Charlotte Dawson died this week. She took her own life after a very public and prolonged battle with depression, and with cyber bullies that took great pleasure in tormenting her in large numbers.
I never met Charlotte, so I'm not qualified to speak of her struggle in more specific terms. I can't speak about her personality or talents. But in the last fortnight I have been bullied myself, both on here and on Instagram.
Firstly let me talk about what Instagram means to me.
I live for art. I'm hopeless at making it (despite the headlines that bring at least a quarter of visitors to this blog), but I'm nothing short of incredible when it comes to enjoying it.
For me art is music, images, words. Of course philosophy has been battling for centuries to define an all-encompassing descriptor for art, but for the purpose of this post, let's just keep it simple.
I'm a child of the 90's- that's when the teenager in me started to make choices regarding what I liked (hair metal) and what I don't (Peking Opera). Back then cameras required film, and I was poor; so taking photos was not only an extremely hit-and-miss affair (I am in no way a photographer), but also very expensive and ultimately disappointing.
When I went on tour with Metallica, I managed to take about a roll of disposable camera shots, of which maybe 5 actually survived the developing process. They are of some road cases backstage with the cool old logo on them, mostly dark, very bad.
And unlike now when every tech and security guy is blasting off pictures 24/7 to social media on their handheld devices; when I started out that would have been seen as very rude, and a great way to get fired. So, long story short- no visual record of all those great times. I wish I had albums full of all the things I saw, people I met, places I went.
Enter Instagram.
For me, Instagram is a photo album that I post pictures (and MEMEs, sorry, I'm one of them!) to, and where like-minded nice people from all over the world who are friends with me do the same. We appreciate each others posts, comment, and enjoy a sense of community (I collect Ibanez guitars, and through IG have connected with not only some lovely fans of that brand, but also touring and recording artists who either favour or are sponsored by Ibanez).
It's basically my version of Facebook (which I don't belong to).
The best thing about it though, is that I can go back and look at what I was thinking about/looking at/doing/where I was going/who I was doing it with after the fact. I can see where I was a year ago. It's my visual diary. I post to it for me, and when people want to come along for the ride, well I think that's just great.
Last week i started getting trolled by an account with zero followers, set up with the sole intention of leaving offensive comments on my posts.
I wasn't upset at the things they said about me, but I was upset that someone would go to that much trouble and take time out of their lives just to write really stupid and socially unacceptable things on my Insta.
Apart from being utterly illegal in Australia (there are several State and Federal laws that prohibit internet bullying, especially comments that instruct a person to kill themselves), it's just a waste of time for everyone involved.
I have attached pics of some of their comments so you can get a feel for the mental level we're dealing with here.
It started when I was chatting to my friend Ritchie in the USA about how my rent is ridiculously high considering the landlords never fix anything that wears out or breaks. I told him I want to buy a farm. Now this is something I've been working toward for only a year now, so it's not happening anytime soon. But it is my dream.
The first thing I notice is this troll seems very angry, and they also appear to be quite focused on my age for some reason.
I can honestly say I have never "pry"ed on a girl in my life, although we all know they meant 'prey'. The disappointing truth is I haven't dated anyone in a long time, and actually turn any girls that ask me to come home with them down. I just don't care about relationships, and I have no interest in sex for sex's sake lately. I have dated girls in their 20's in the past, and they're the reason I don't want to any more. Because I don't need drama. Like this.
Calling me fat and old is fine. I am old to a lot of people. And I'm glad I am, because being young was a massive waste of time really. I like this stage of my life a lot more. A lot more. I'm not fat though. And even if I was, who cares?
I definitely have bad breath in the morning. So they got me there.
Broke? Nope. And again, how is that an insult? People in this country live better than 90% of the rest of the world, and I don't think that's a statistic we should be proud of. We have far too much wealth, mismanaged or otherwise. I did grow up broke, which is why I worked so hard to rise up out of it to where I am now. But calling someone that is so so stupid.
So now we have a sense of some of the insults that were tossed my way. I had a laugh, scratched my head for a minute thinking who could be so obsessed with me and why; realised who it was (someone I rejected repeatedly because they had one face to my face, and another behind my back; as well as a shopping list of character defects I simply wanted nothing to do with), and got on with being broke, fat, ugly, and preying on young girls.
But this post isn't about Charlotte Dawson, or my Insta troll. It's about everyone else.
Reading comments about Ms Dawson's death just blew my mind. The prevailing attitude wasn't something like "Wow- we should have mental health services that can cope with this, and a society that has enough intelligence to realise when you troll someone else, you're only embarrassing yourself".
