While the internet has opened up instant communication and provided opportunities for so much good, it disturbs me that a minority of people can use this amazing medium to cause damage and havoc. Cyber bullying, harassment, defamation and sheer unethical destruction have caused many young people around the world to take their own lives. Defamatory statements made by some people have caused others to be wrongly imprisoned or to lose their businesses, homes or jobs.

Of course bullying and harassment and defamation have been going on for years, well before the www came into being. People have been victims of this appalling behaviour since the world began but the problem with internet and SMS bullying and defamation is that:

• It can go globally viral within hours.
• Once out there it can never be fully erased.
• Defamation, threats and destructive statements can be made from alias “profiles” and platforms that hide the real perpetrator.
• The same defamation, threats and destructive statements can be made on a multitude of platforms and websites so that tracking them down and deleting them can become impossible.
• Untrue and malicious statements can be made without the need for supporting evidence.
• Those same untrue statements can incite viral retaliation to innocent parties very quickly.

Just because the anonymity of the keyboard appears to provide adequate defence from karmic, legal and practical payback, doesn’t mean that it’s a justice free platform for open destruction and vengeance. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to have sunk into the questionable brains of those people who engage in this type of immoral and dangerous behaviour yet.

Let me take this opportunity to point out that Karmic payback works equally as well, regardless of the platform used and while for many victims, the payback comes too late, I pray that one day those who wreak havoc on the www will realise that regardless of the medium, their turn will come.  The impact of immoral, unethical, destructive behaviour will return to the perpetrator at some point, somehow regardless of the medium used. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword or in this case, those who live by the defamatory keyboard will eventually suffer from their own keyboard input. Keyboard anonymity only goes so far and technological advances now mean that every key stroke made can be tracked right back to its source just the same as handwritten letters and phone calls.

This is all very well but we need more than a technological tracking device. We need society as a whole to stamp out this intolerable behaviour. It doesn’t matter what medium anyone uses to abuse someone else, IT IS WRONG! As a group of moral beings, we MUST stand together to stop this abuse. We MUST raise our voices in unison to show that any defamation, bullying or harassment, regardless of the platform, is WRONG and will NOT be tolerated. The more of us that stand together as one and declare such behaviour as intolerable, the more we help to stop our bullied teenagers killing themselves as a last resort. The more we stand together and openly tell the world that we will not tolerate this premeditated abuse, the less suffering will occur. Come on people, enough is enough! NO MORE BULLYING!

Blessings, Amethyst

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