The Bead Cyberbully – by Hannah Rosner

Originally written for the ISGB Newsletter

In my last article (posted yesterday), I looked at online Trolling in the arts fields.  Today I want to discuss Cyberbullies.  Before I begin though, I want to redefine these terms.  What is the difference between a Troll and a Cyberbully?  In both cases, I’ve seen feelings badly hurt, and in many cases I see trolling turn into cyberbullying.  But for the sake of these articles, I’m going to define them as follows:  Trolls seek to rile online communities and attract attention to themselves.  In other words, trolling is really all about the person doing the trolling – they want to feel smart or to get reactions and it doesn’t matter who responds so long as there IS a response.  Since my last article I found a really good online article about Trolls on Psychology Today here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists

As soon as it becomes personal, it becoming bullying. Cyberbullies want to use the Internet to hurt specific victim(s).  Although most of the online information I found involved cyberbullying of teens and adolescents, I saw many reports of artists who sold their work online becoming targets.  As a result, I put out a posting asking for stories, especially from my lampworker friends.  I received more responses than I expected, and they were truly heartbreaking.

The most important things I’m going to tell you are:

1.  If you have been the target of cyberbullying, you are not alone – Cyberbullies generally have multiple victims and are bullies in real life as well.  They are not singling you out – they are terrible to many people.
2. There are steps you can take, but confronting a Cyberbully directly beyond telling them to stop is not one of them.

When I originally looked into writing an article about cyberbullying within the beading and lampworking communities, I felt that I’d been really lucky.  My instances of cyberbullying were minor and had been resolved years ago in spite of my active online sales via social media outlets.  This changed three weeks before I wrote this article when I got an order from a NY customer via Etsy for a made-to-order pendant.  The posting stated that creation and shipping needed a month, but the attached note told me that the pendant was needed in two days.  The order was placed on a Saturday morning and the pendant was needed on Monday afternoon.  There was no suggestion of upgrading shipping from first class to overnight, so I wrote a note clearly restating the terms and asking if the customer would like a refund.  The answer accepted my shipping terms so I began creation.  Two days later I received a note asking for  a more specific date of shipping.  Again, I stated that the piece needed a full month and gave a three day window in which the customer could expect their piece.  In the next four days, I answered the same question exactly 5 more times.  At this point you’re thinking “that’s not bullying, that’s nagging” and you would be absolutely correct.  But I realized that there was no way I was going to see the end of the notes so I refunded and canceled the order.  That’s when things got nasty.  In the next note I was called idiotic and childish and was told to grow up.  I ignored the email.  The next 6 emails got progressively nastier.  I turned them over to Etsy without responding and got a sadly predictable response on how Etsy likes its sellers and customers to work things out themselves.  Thing is, this Cyberbully didn’t get what he wanted.  I’m not sure if I was supposed to reinstate the order or just feel bad but really all I got was this little story to tell you.

Social media allows bullying to become easy for people since they rarely face repercussions and actually see the hurt they inflict.  In some instances Cyberbullies never actually meet the people they bully. Kind people don’t suddenly become horrible online.  I asked for stories and asked that names not be given but in almost all of the cases, victims supplied them anyhow.  As it turned out, this showed an interesting trend.  Once they got bored with one victim, they didn’t just stop.  Instead, they moved onto another victim.  Each time I was given a name, I heard multiple stories about them from multiple sources.

Why do they behave in this manner?  I have no idea because I am not a psychiatrist.  We like to tell each other that these Cyberbullies and Trolls are somehow jealous – but that’s oversimplifying the situation.  Our community is relatively small.  Perhaps some of these Cyberbullies fear the competitive market – there are less buyers than 10 years ago and thereby more competition for the existing expendable cash.  This would explain quite a bit of the behavior in the seed beading market.  Many bead stores have closed their doors and the numbers of show attendees and in-person buyers have dwindled as the online costs have plummeted and online availability has increased.

Social Media sales groups and pages were the stage for quite of few of the stories I heard.  The most interesting ones I received were stories in which a writer started out by posting an inappropriate comment to a thread, on a forum or in someone’s personal group.  The original comment was possibly trollish and possibly just meant as a joke – not related to the original thread at all and poorly conceived.  The result was a group of people who pounced on her and cyberbullied her off the board/group/forum and then sent direct messages and a number of phone calls.  Did she deserve it?  Absolutely not.  Nobody deserves to be bullied.  Remember  that when you speak directly to someone, they hear the inflection in your voice, they take visual cues and they also have the words you say.  Online, your readers only have one of those 3 cues and it’s easy to miss a joke.

I also received a number of stories about non-constructive criticism about artists’ works by Cyberbullies.  In many cases the criticism bled over from work to direct criticism of the victim herself.  In each case, the victim did exactly the right thing by just leaving the group (forum or page) altogether.  Again, each was not alone in being bullied.  Even more important to remember as an artist is that if you are being bullied by someone online about the design or quality of your work, it is easy to get your feelings hurt when you’ve put so much of yourself into your art.  However, whoever is cyberbullying you is not your target market so their opinion does not matter.

The stories I was most shocked by were the ones in which there were real-life and personal rather than business connections.  In two instances I heard stories of relationships gone sour: in both cases the Cyberbully and his new partner turned to Facebook and to online forums to trounce the character and the artistic skill set of the victim.  In one of these cases the Cyberbully actually stalked his victim’s website to find her full list of scheduled classes and called each one of the stores to slander her.  In another situation, two artists were interested in dating a third artist.  The resulting online slut shaming lasted nearly a decade but actually did no harm to the livelihood or relationship of the victim.  Do each of these cases now fall under the definition of Twibel (online libel)?  Yes, they do, and they can be addressed as such in a court of law.  In most cases of Cyberbullying, however, the victim does nothing.

The multiple victims who received email and/or verbal threats of lawsuits from one member of our community have not taken action.  This Cyberbully also bullied victims in person, no matter if they were family, professional contacts or employees.  An attorney friend of mine thought that many of these threats were empty.  Further if there ever were actual lawsuits that went forward they would be thrown out.  However, the threats themselves incurred worry and wasted time.  Even if the lawsuits went forward to the point of getting thrown out of court, they would cost the victim time and money – another win for the Cyberbully.

Finally, I got responses from a whole group of people who I know have not actually been bullied.  I found this interesting, and even more so as I expected to hear from every last one of these people when I put out my original posting.  These people love to be the center of attention, constantly are describing themselves as victims online, always have troubles that they post onto Facebook to gather attention, Paypal “donations” and pity.  In two cases, I would actually place them squarely in the camp of online Trolls.  Fascinating, right?

So, what can you do?  Do you feel like you have been the victim of a Cyberbully?  There are actually steps you can take.  Take a look at this article: https://cyberbullying.org/advice-for-adult-victims-of-cyberbullying

Please, have a kind day.