「故事·听力」I Was Destroyed By Comments Online
I Was Destroyed By Comments Online
This is Brenda, and she never thought that she’d find herself in the kind of situation she was in until recently. She hates conflicts, and she’s always tried to cause as little trouble is possible. But once she became a victim of cyberbullying, and it was a real nightmare.
She’d heard about cyberbullying before, but thought it was what you might call a “first world problem”. If you don’t like someone’s comments on social media, just block them and go offline. After all, sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you – that’s what Brenda thought. She never even thought that something like that could affect her in any way, because she’s kind of shy and not very sociable. She’s precisely one of those people you don’t even notice. And that might make her uncool, but she really hates attention. But once she got too much, and didn’t know how to handle it properly.It all started at school during her lunch break, when she unexpectedly started chatting with one of her classmates – they were in the same sociology class. He turned out to be quite smart, and they had some interests in common, so it was a pleasant conversation. For Brenda this was a whole new experience, as she’s normally the most silent person in class. Don’t think she had fallen in love with him or anything – he was just a nice person. After the break they went to their different classes and the episode was over. Or so she thought.
At the end of the day she was approached by that boy’s girlfriend (her name was Liz) and her friends. They literally cornered her and she started shouting that she was trying to steal her boyfriend. Brenda hates confrontation, and she was pretty scared – the allegations were so absurd. “Look”, she said, “I don’t want to steal your boyfriend, I don’t even like him!” This seemed to irritate her even more, and the situation was getting out of control. She thought that it would calm her down a little bit if she said: “Look, even if I liked him, he obviously doesn’t like me, right?” That was a mistake. She got furious and said that it would be better for her not to be seen near him ever again, or else…Liz didn’t specify what would happen, and after this threat she left Brenda alone.
Brenda felt exhausted – conflicts tire her out a lot. But it seemed to have ended with some kind of understanding, and she got home feeling relieved. She checked her social media accounts – even if she’s pretty shy in real life, she overcomes this side of her character when she’s online. She has quite a few online contacts, friends and followers, and she enjoys chatting with them. But a couple of hours later, something strange started happening. She started getting lots of nasty comments from anonymous freshly created accounts all at once. They commented on her pictures and posts, calling her names and saying she was fat, ugly and stupid. She blocked them all at once. Although they were anonymous, she figured out at once who it must be – Liz was the only person she had a conflict with.
But of course, blocking didn’t solve anything. More new accounts appeared just to insult her. Clearly, Liz had mobilized all her friends. Brenda had to make all her accounts completely private. After this, it ended. But the next day at school she saw Liz, who didn’t give any indication that she was involved in what had happened. Brenda felt the need to face up to her, and ask what she thought she was doing. She appeared surprised, and assured her that she had no idea what she was talking about. She was so false! But...Brenda had no proof. However, she thought she had solved the problem for the time being by making her accounts private. Yeah right.
When she got home, she found out that her friends had started getting nasty messages about her from the anonymous accounts. It was horrible! Of course, her close friends ignored and blocked them, but there were lots of people who didn’t know her well, and who knows what they might think about her! This time the insults were more elaborate – there was gossip about her doing horrible stuff, like being a school bully, stealing things from classmates, shoplifting etc. Of course, all these things were made up! She had to report all the users for cyberbullying, and they were blocked, but her bullies just created new accounts.
The worst thing was that first, they didn’t seem to stop, and second, they always found new ways to torture her. Once, she found an entire community dedicated to hating on her! There were pictures of her from school, reports on what she was doing, all accompanied with their sarcastic comments. She felt cornered...