# Why does the SDMB condone cyber bullying? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [March 21, 2015, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576 "2015-03-21T07:28:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/182 "2015-03-25T01:33:00Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > You can’t bully a corpse, it generally doesn’t care Yet you can “abuse” a corpse. > [@](#): > > "A person commits an offense if the person, without legal authority, knowingly: (1) disinters, disturbs, damages, dissects, in whole or in part, carries away, or treats in an offensive manner a human corpse; (2) conceals a human corpse knowing it to be illegally disinterred; (3) sells or buys a human corpse or in any way traffics in a human corpse; (4) transmits or conveys, or procures to be transmitted or conveyed, a human corpse to a place outside the state; or (5) vandalizes, damages, or treats in an offensive manner the space in which a human corpse has been interred or otherwise permanently laid to rest… > > “Human corpse includes: (1) any portion of a human corpse; (2) the cremated remains of a human corpse; or (3) any portion of the cremated remains of a human corpse.” ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/183 "2015-03-25T01:47:00Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Yet you can “abuse” a corpse. You don’t seriously want to conflate those two things do you? ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/184 "2015-03-25T01:53:17Z")
And mix business with pleasure? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/185 "2015-03-25T01:58:14Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > You don’t seriously want to conflate those two things do you? Seriously? Sorry, I thought this thread was just silly stuff ever since around about the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/186 "2015-03-25T07:11:43Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > _Cyberbullying is the use of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to_\* harass, threaten or intimidate someone\*\*. \* > _Cyberbullying can include such acts as making threats, sending provocative insults or racial or ethnic slurs, gay bashing, attempting to infect the victim’s computer with a virus, and flooding an e-mail inbox with messages_. > > [http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/cyberbullying](http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/cyberbullying) > Did any of that really happen? > > (bolding mine) > [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes. **"harass… or intimidate someone**" also see Heffalump and Roo’s earlier post with this defintion: _Cyber-bullying could be limited to posting rumors or gossips about a person in the internet bringing about hatred in other’s minds_ Ok, I have to go to bed, and I was pleased that a post about a BBQ was held in the Pit, which was the longest thread I’ve ever gotten through there, particularly enjoyable for the GQ-worthy forensics. Having said that, and coming in unfamiliar with _any_ of the main players here from any of their previous posts (sorry if I can’t remember), it seems to me that by sheer number, tenor, and venue of posts about that poster who said she is woman whose husband has a twice-branded butt is being harassed and intimidated the hell out of. It’s possible, although I haven’t thought about it hard, that reading that thread and this one has or is about to bring about hatred in my mind…too late. If this were the Pit, I would say “I hate hate hatey hate her.” In fact _in real life_ I told my wife that I hate her(?), and told her to watch out for her and tell the truth about her bad credit and that she smells like elderberry. And then, like the students who are bullied severely, cyber or otherwise, she(?) might be forced by self-ego preservation to leave SDMB, with those terrible impacts on her life that the law, and citations of the law or terms of art with anything more than hyperbole, are _really_designed to cover: how anonymous people care, or say they care, about anonymous people about whom they know nothing except as what they reveal from their dog-sized human costume. By the way, my sister Sally is a b-y-itch bitch. She’s a member here. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/187 "2015-03-25T12:45:02Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > While true, there is policy that we aren’t supposed to continue to talk about suspended or banned members due to their inability to defend themselves, and it would seem that the same logic would apply to those who can’t defend themselves for other reasons. No. “Speaking ill of the dead” when it comes to banned and suspended posters is just a euphemism. Dead people can not read the board. Banned people can. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/188 "2015-03-25T13:54:20Z")
Dead people’s friends and family don’t count. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/189 "2015-03-25T13:58:56Z")
