A Message To All Of You Online!

Today, almost all the world is online. In fact, the population of the world online may be even greater than the actual population!

How?

Because even dead people have their own accounts, which might never be deleted! And obviously, there is no dearth of multiple fake accounts of one real individual.

It is quite easy to create a good number of our own alter-egos nowadays. But even though they are virtual, all of them still have to account for themselves and take responsibility for whatever footprints they leave online, because at the end of the day, it’s still humans dealing with humans, and there’s always a real person with a heart and mind behind the mask of anonymity.

Robert Frost’s verse from the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep…” can be aptly modified in the modern-day context as “The Internet is menacing, dark and deep…” because beyond our knowledge of the web, there does exist an entity called the “Dark Net” or “Deep Web”.

Imagine an iceberg in an ocean. Obviously, we know that the tip, the amount over the surface, is just a small fraction of the entire mass of which about 95% is underwater, hidden from view. Well, the amount of internet we usually access in our day-to-day lives is that tip, while the rest consists of the virtual space where users remain anonymous at all times, messages are exchanged surrounded by layers of encryption (what is known otherwise as ‘Onion Routing’) and illegal activities abound, be it drug sale, pornography, hiring of assassins, generation of fake passports and degrees…the list is practically endless.

Conclusion: the dark net has its own share of crimes and problems. But one crime committed even outside it, in the clear light of day, is cyberbullying.

This menace too has a lot of forms, ranging from cyberstalking, impersonation, video-shaming to extortion, dissing and to trolling. The harassment could become so extreme so as to push the victim to commit suicide, as was seen in the case of 15-year-old Canadian Amanda Todds who took her life in 2012. But what is more shocking is that India has left more developed countries like the USA and Canada far behind to become the country where cyberbullying is most prevalent. According to a 2015 study, one in five children in India have faced one or the other form of cyberbullying.

It’s no surprise that children and adolescents are the first targets of these bullies, most of whom are teens themselves. In this age group, they tend to be naturally more curious and more competent with technology as compared to adults. But how can resorting to cyber crime solve their real problems?

Section 66A of the amended IT Act is the only legal framework in India that has the power to punish anyone sending annoying, insulting, offensive or menacing messages through digital and information communication technology. Why so? Because unless a cyberbullying case morphs into a suicide or a serious hate crime case, it is not taken that seriously. Although it is good that awareness is now increasing and adolescents are taking their stand, only someone who has faced a cyber troll can realize how harmful a blow even one phrase from them can be to one’s self-esteem.

Being an author who often publishes her work online in a community of readers ranging from eight to eighty years of age, from across the globe, I often get a lot of great feedback from people who are strangers to me. And I can’t say that every single of my readers has been as supportive towards and as entertained by my work.

I can never forget one such user who commented on various chapters of a novel I’d written online. What was so different about his comments, you wonder?

Well, they comprised a handpicked selection of the choicest of abuses! And they were directed not at the story (which, I should add, had nothing offensive in it anyway) or any character of the story, but at me! Now that might have been a cause for me to fall into depression but what was hilarious was the fact that the same user had voted ‘like’ on all the chapters while simultaneously trolling me!

Of course, it then became a matter of great amusement, bewilderment as well as concern for me and so, once I was done deleting his hateful comments (because why surround yourself with unnecessary negativity?), I messaged him personally asking him in the politest way possible the reason for his curious behaviour.

Once again, he replied with an abuse (no surprise there!) but I am hardly one to give up so easily. I persisted. What could have been troubling him so much that he decided to vent out his frustration in this way? After all, I didn’t know him personally so he couldn’t have an enmity with me that he was taking revenge for, so I decided to dig deeper and assured him that I was here to listen to his problems if he just wanted to share them—I thought it would be a much gratifying way than just randomly throwing curses at people!

This time, he listened, actually. He told me his real name, where he belonged to, his age (he was sixteen, only a year younger than me then) and why he was so frustrated that time. It was simply because he didn’t feel he could cope with his studies. A trivial thing, if you compare to the consequences it might have had on a victim who might not have been as patient and confident as me.

Anyway, I counselled him a bit after that (people who know me would be familiar with my impromptu counselling sessions!), and in the end, he said he did realize he shouldn’t have done what he did. He apologized wholeheartedly without me asking him to, and why would I not have accepted it? Now, we are on great, friendly terms and I know he hasn’t gone back to his old ways.

Unfortunately, such experiences don’t turn out so well with everyone. I always suggest people facing bullies online to calmly talk them out of it, but I’ve seen cases where they are impossible to talk to, and in those cases, it’s best to just ignore them. After all, a bully never has anything better to do in his/her life, and if they don’t know you, how can you let them get to you, knowing your achievements are far greater? For starters, you have your self-esteem. Work on it, make yourself unbreakable. You have people who love you more than anything in the world. You have your whole life ahead. Don’t let one judgement or action that doesn’t even exist in the real world make you want to end it.

Image Credit: wired.co.uk, talkspace.com, cartoonstock.com