What’s The Point Of Being An Internet Bully?
I remember the day clearly – I was in middle school gym class and the “popular girls” decided they were tired of playing touch football and wanted to sit out on the field. Now it was a hot day, so I decided to sit out as well. Turns out, only they could sit down and no one else. If anyone knows anything about me, they know I don’t like taking crap from anyone else, and well, let’s just say the popular girls thought it was time to beat me up in the locker room.
Luckily for me, I’m gifted with the an awesome suaveness that allowed me to calmly talk them out of turning me to blonde girl soup. Back then, this experience was frightening. Today, it’s funny. It’s funny that people would want to start a fight over sitting down in gym class.
The great thing about being a geek is that, while you may not be popular in high school, people eventually grow out of the “stuffing-people-in-lockers-and-taking-their-lunch-money” (no, that never happened to me!) mentality. At least so I thought.
When you’re a nobody on the internet, it’s tough to remember how mean people can be, but as soon as you start getting recognition, you attract those bullies right back to you, except this time they’re free to cowardly harrass you behind the anonymity of the web.
I get hate “something” at least a few times a month, and I don’t get it. It’s one thing to disagree with me, it’s another to try to call me out to make you look cool. Fortunately most of you guys (awesome you are!) haven’t taken any of these bullies’ crap and have defended me to the end. Mucho gracias by the way.
The Bullies
Every six months or so, I get an email from a loser who uses a fake name and no email address to say I’m lying about my RSS feed stats. Really? If you’re so sure about that, why the cowardliness of no return email or name? Probably because he realizes he’s just a sad loser, like my awesome old middle school bullies. Also, it’s kinda hard to fake subscriber stats when you’re using a Subscriber plugin to track it. If I were going to fake my stats, I do something like “3434343434343″ subscribers…not 3,000.
I also had a “reader” (right) tell me they’d never read my stuff again, because in my portfolio I discern between a CMS-driven site and a regular site as “static”. He then decided to give me a long lecture about how PHP isn’t static. Um, technically it is if you’re not using a DB behind it. He must be the only idiot in the world to not be able to understand the way I break up my portfolio.
My favorite bullies though are blog bullies. You know, the ones who creep around popular blog posts and never post something unless it’s really hateful. My favorite was the guy who insisted I shouldn’t comment my code at all because non-English developers wouldn’t really be able to read it. So was he suggesting that no one be able to read it at all? That I translate my comments into 100 languages? Funny that all programming code is written in English…so I guess if developers can’t read my comments, they probably can’t read the code anyways.
What gives?
So what’s the point of being a bully? Why do people decide to hate on someone who’s successful, instead of working hard to become successful themselves? Do they not realize they just look like a jerk?
image by headexplodie
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
I really don’t understand why anyone would spend time trying to bully anyone on the Internet or in real-life.
I wouldn’t take it personally (and by the sounds of it you don’t anyway), I see it as some form of jealousy.
I just kind of laugh it off, but it still interests me on why’d they do it in the first place.
It’s a shame that people have to resort to such levels. I do agree with Benjamin. It is jealousy. They can’t be as successful especially at a young age so they have to try and tear you down because that’s the only way they think you will tank. People are shallow and have no life. They should be permanently banned from whatever sites (if possible). Just flush ‘em down the drain. The world would be a better place.
Keep rockin’ Amber!
Been there, put up with that crap…!
For what it’s worth, you have the “job” I aspire to have one day (having just left the rat race to figure it out), and I can see why a lot of people would be envious of that.
Difference between internet bullies and the rest of us is they’re that insecure they can’t use someone else’s success as inspiration to spur them on to improve, so they can think of nothing better than to spew hate where it isn’t deserved.
Keep up the good work, and thanks for the thought-provoking post!
Is one hiding his name worth a thought? I don’t think so. Except for this one thought you need to push the delete button.
Go on, you have now attention and attraction. And you are now the in girl I would say.
I guess there will always be people who act out their inner struggle for the whole world to see.
I think the vast majority of people recognize a bully behind a comment for what he or she is and don’t take the comment seriously. Bullies want a reaction- they want to see you sweat. Best not to let ‘em.
Don’t feed the pigeons!
Unfortunately the web creates new bullies too, ones that are probably not in real life, hiding behind the computer being something their not or can’t be in front of people which is sad enough.
