Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
Insulting someone online and bullying aren't the same thing, necessarily. I see cyber-bullying more as humiliating someone publicly using the Internet to do it. I think most cyber-bullying happens with people that also know each other in real life, so the bullying can have real impact.
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Insulting a person is a form of attempting to isolate one person by exposing qualities that are supposedly negative. Isolation on forums such as these is basically the same psychological set-up as being isolated in real-life society. When someone goes out of their way to isolate someone socially, then that's bullying.
One petty insult isn't really bullying in real life either, but when someone constantly goes out of their way to insult another person and make that person feel down, then yes - that is cyber-bullying, in the same way that it's bullying in real life.
Humiliation is also a big part of it, but if someone feels isolates on a forum like these, then they'll most likely feel pretty humiliated. When it comes to people knowing the victim, I'm not sure if that's necessary for cyber-bullying. There are many college online communities, for example, where students will go online anonymously and insult their peers. Many people are ganged up on and bullied on these communities, but they never know who it is that does it.