Since nobody’s requiring them to read the board, no, they don’t and shouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/190 "2015-03-25T14:08:23Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Dead people’s friends and family don’t count. Dead people’s friends and family can in fact post if they want. The comparison doesn’t really hold up. Dead people can’t get pissed off, create socks and come back to troll the board. At least I hope not. That would be a very boring horror movie. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/191 "2015-03-25T14:33:12Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Since nobody’s requiring them to read the board, no, they don’t and shouldn’t. By that logic, since nobody is required to read the board, nobody actually matters. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/192 "2015-03-25T14:48:07Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > By that logic, since nobody is required to read the board, nobody actually matters. What? I’m not even going to try to parse what you mean by that. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/193 "2015-03-25T20:05:50Z")
Bill Murray in Meatballs It just doesn’t matter! ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/194 "2015-03-25T21:34:35Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Since nobody’s requiring them to read the board, no, they don’t and shouldn’t. If nobody is requiring you to read the boards, then it doesn’t matter if you get upset by anything. You just said it. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/195 "2015-03-25T21:54:59Z")
Yeah, that’s true up to a (pretty distant) point. I’m happy to fight in the Pit, and I can generally be friendly with people outside it. I like a lot of the people here, but it’s not the end of the world if someone calls me a poopy-head. It’s words on a screen. As long as A) there’s no actual _REAL_ threats\* like “I know where you live and I’m going to drive there and cut you up into fishbait”, B) as long as there’s no hate speech and C) as long as it’s forum appropriate, words on a screen are no big deal. It comes to this: If you can turn off your monitor or change the web page, you’re simply not being bullied by any sane definition. Since dead people can’t look at the screen, they’re not being bullied. Since the corpse’s friends and family aren’t strapped in and forced to read the specific pit-thread (“Clockwork Orange”-style), _they’re_ not being cyber-bullied. To her credit (100% sincerely) Broomstick herself said she wasn’t being cyber-bullied. [Megan Meier](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier) was cyber-bullied. The idiotic complaint in the original post and your post that Opal’s loved ones who choose to open a thread _in the pit_ about Opal are contemptible and diminish a real problem. \*And I’ve called for an end to the stupid “wishing death” rule. Magical thinking isn’t a threat. Somehow we’ve morphed from “Don’t threaten people” with an explicit instruction that stuff like “Oh drop dead” is absolutely acceptable to a much more weenie position I’d like to see rolled back. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/196 "2015-03-30T16:20:27Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Again, I ask-\*\* why does the SDMB condone cyber-bullying\*\*? It’s a simple question, why not a answer? > [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Simple answer. We don’t. **ECG** , I had to laugh at that one. All one has to do is look in the Stupid Liberal thread and you’ll see me being cyber-bullied. And **Miller** joined in on it, to the point where I had to tell him to fuck off. I’d have put him on my ignore list, but unfortunately, we can’t ignore mods. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/197 "2015-03-30T16:31:44Z")
Yes you can. You just can’t block them with software. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/198 "2015-03-30T17:26:13Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > **ECG** , I had to laugh at that one. All one has to do is look in the Stupid Liberal thread and you’ll see me being cyber-bullied. They’ll be bullying on the other side of their faces when at the last second you pull off a crane kick and win the tournament! ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/199 "2015-03-30T17:53:04Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > They’ll be bullying on the other side of their faces when at the last second you pull off a crane kick and win the tournament! Focus **Clothahumpsan** , focus. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/200 "2015-03-30T18:11:52Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > **ECG** , I had to laugh at that one. All one has to do is look in the Stupid Liberal thread and you’ll see me being cyber-bullied. And **Miller** joined in on it, to the point where I had to tell him to fuck off. I’d have put him on my ignore list, but unfortunately, we can’t ignore mods. Horseshit. Were people sending you text messages on your so phone? Emailing your personal accounts? Writing stuff on your Facebook page? Arranging attacks on chat programs like Yahoo Messenger? Surrounding you on the Internet so that anywhere you went you were attacked? Did Miller use his mighty mod powers to try to cut off your Internet service entirely? No? Then you were not being bullied. And your whiney little complaint diminishes the real victims of cyber bullying almost as much as the OP’s did ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576/201 "2015-03-30T18:21:07Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > The idiotic complaint in the original post and your post that Opal’s loved ones who choose to open a thread _in the pit_ about Opal are contemptible and diminish a real problem. No, since as you said, you aren’t strapped in and forced to read the specific pit-thread, or this one, it isn’t a problem. Since you aren’t being forced to read anything, none of it is a problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-sdmb-condone-cyber-bullying/715576.md?page=11)