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Thread: DiManno; Cyber-bullying is too mild a term for criminal harassment

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[quote=HELENNA,480282]While instinctively averse to snitch-lines, I can accept that sometimes the greater public interest justifies this kind of intervention tool. The cost of silence is simply too high.

Toronto police on Thursday took a different tack, throwing the book at a teenage boy, charging him with extortion, threatening death, making, possession and distribution of child pornography, all arising from a sexting case. The youth had allegedly used intimate photos of a girl with whom he’d had a six-month online relationship, hacking into her email account and sending the “lewd’’ images to all her email contacts after she refused to provide a video of herself.

What’s distressing is not just the boy’s spiteful conduct, his utter lack of ethics — we expect rash behavior from teenagers because immaturity is part of the youthful condition. But I’m equally at a loss by teens — or adults for that matter — who recklessly dump compromising photographs and details about themselves into the cyber mosh pit.

Amanda did the same thing with a picture of herself topless, intended for one person, but it went viral. In her wrenching pre-suicide video, she acknowledged that error. But why must I live with this mistake forever, she asked? Because the Internet is forever, and even a generation raised on social media inexplicably fails to grasp the reality of ever-after. It takes a second to send what can never be taken back.

What startles me is how quickly malevolence can spike from zero to potentially tragic. There’s a phenomenon in psychology known as “Frog in the Frying Pan’’ sensory deprivation. A frog dropped into a sizzling frying pan will immediately jump out. But if the pan is heated slowly, the frog will not perceive danger, eventually boiling to death. It’s basically an anecdotal truism, sometimes used to describe women that stay in abusive relationships as they become accustomed to ill-treatment, rather than leap for sanctuary, flee.

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