and you all lay down for all of it…. you all talk a lot of shit, but when it comes down to it… it’s all talk & they win again… because we are the evil pedophile pirate hackers & they are looking out for out liberties & freedom!

just sayin…

Being that this was regarding internet bullying the child in question has the very real ability to find an entirely new circle of friends literally anywhere in the world.

This is what separates “cyber-bullying” from REAL bullying. You don’t like the people in the ring your in, peg your wigwam in another social circle. It’s that simple.

This is where parental assistance comes in. If your child attends a part of an online community filled with trolls then suggest to him he leaves that part and starts anew somewhere else.

In the real world bullying is a lot harder to mitigate this way since you can’t avoid the mob on the schoolyard. And this is where you need “moderator” i.e. adult supervision and intervention.

Bullying online is done mainly by way of manipulation and rumor spreading. This is true. The solution to THAT, however, is simple. You start finding the other people bullied the same way and offer to start a “Full Disclosure”-circle. Whenever Bully A says anything about anyone in the circle, the person to hear it disseminates it to the circle – no matter what it is. This is how I and my friends dealt with the fact that there was one pathological liar around who tried “bonding” with person A by spreading rumors about what person B had said about person A…and vice versa.

Not only did that work very effectively at defusing whatever the liar was saying, it ensured that in our circle, we became a lot closer.

And if your child has no friends close enough in that part of the online community to work with such a solution, then honestly, he SHOULD leave it altogether.

One thing is certain – the idea of online “monitoring” and “anti-bully legislation” will solve nothing. Indeed, rather than empowering the bullied party it disempowers everyone. And in the process, as “collateral” damage, in practice disembowels freedom of speech. Unless you want a paradigm where the people currently bullying other people instead do the same by way of trolling the legal system, I would advise other options.