Bullying: Media frenzy

I do not always agree with The Amazing Atheist, but he is my favourite Devil's Advocate. And picking up on the feed about Amanda Todd, he made an excellent point - there are so many people out there who have been bullied so far that they kill themselves, it is a great question why exactly Amanda Todd has been singled out and turned into a story. Even Anonymous has gone to lengths to find her bullies, but what about those who are responsible for similar suicides, not to mention those who are active bullies today?

Will this be yet another story that is forgotten as soon as the US presidential election is over? Or will there be an actual earth shattering change?

Please! Prove The Amazing Atheist wrong, let's explore the root causes of bullying and do some major change at all levels of society - on a global scale. Let's treat the illness, not the symptom.

Bullying: Amanda Todd

For those who don't know the case of Amanda Todd, her story can be found at the bottom of the article.

Bully apologism and death penalty

In the trail of Amanda Todd's suicide, a whole bunch of people - some trolling, some being honest about their opinion - see Amanda's suicide as self inflicted and well deserved. So what they are really saying is: If a woman shows her breasts and sleep with someone's boyfriend, she should be dragged to the city square and stoned. As usual, the guy is of no fault, so he gets to take part of the stoning.

I don't know about you, but I don't want women to grow up thinking there is a death penalty for showing their breasts. Nor do I want anyone to think there is a death penalty for a silly mistake they did in 7th grade.

Mental health

Amanda started getting mental illnesss after photos of her breasts started circulating on the Internet, which constitutes a major traumatic event. At that moment, her perception of her life was changed dramatically. She feels shame, a matter of "I am" rather than "I did". She crossed the clinical line. And as she moved from place to place, she got a constant confirmation from people around her, that she "is" a mistake.

This is, in my opinion, a flawed thinking that a lot of people do. In the bullying that followed, the perpetrator was able to make life hell for her only because all her friends looked at it as a case of "you are" rather than "you did". It should take little effort to realize that yes, people in seventh grade do make mistakes, and that a child pornographer should not be your source of knowledge about the worth of children.

So when we're talking about mental health, we need to see the whole system. Everyone involved in the bullying were basically just trying to show off that they were better than her. I don't think destroying someone you see as lower than yourself makes you a better person. A better person has compassion. A better person does not strive to show off that they are better.

Education

Indeed, a mentally secure and stable person does not have a need to compare themselves to others. My claim is that this shows a society-wide mental health issue. And it exists because children today are not educated in good morals and what it really means to be good. And possibly because it is being viewed as a task for the parents only, without giving the parents the tools needed to do this part of the job.

You have no friends

"Look around you, you have no friends," she was confronted with, as a way of pushing her further into the dirt. Why, a better person would have continued with "let me help you".

Today's TED is about shame.



Background: Amanda's story in her own words