Instead it was "If you don't like what people are saying about you on social media, delete your social media and get on with life."
Wow. Such idiocy. Much dumbass.
That is exactly like saying if you don't like people keying your car in the supermarket parking lot, to sell your car and stay in the house forever.
If you don't like graffiti on your wall, demolish your house and go somewhere else.
If you don't like being stabbed on the street, delete yourself and die.
Australia is the birthplace of "swallow a cup of concrete and harden the fuck up". It's the poster child for tough, irreverent men and women as window dressing/arm candy. It's a hard country, which was built on adversity, and the people (both first nation and colonists) adapted and got on with life.
At least, that's the Crocodile Dundee-meets-AFL view of it. But that doesn't address the issue that mental illness affects 1 in 3 Australians at some point in their lives. Suicide rates are unacceptably high, and the mental health system is long broken- releasing people with genuine health issues into the public to commit crimes, suffer needlessly, or die alone.
It also completely misses the point that if you have a social media platform that you enjoy innocuously using, you shouldn't have to delete it just because someone with a mental illness of their own decided it's fun to call you names and try to embarrass you publicly.
It's not a matter of 'hardening up', it's a matter of learning some respect for other people, and if you don't like a person; then don't go visiting their social media and showing everyone you can't spell and have shit for brains. And it's a matter for society as a whole to see the situation for what it is, and to stop raising trolls in the first place.
Studies show that trolls are people who feel powerless, and who feel the need to anonymously snipe at people from behind the safety of the internet. They hide behind computers and say mean or aggressive things because they can't say those things in real life. They're weak, they're sad, in short, they are mentally ill.
So imagine instead of just deleting our social media profiles, we addressed the problem and got the trolls the education and support they need, for the mental issues they have? And instead of telling each other to get over it, we admitted we have a massive problem with not only mental illness in Australia, but people's attitudes to it as well.
You can say "harden up" as much as you like, meanwhile teenagers are literally throwing themselves off high bridges, overdosing, and bleeding themselves to death. Not everyone knows not to take trolls seriously, or to see what their words actually mean, how they point back at the troll.
This is a real issue. Not because it happened to me- I've been through (much much) worse. But because people are dying for no reason, other than this country thinks there's something to be gained by suffering in silence.
Stop trying to act tough and try being human.
There's your synopsis.
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
I never met Charlotte, so I'm not qualified to speak of her struggle in more specific terms. I can't speak about her personality or talents. But in the last fortnight I have been bullied myself, both on here and on Instagram.
Firstly let me talk about what Instagram means to me.
I live for art. I'm hopeless at making it (despite the headlines that bring at least a quarter of visitors to this blog), but I'm nothing short of incredible when it comes to enjoying it.
For me art is music, images, words. Of course philosophy has been battling for centuries to define an all-encompassing descriptor for art, but for the purpose of this post, let's just keep it simple.
I'm a child of the 90's- that's when the teenager in me started to make choices regarding what I liked (hair metal) and what I don't (Peking Opera). Back then cameras required film, and I was poor; so taking photos was not only an extremely hit-and-miss affair (I am in no way a photographer), but also very expensive and ultimately disappointing.
When I went on tour with Metallica, I managed to take about a roll of disposable camera shots, of which maybe 5 actually survived the developing process. They are of some road cases backstage with the cool old logo on them, mostly dark, very bad.
And unlike now when every tech and security guy is blasting off pictures 24/7 to social media on their handheld devices; when I started out that would have been seen as very rude, and a great way to get fired. So, long story short- no visual record of all those great times. I wish I had albums full of all the things I saw, people I met, places I went.
Enter Instagram.
For me, Instagram is a photo album that I post pictures (and MEMEs, sorry, I'm one of them!) to, and where like-minded nice people from all over the world who are friends with me do the same. We appreciate each others posts, comment, and enjoy a sense of community (I collect Ibanez guitars, and through IG have connected with not only some lovely fans of that brand, but also touring and recording artists who either favour or are sponsored by Ibanez).
It's basically my version of Facebook (which I don't belong to).
The best thing about it though, is that I can go back and look at what I was thinking about/looking at/doing/where I was going/who I was doing it with after the fact. I can see where I was a year ago. It's my visual diary. I post to it for me, and when people want to come along for the ride, well I think that's just great.
Last week i started getting trolled by an account with zero followers, set up with the sole intention of leaving offensive comments on my posts.
I wasn't upset at the things they said about me, but I was upset that someone would go to that much trouble and take time out of their lives just to write really stupid and socially unacceptable things on my Insta.
