general updates on my page.

Thanks for the knowledge. I have two specific people I get these e-mails from an I'm going to ask them to turn this feature off.

I agree that FB seems like a wonderful tool to link people. I'm just troubled by them claiming ownership of anything I would upload on a FB account, to do with what they want. I guess that's the trade off if you want this "tool" for yourself...

oldhometown- you would be amazed at the number of websites that claim ownership to what is posted on their websites, a lot of the stuff I see posted on FB aren't even owned by the people posting, so I don't think FB has a stong right to anything, afterall how can I give up the rights to something I don't even own.

When you signed up for ToledoTalk, the admins claimed ownership of your pets, your spouse, and your house.

I took my FB page down about 6 months ago. It just didn't provide me any real value for the time spent. I figured if I wasn't on there I couldn't be too much of a target. Some of my "friends" got a little aggravated, but, I'm staying off. If they want to know what I'm up to they can just pick up the phone or email me. I check in with them every so often. I think in reality I'm just too old. I never did see much value in it.

So what are your thoughts about a school district (not TPS) that allows students to bring and use cell phones and cameras at school in as young as 6th grade. Pros and cons.

That is how the picture that eventually got on FB originated.

Especially now that more students have to walk to school, having a cell phone can be a matter of safety. However, I don't think they have place in the learning environment.

I agree with you re: the safety benefits. However, our school district is allowing children as young as 6th grade to text during the school day as long as it is during non-instructional time. That means in between classes, in the lunch room, during study hall, etc.

I think that when it comes to technology, we have to put it into chronological and cultural context. When I was in 6th grade, kids passed notes to friends. Texting has become a new version of that. The school may be going on the premise that if you allow it during specific times, it's less likely to disrupt instructional time. We can argue that it shouldn't take place at all, but the type of social behavior that accompanies it has always been a part of the school experience--it doesn't matter what rules you put into place.

That being said, I don't know for certain that cell phones for 6th grades are necessary, even for safety purposes. Then again, I think that kids now are coddled far too much compared to previous generations. It's great that we place such importance on them, but when they get to college and have no clue... yikes.

From DHR: I don't think a single person is convinced madjack wouldn't turn into a 3 year old girl in any sort of real-life confrontation.

Bring it.

From DHR: ...Let's just say we are very different people. I used to wonder if he would affect me negatively in some way.

I have an extremely vivid imagination, but after thinking this over carefully I cannot imagine any way at all that being confused with someone else could possibly damage you or your reputation.

From INeedCoffee: I'm 6'4" and can carry over my weight :)

Okay, I'm impressed. The best I was ever able to do is carry 120 pounds while running a karate Kata. I got it done but I wouldn't want to do it everyday. I'm 6 feet even and heavy.

Being able to carry more than your own weight is significant. Some people can lift their own weight, one way or another, but to actually carry it for any distance at all is an accomplishment.

madjack - mostly job interviews. A quick Google search for my name would bring up a lot of things I'd never want attributed to me. Couple those things with my name, my age, and my general location and some poor detective work and I may get passed over.

And yes, I understood the point of your post, but I thought I'd give you an honest answer anyhow. I'm not broke, so I must be doing something right.

Cyber-bullying on Facebook and the like is an extension of real-life bullying that occurs way too frequently in today's schools, particularly middle-schools.

The daily crap and abuse heaped on 12 to 14 year-olds by other 12 to 14 years olds is astounding and is largely tolerated by administrators at all schools, public or private.

It's 'tolerated' because it happens so damn frequently it's simply gotten to the point it's considered 'part' of a 'regular' school day.

BTW, in my opinion, unless your 'real' name is known and used, there's no such thing as cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying is all about 'identity', the destroying of such, and the tearing down of self-esteem, especially in the case of a child.

Which is why Facebook, where 'real' names are used, differs and is much more potentially-menacing that a site like Toledo Talk, where 95% of posters are anonymous.

"Facebook and Twitter are for attention whores who need constant affirmation. See a psychiatric specialist or your family doctor and live in the real world, I don't give a rats ass what you are having for dinner or what you are going to watch on tv.
Live life, don't spend all day telling people about it."--posted above.

I personally signed up on Facebook just a few months ago and enjoy alot of it, but much of this statement rings absolutely true.

McCaskey -

The FB situation involving my son had his real name and his picture with some very disparaging comments.

We do not let him have a FB account because he is under 13 and because of the risks of privacy.

You are right that a lot of bullying at middle schools is simply tolerated as a "right of passage."

From DHR: I understood the point of your post,

Okay, that's a good point and it's the reason I remain anonymous. It's not much of a secret that I'm a gun owner and while that wouldn't bother anyone in, say, South Dakota, just watch the reaction from the East coast. Any prospective client in Massachusetts would likely make the sign of the cross and start chasing me around the office with Holy water. Case in point, look what happened to Kim du Toit.

Put the Second Amendment together with a few volatile political rants and I'm guaranteed steady employment as a mystery shopper at the soup kitchen.

From McCaskey: The daily crap and abuse heaped on 12 to 14 year-olds by other 12 to 14 years olds is astounding...

Ain't that the truth. Nice post.

Back in the bad old days before electricity the public school system never taught the little animals anything about civilized behavior except do as you're told or you'll get a paddling. They meant it, too. Dispensing with the whole corporal punishment issue, does the public school curriculum include anything about graceful human behavior?

Corky---understand that I have complete sympathy for your situation. What happened to your son is criminal. Best of luck going forward getting it resolved.

I have a 13-year-old who has had to deal with some of these issues, certainly not anywhere near the extent of what your son has faced, or anywhere near what many of his classmates at his school have dealt with.

It slowly gets better as they get older, at least that's what we've found with our daughter, now a HS senior. HS freshman year should be somewhat better, and so forth...

Thanks McCaskey. He's a great kids. He's athletic and smart and a little quiet. His quiet nature makes him an easy target. I'm not the kind of mother who tells him not to fight. As a matter of fact, my husband and I have told him "Punch 'em." You may get in trouble at school, but you won't get in trouble at home. As a matter of fact, if you're defending yourself . . . "We'll take you to dinner." But his personal disposition is to not do so. We've told him that it will get better and we're just doing the best we can to support him.

madjack - at least SD is better than most of the east coast!