I do not understand the mindset of trolls and bullies

who would spread vitriol and horribleness just to feel good about their own pathetic lives.

This makes me mad, and sad, and a whole lot of other emotions, wrapped up in a twisted ball of yarn made of sick colours. Thank goodness for people who have good hearts (and a fair amount of technical knowledge), who can create as safe an environment as possible away from this sort of thing:

The day ‘hackers’ told 6 year old autistic children that they should ‘kill yourself’

On April 6th, 2016, two people attempted to hack into the Autcraft server and failed.

What they did succeed in doing, however, was to hijack our IP address, effectively redirecting all the traffic from our server to a server of their own.

The children that signed on to play, some as young as 6 years old, signed on to their server instead of mine. Once there, they were encased in a bedrock box from which they could not leave and were told that they were rejects from society, degenerates and that they should kill themselves.

When I asked these guys why they’d do such a thing, they responded “it’s funny.”

Follow the links at the end of his post if you want to support Autcraft and help keep it safe by becoming a Patron or donating directly. Thanks to Ragen Chastain, of the Dances with Fat blog, for sharing it on Facebook.

Oh, I did want to link to this very interesting study

Bullying does more long-term mental health harm than abuse, study says

The long-term effects of being bullied by other kids are worse than being abused by an adult, new research shows.

Among a large group of children in England, those who were bullied were 60% more likely to have mental health problems as adults than were those who suffered physical, emotional or sexual abuse. And among a large group of children in the United States, the risk of mental health problems was nearly four times greater for victims of bullying than for victims of child abuse.

The study itself, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, is open access and is freely available on their website (PDF: Lereya ST, Copeland WE, Wolke D. Adult mental health consequences of peer bullying and maltreatment in childhood: two cohorts in two countries. The Lancet Psychiatry. Published online April 28, 2015.)

I do have to share this, first

By Sue Fitzmaurice....I think this sums things up very nicely.

Sad

12-year-old boy who was victim of bullying attack dies after weeks in hospital

A young boy who was the victim of bullying has died, according to his family. Bailey O'Neill, who turned 12 on Saturday, was in a coma after suffering several seizures. His family told NBC10's Katy Zachry that he died at the hospital on Sunday.

Bailey's family says he was jumped by two classmates during recess at Darby Township School last January and suffered a concussion as well as a broken nose as a result. He then began to suffer seizures the next day, forcing doctors to put him into a medically induced coma. Joy Fecanin, the boy's grandmother, told NBC10's Katy Zachry that he had to have a blood transfusion after getting pneumonia.

When I was the same age, I was jumped by four girls while walking home from school. They broke my glasses, and tore my coat, but fortunately I wasn't injured. Another time one of the girls in school threatened to kill me. I avoided the walk home for weeks, getting my mom to come pick me up. It saddens me to see that kids are still being bullied. It is not some rite of passage, or just kids being kids. The bullies often have serious issues themselves, and the bullied obviously suffer. Something must be done to create a zero tolerance for bullying in our schools. I'm not sure if the problem is getting worse, or if we just are more connected by the media today. But horrible things are happening, much worse than being threatened for lunch money or having fish guts put in your biology book in your locker (that happened to me, too). Kids have died, have been set on fire, shot. This is terrible. I don't have any solutions myself, but this is one reason I'm glad I'm not a parent--this kind of thing would worry me to death. My thoughts are with this family--and the others that struggle to deal with bullying. It's a challenge to deal with and could have grave consequences in how it's handled.

Excellent attitude

'I Won't Be a Bystander': One Principal's Reaction to Seeing Bully

Not everyone has been a victim or a bully, but we’ve all been bystanders. If you doubt this, watch Bully.

The film opened in Los Angeles last weekend, and as I watched it, I saw footage of students being stabbed, punched, and yelled at. I saw a student grasping his head because it had been smashed into a nail, and heard another student recount being run over by a minivan full of schoolmates. The thread holding these events together was the adults standing by, believing kids are just being kids and wondering why the victims can’t just make the bullying stop.

Bullying has been a problem, well, since they started having schools, probably. I was bullied as a kid, but the adults either turned a blind eye to it, or put the onus onto me by giving me advice of ignoring the bullying, which simply didn't work. My mother did cruise through the base one evening looking for the girls who jumped me on the way home and broke my glasses, ready to turn them over to the security police. But it seems that some kids today lack any empathy for their peers, and will do things unthinkable when I was a kid, like douse someone with an accelerant and set them on fire, or run over them with a car, terrible, deadly things. It's no wonder kids who feel relentless torment commit suicide. This administrator is right--as adults it's important to be proactive in teaching children tolerance and empathy, and also to step in when bullying occurs. It's not the job of the bullied to try to stop it. It's up to the parents, the school teachers, and the administrators, and anyone else who witnesses an act of bullying.