Seriously sometimes I do leave funny comments and those are usually what brings me the worst comments I have ever seen and I expect them each and every time guaranteed!.
Its kinda like the ending of the last Jay and Silent Bob film probably best explanation. You know the list of comments…
I think that bullying is always a sign of jealous, inferiority complex, a sad life and eventually a small penis. But I wanted to comment about the stuff about comments in english. First, I think it’s essential for a developer to know english, because not only all the major languages are written in that idiom, but the majority of the good resources and references for learning too. I’m brazilian (and still developing my english skills) and even I comment my codes like this, because it’s the most universal language we have out there.
I really hate this post.
Sorry I couldn’t resist.
I don’t know that there’s any single reason why people become bullies either on the internet or real life. For some it’s probably juvenile entertainment. I’ve also known people who liked provoking others just to see what kind of reaction they could get.
Mostly I think it’s because the person is angry with themself more than anything. It’s hard to be angry with yourself, since it means accepting you deserve that anger. It’s much easier to take your anger out on someone else.
When I see people that angry I usually feel sorry for them. They have to be feeling something awful inside in order to have that much anger to release. I wonder what kind of miserable feelings they must be dealing with in order to hold so much anger.
Sadly the internet makes it easier to do the above anonymously. People get braver or at least less afraid of it coming back to them when they can hide behind anonymity.
I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks (found you from Freelance Folder). In what I’ve seen and read it’s clear that you’re successful and are very knowledgeable in your field. Unfortunately there are some people who feel they need to hate on everything and everyone that is successful/knowledgeable because they feel inferior to you. Normal people will take what you have to offer and try to learn from it others will give nonconstructive criticism and be just down right mean.
Pay no attention to the coward haters! Consider it a sign of successes. Keep doing what you’re doing!
I notice that for some strange reason you seems to attract a fair amount of haters. I don’t really get why, as I find your writing and work really inspiring (even though I’m not a designer). I still think Tim Ferriss gets the most shit out of anybody online today, that guy seems to really offend some people.
Does it bother you? I mean, like if you read one hate email does it stick with you longer than all the complimentary emails/comments you get?
Nope, it doesn’t stick with me at all. I get a lot of hate mail because I write about a lot of controversial stuff, instead of just the regular stuff others write about. Also, it’s because I’m a female and a blonde, and for some reason it really seems to anger some mean that a pretty blonde girl is smarter than them
I love following your blog and your work. You inspire me. The more successful you become, the more haters you’ll find. Look at Apple/Google/Microsoft…they get sued like 17,354 times a day by haters who just need to do some hatin’. I see a lot of hating in YouTube comments as well. I’m with you on the “it’s interesting” and “but why?” part of the hating.
Keep it up!
Just wanted to say to be sure not to confuse critiquing with bullying, because the former is constructive and desirable while the latter is simply destructive.
Keep up the great work, you’re inspirational Ms Weinberg!!
Internet bullies are cowards.I had a blog on a somewhat popualr site called Yahoo 360,it was a social networking site.Thank god they shut it down. There was alot of abuse on there! I developed online friendships with everyone on there. That ended as quik as it started. It was like one big high school of mentaly unstable ,sick adults with the maturity level of a bipolar teenagers! People did stuff like photo shop pictures of people and create fake pages to mock them.
One lesson I learned is I will NEVER just invite people into my cyber world unless I know them in real life,seriously. I heard people can create some good friendships on line but it’s important to make sure thse connection like in real life aren’t drama filled and toxic!
I also discovered peoples personalities can be different online,using the example of bullies,these people if met in reallife would be a bit mousy and probably have a more subserviant passive demeanor because AGAIN they only have courage to speak their little passive agrressive minds on line! I also learned this after exchanging numbers with a “online friend” after awhile. We taked once on the phone and there was just nothing to say.LOL Her energy level was much different than she appeared on line. It was like talking to someone totaly different and her social skills seemed tobe much better on line.LOL
Great post about them! Becareful who you let into your cyber world and if your a bully,grow some balls,grow up and stop covertly pushing people around online,seriously thats a cowardly ballesss wimp
Just found this post. Should have found it when I posted mine.
http://oneblueeye.me/blog/2011/bullies-are-cowards