Cyberbullying

The summer before I started middle school, I created my facebook page.  It was my first social media site and I was so excited.  Everyone had a facebook back then; it was the new big thing.  I had fun with it, posted pictures, poked my friends, and did the same thing everyone else did with their facebooks.  And for a few months, it was great.

At some point during seventh grade, my friends started getting messages from someone who claimed to know me.  At first, they didn’t think anything of it.  But then the person started asking these inappropriate questions about me.  They eventually brought it up to me and I had never heard of the person before.  My friends kept talking to the person and printed out the conversations for me to read.  The things they said about me were horrible, and I hated it.   Like most people who have been cyberbullied, I didn’t tell anyone.

After a couple months, I finally went up to my sister and told her about what had been happening.  She apparently knew the person, and sent them a message.  The page was deleted and for a while everything was fine.  I still went on facebook everday, almost like nothing had ever happened.  But in the middle of eighth grade, it started up all over again.

I heard about it in the library.  Someone had come up to me and started asking me about a couple strange rumors she had heard about me.  When I had no idea what she was talking about, she told me people thought I had slept with this one guy in my grade.  Obviously I was upset and couldn’t believe someone would say stuff like that about me.  When I found out it had started on facebook, I knew exactly who had started the rumors.  And, once again, I didn’t tell anyone.

Not long after, the guy came up to me and asked why I had told everyone we had slept together.  I had been informed the person had decided to pretend to be me this time, and I was upset.  But I didn’t tell anyone.  I told the guy it wasn’t me, but that I knew who it was and I was sorry.  He accepted that and left it alone for a while.  But then he came up to me again and demanded to know why I had lied.  So, for the first time, I told someone outside of my family and friends what was going on.  Then I found the fake me page and sent them another message.  They once again took the page down.

It had affected me more this time, though.  I stopped going on facebook as much and when I was on, I made sure I was “invisible,” so it seemed like I was still offline.  I wasn’t as fond of the new social media site anymore, but it wasn’t only my online self that had been hurt.  School had become something different, something less comfortable than before.  No one really knew this person wasn’t me, and I wasn’t advertising what had been done to me, so I let them believe what they wanted.  And no one ever came right out and bullied me, but in a way that was almost worse.  People had started calling me horrible names behind my back.  Slut, whore, liar.  Everyone was judging me based on the words of someone else.

The page was back up a lot quicker this time, and we became a lot less sure of who it was.  Some people told me it sounded like a girl, others were sure it’s a guy.  I didn’t know anymore.  All I knew was someone was pretending to be me, and everyone believed them.  The person would proposition guys, start rumors about me, and just say horrible things about me to people I barely knew.  The name calling just got worse and worse, but I had learned my lesson.  I told my parents, and whenever someone had the guts to mention it to me, I would tell them what was happening.

Most people were really supportive, and did their best to spread the word.  People I barely knew, people in friend groups completely different than mine, were suddenly my knights in shining armor.  They let everyone know it wasn’t me and would either send nasty messages to the fake me or print out conversations for me.  It got better for a while, and the page would disappear every now and again, but it always came back.

Eventually, my family contacted facebook.  We told them what was happening and reported the fake me multiple times.  The fake me and everything that happened because of it had seriously damaged my self-confidence, and I no longer went on facebook at all unless it was to report the fake me.  My parents were furious with facebook for allowing this to happen and didn’t hesitate to let them know.  But nothing ever happened.  They didn’t care.

 In ninth grade, the bullying got worse.  I became even more upset about what was happening on facebook, and I still had no clue who it was.  My friends were all really supportive, but it didn’t matter.  Everyone was on facebook, and most people still thought it was me.  One day towards the end of ninth grade it got really bad.  I had been called one too many names, been asked about facebook one too many times, and just lost it.  I broke down crying in the middle of lunch and left to go to guidance.  I missed the entirety of my next class, and when I got back almost everyone knew I had been crying in guidance for the past hour.  I’m sure my red and puffy eyes didn’t help.

To make matters worse, I realized next period that someone thought it would be funny to stick gum in my hood.  The gum got all over my sweatshirt and stuck in my hair.  I spent half of that block alternating between crying and trying to get it out, and when I couldn’t the substitute teacher took a pair of scissors to my hair in front of the whole class.  I was mortified and immediately left to go to the bathroom.  I called my mom, in tears, and asked to leave school.  My dad picked me up and I barely made it out of the school before I started sobbing.  My dad was furious, and went straight to the cops.

They took my information, listened to the story, and then politely told me they wouldn’t do anything about it.  They said it wasn’t something they could get involved in, because no one had hurt me.  We went home and when my older sister asked why I was so upset, what they had done to me to make me lose it, I couldn’t even answer her.  Because the cops were right.  No one had hurt me.  No one ever said anything bad about me to my face.  Most people were actually really nice about it once they found out it wasn’t me.  But it still hurt.  I was only in ninth grade, and I had already been harassed online for over two years.  It didn’t matter that some people knew it wasn’t me; the person was still getting away with it.  It didn’t matter that no one was mean to me directly; I still heard what they called me.  It didn’t matter that no one had hit me; I was still just as hurt.  It wasn’t outright bullying, but it just as bad.d

That summer, I deleted my facebook.  I hadn’t been on it in months and I was tired of it.  Reporting the fake me and complaining to the facebook staff wasn’t doing anything.  But it didn’t do anything.  The fake me had a picture of me and a bunch of friends at a pool as their profile picture now, so people were even more willing to believe it was me.  I was in high school now, and while I was trying to move on, no one was letting me.

People kept coming up to me and mentioning conversations they had had with “me” the night before, no matter how many times I repeated that I didn’t have a facebook anymore.  To make matters worse, teachers were now lecturing us to be careful what we post because our profiles get observed when we apply for college.  I didn’t even have a facebook anymore, but it was still doing its best to ruin my life.

 I’m a senior now.  It’s been five years since the cyberbullying started.  A lot’s changed since then.  I grew up.  I’m more likely to throw a punch than start crying.  People go on facebook a lot less.  More people know it isn’t me.  I know it has to be one of my friends, but I don’t know who.  I know the cops will never do anything.  And I know that while this may eventually fade away, the mark it’s left on me never will.