Thanks to Allison Kipta for the link.

Words fail

10-year-old Commits Suicide Because of Bullying

I know I've posted some grim news stories here lately. Sorry for that. But this so disturbed me. 10 year olds shouldn't have to endure being called sluts, and they certainly shouldn't feel that ending their life is the only way out. How do we stop such horrible bullying, and build resiliency in our children? Are we failing both the bullied and the bullies?

I'm 44 years old and still freeze like I did with bullies

Yesterday on my way home, I was walking up ahead of some young women who had gotten off the bus, too. They were loud and obnoxious (screaming at someone they knew at the top of their lungs, for one), and after they stopped that interchange they started making squealing pig noises that filtered over in my direction.

My heart stopped. I went into a panic. Years ago, that's exactly the sort of thing a school bully might do. Now, I know that they were probably not even directing it at me (on the other hand although they were all chunky, I was by far the larger, so maybe they were just that obnoxious). What's important was my reaction. I froze. I took it to be directed to me at first, just as all those insults had been when I was a kid. But I had two reactions afterwards which I thought showed promise. One, I realised that even if it were directed towards me, they were obnoxious gets who did not deserve the time of day. Secondly, I felt an upsurge of self-defence and quite frankly considered beating the crap out of them. Fortunately the first prevailed (I can just imagine the new reports: rabid librarian wails on defenceless girls). But the point is I felt anger, and although I controlled my actions, felt the impetus to defend myself. When I was a kid, I just felt powerless, and slunk off, and they kept taunting me because of it. I've only hit two people in my life, both bullies. One was when I was a kid and I never did anything to him when he was bullying me, but he was picking on a 4 year old and I bloodied his nose. The second was when I was older and someone I was living with tried to manipulate my actions and emotions by faking a suicide attempt. I tip-toed on eggshells for a week and finally boxed his ears. He slapped me. That was about as physically negative as our relationship ever got, although he was physically abusive on a daily basis through tickling. Yes, tickling. He would run at me, no matter what I was doing, and tickle me in this bizarre attack mode. It took me awhile to realise how insidious it was, because it was physical abuse, but because he wasn't hitting me, he could say everything was fine, and it didn't leave bruises. But it left me feeling like I would be attacked any minute. And of course, that was nothing compared to the emotional abuse and manipulation. Fortunately I finally came to my senses, grew a backbone, and left all that behind, although it took me a couple more years to finally get the courage to leave. When I did, he came to my house, knocking like he was trying to break the door down, until the nice policemen came and told him to go away or he'd be going downtown. I have had little trouble with him since, and have come to realise that he was essentially a coward and the only real power he had was what I gave him. And he was the last bully I had in my life that I gave any real power to.

You think?

Bullies Target Obese Kids: Being overweight is prime factor regardless of race, family income, study finds

I was bullied as a child. I was chunky (although not nearly as fat as I thought I was; I got a lot of my self-image from my mother, who had her own issues with her weight).

I was nearsighted with thick 1970s glasses.

I wore clothes my mother made for me, mostly polyester pantsuits (it was the 70s). I don't think I owned a pair of jeans until junior high. I remember them well--pink with elephants on the back pockets. Okay, so that was also the late 70s. I didn't wear jeans regularly until my senior year of high school and in college.

I was also a terrible know-it-all without social skills whose self-esteem was rooted in how well I did at school, and although I didn't really realise I showed off, I did.

So there were several factors to my being bullied. Plus I always got along better with kids younger than myself and adults. The ones in my class were older (I skipped a grade) and I guess I just couldn't relate that well to them, with the exception of a few close special friends.

I have certain snapshots from my childhood of bullying, although there were constant barbs throughout:

One kid picked on me in our neighbourhood in Louisiana and I never really fought back until he started bullying a four-year-old (I was nine, he was eight), whereupon I hit him and gave him a bloody nose. I think it's the first of only two times I've ever hit anyone for real.

I was jumped by some Hispanic and black girls at school in California. They broke my glasses and tore my coat. There were all the factors above, plus I had a Louisiana accent at the time that they may have thought worthy of making fun of. I lost that accent by the time I got to Kansas and now the only people who think I have a Southern accent are people in Minnesota or other places far north. My mom, after getting me new glasses, drove me around the base searching for them. I'm not sure whether she planned on calling the security police or taking care of them herself. It made me feel truly loved.