Apart from being utterly illegal in Australia (there are several State and Federal laws that prohibit internet bullying, especially comments that instruct a person to kill themselves), it's just a waste of time for everyone involved.
I have attached pics of some of their comments so you can get a feel for the mental level we're dealing with here.
It started when I was chatting to my friend Ritchie in the USA about how my rent is ridiculously high considering the landlords never fix anything that wears out or breaks. I told him I want to buy a farm. Now this is something I've been working toward for only a year now, so it's not happening anytime soon. But it is my dream.
The first thing I notice is this troll seems very angry, and they also appear to be quite focused on my age for some reason.
I can honestly say I have never "pry"ed on a girl in my life, although we all know they meant 'prey'. The disappointing truth is I haven't dated anyone in a long time, and actually turn any girls that ask me to come home with them down. I just don't care about relationships, and I have no interest in sex for sex's sake lately. I have dated girls in their 20's in the past, and they're the reason I don't want to any more. Because I don't need drama. Like this.
Calling me fat and old is fine. I am old to a lot of people. And I'm glad I am, because being young was a massive waste of time really. I like this stage of my life a lot more. A lot more. I'm not fat though. And even if I was, who cares?
I definitely have bad breath in the morning. So they got me there.
Broke? Nope. And again, how is that an insult? People in this country live better than 90% of the rest of the world, and I don't think that's a statistic we should be proud of. We have far too much wealth, mismanaged or otherwise. I did grow up broke, which is why I worked so hard to rise up out of it to where I am now. But calling someone that is so so stupid.
So now we have a sense of some of the insults that were tossed my way. I had a laugh, scratched my head for a minute thinking who could be so obsessed with me and why; realised who it was (someone I rejected repeatedly because they had one face to my face, and another behind my back; as well as a shopping list of character defects I simply wanted nothing to do with), and got on with being broke, fat, ugly, and preying on young girls.
But this post isn't about Charlotte Dawson, or my Insta troll. It's about everyone else.
Reading comments about Ms Dawson's death just blew my mind. The prevailing attitude wasn't something like "Wow- we should have mental health services that can cope with this, and a society that has enough intelligence to realise when you troll someone else, you're only embarrassing yourself".
Instead it was "If you don't like what people are saying about you on social media, delete your social media and get on with life."
Wow. Such idiocy. Much dumbass.
That is exactly like saying if you don't like people keying your car in the supermarket parking lot, to sell your car and stay in the house forever.
If you don't like graffiti on your wall, demolish your house and go somewhere else.
If you don't like being stabbed on the street, delete yourself and die.
Australia is the birthplace of "swallow a cup of concrete and harden the fuck up". It's the poster child for tough, irreverent men and women as window dressing/arm candy. It's a hard country, which was built on adversity, and the people (both first nation and colonists) adapted and got on with life.
At least, that's the Crocodile Dundee-meets-AFL view of it. But that doesn't address the issue that mental illness affects 1 in 3 Australians at some point in their lives. Suicide rates are unacceptably high, and the mental health system is long broken- releasing people with genuine health issues into the public to commit crimes, suffer needlessly, or die alone.
It also completely misses the point that if you have a social media platform that you enjoy innocuously using, you shouldn't have to delete it just because someone with a mental illness of their own decided it's fun to call you names and try to embarrass you publicly.
It's not a matter of 'hardening up', it's a matter of learning some respect for other people, and if you don't like a person; then don't go visiting their social media and showing everyone you can't spell and have shit for brains. And it's a matter for society as a whole to see the situation for what it is, and to stop raising trolls in the first place.
Studies show that trolls are people who feel powerless, and who feel the need to anonymously snipe at people from behind the safety of the internet. They hide behind computers and say mean or aggressive things because they can't say those things in real life. They're weak, they're sad, in short, they are mentally ill.
So imagine instead of just deleting our social media profiles, we addressed the problem and got the trolls the education and support they need, for the mental issues they have? And instead of telling each other to get over it, we admitted we have a massive problem with not only mental illness in Australia, but people's attitudes to it as well.
You can say "harden up" as much as you like, meanwhile teenagers are literally throwing themselves off high bridges, overdosing, and bleeding themselves to death. Not everyone knows not to take trolls seriously, or to see what their words actually mean, how they point back at the troll.
This is a real issue. Not because it happened to me- I've been through (much much) worse. But because people are dying for no reason, other than this country thinks there's something to be gained by suffering in silence.
Stop trying to act tough and try being human.
There's your synopsis.
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
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