I was once threatened by a black girl with certain pain and possible death at school and spent two weeks finding excuses to get my mother to pick me up rather than walk home. This is why: I was having nascent bisexual feelings and really admired her athleticism (we were in gym together). I was in my horsey-girly phase, in junior high, and constantly drew horses. I went to give her a compliment and the first athlete I thought of was a jockey. In retrospect I think she thought I was calling her a lawn jockey, which is understandably upsetting. I didn't realise what I had done until I related this story to a co-worker who was of mixed race when I was about 36. Almost all of the lawn jockeys I'd seen growing up were white, and not painted with the stereotypical black features they used to be.

Bullying had the effect of making me fearful of a lot in life and certainly didn't help my self-esteem, which has been chronically low, any. I'm much better now, but it's taken years and years to come to grips with myself and like what and who I am, and to realise that their opinions never really should have mattered.

I am under orders

from Brandon to not think of the additional $930 I owe the state and federal government for 2009 (I did my taxes tonight), but to blog about something interesting for him to read. So first, some humour...

Here's a stupid-criminal story:
Jail me, Elmo? Police: Dad left pot in boy’s bag: He's accused of calling son's school to see if he could retrieve it

Here's a little another odd bit:
Doctor Who regeneration was 'modelled on LSD trips'

"The metaphysical change... is a horrifying experience - an experience in which he relives some of the most unendurable moments of his long life, including the galactic war," it said.

"It is as if he has had the LSD drug and instead of experiencing the kicks, he has the hell and dank horror which can be its effect," the memo added.

In the library world, Will Manley is a columnist who is both lauded and reviled for his perspective. In 1992, he lost his position at the Wilson Library Bulletin for running a sex survey of librarians in his column. Finally, the results are made public:

WILL UNWOUND #78: “The 1992 Librarians and Sex Survey Results” by Will Manley

Just for the record, I would not be among the 38% of female respondents who, if PeeWee Herman were the last man on Earth, have sex to repropagate the species. The human race would just die. Sorry.

On to something more serious. To kick off National Library Week, an op-ed piece by Art Brodsky on the decimation that library budgets are undergoing when they're most needed:

Our Public Library Lifeline Is Fraying. We'll Be Sorry When it Snaps

No less an authority than Keith Richards put it best in his forthcoming autobiography: "When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser."

This is sure to cause some strong reactions:

Spanking kids linked to bullying: Report: Physical punishment can lead to aggressive behavior

According to the study, kids who were spanked often were twice as likely as those who weren't spanked to develop aggressive behaviors such as getting into fights, destroying things or being mean to others.

Earlier research had produced similar results, but most had not taken into account how aggressive kids were to begin with, and other factors could have biased the results.

As I don't have kids, I don't feel I can really comment on this too much. I do think that the greater the physical punishment, the more likely the child is to model this behaviour him- or herself.

There's a taste of stuff in my reader, Brandon. Hope you all enjoy.

Disturbing

Videotaped Florida Teen Beating Prompts Calls To Block Violent Content

My favourite comment, by someone writing as 'Logic' (although I don't agree on the weapons part) was:

The video never made it on YouTube or MySpace but we should ban it because someone said they might do it.

By that logic, Weapons should be banned because kids have said they may want to use them.

Books should be banned because people talk about reading them.

And Love should be banned because people talk about making it.

Last I checked people are guity of the acts they commit not the acts they imagine or talk about. By all means let them post the evidence and get caught.

The Associated Press has a story that incorporates the video. The video itself was not actually uploaded to either site, both of which already have rules in place for reviewing or yanking videos such as this one. I don't think any other body need get involved.

I hope the six girls involved in the beating (and the two guys who stood lookout) get a good dose of justice. They're not going to get it from home, I believe. Apparently one mom went on a morning show defending her daughter, saying only one girl beat the victim at any given time; quotes of the girls at their arrest ('will I get out in time for cheerleading practice') and from MySpace don't show much bloody remorse.

The girl has lost hearing and sight on one side of her head and suffered a concussion. She could just have easily have died, having been slammed into a wall. Bullying has been around for a long time, and has always been disturbing, but beating someone within an inch of their life to make a good video shoot for 15 minutes of fame is even more disturbing.

Let's just say I'm not wishing them a happy time in jail. :)