back to article UK charity acts on YouTube bullying

A UK charity has launched a channel on YouTube to encourage kids to stop putting up with bullying on social networking and video sharing websites. Assorted celebs like Ronan Keating, Girls Aloud, Danni Minogue, and Patrick Stewart are included in a video urging children not to put up with online abuse. Kids are reminded that …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    It's all good and well but...

    When the government bullies UK citizens and foreign countries, what sort of an example does that set?

    Indefinate detention without charge for "terror suspects" and threatening developing countries with sanctions, that seems like a bully attitude to me, pick on those weaker than you...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Ronan Keating, Girls Aloud, Danni Minogue, and Patrick Stewart?!

    what a bunch of toss. and yet more evidence of the fathomless idiocy of the internet. so, you're being abused on line, how will you cope? to whom will you turn? fear not kids, who better than a few z-list arseholes (and one world-renowned actor) to take you gently by the hand and say "there there". better still, just turn the fucking machine off and do a jigsaw or read a book.

    people aren't just wankers to each other on the internet, it occurs in every facet of life. just so happens the internet is more convenient.

    as dennis leary once said "life sucks, get a fucking helmet".

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Yes, OK but why...

    Using a few celebs will raise it above water for a while, but it soon sinks again...anne diamond's cot death thing as example, how prominent is it now? no bus stop ads, news stories etc, like it's ok for kids to die now the celeb has left the building?

    A web site with information is good, but lets face it, tell someone about it online and get sh*t kicked at school by the bullies never helped solve it. if you complain, the bullies know who you are, so do their mates...you need help and support after, not like crime victims get, offender gets counselling, guidance, holiday abroad and house with car, victim gets higher insurance premium and forgotten completely.

    Oh BTW, Patrick Stewart is well recognised by over 4 generations, unlike girls aloud who rate as jazz mag stars

  4. Solomon Grundy

    How can this happen?

    How can you be bullied online? At what point can you not cut them off and really, what are they going to do?

    Bully: You suck Tommy, I'm going to kick your ass!

    Emo1: STFU.

    Billy: WTF did you say to me? Better watch your mouth.

    Capt. Jean-Luc Picard: Freeze holo-deck. Tommy you must move past your unhappy parents and learn to stop bullying people. The only positive that comes from your bullying is my being cast in these public service messages.

    Emo1: You made me cry Bully. I hate you, but I love you.

  5. Chris Collins

    Role models?

    If your role models are Ronan Keating and Captain Pickard then you deserve a beating. Plus, did not one of the Girls Aloud have a problem with black people? Does beating toilet attendents up whilst hurling racist abuse at them count as bullying? Or are we supposed to gloss over that fact?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bullies are people too !

    You see bullies are actually cowards inside..

    If you put a message on a website telling them how bullying makes you feel they will realise that they are making you sad and stop it.

    When you are getting your face pounded into the floor, tell them that you feel their pain, they don't need to be afraid and that you love them. When you recover conciousness, remember it hurt them more than it hurt you.

    Practical advice is essential to deal effectively with being bullied. It will empower you and make a big difference to the situation.

    My advice is, when you are getting your head flushed down the toilet, keep your mouth shut.

    Failure to take such good advice may leave you with the feeling that the law of the jungle is still in force and you will need to react accordingly. We wouldn't want that now would we ?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Meh.

    Who cares about "online" bullying? Is there even such a thing? It's quite simple really. Educate your kids before letting them use the internet and sites like Emospace, facebook and the likes, or better yet, bar them from them altogether. They're a waste of time.

    Patrick Stewart can get away with this because he's Picard, and therefore immune to any criticizm. Ever. The rest can F right O and spend their time on something more productive.

  8. adnim

    Well

    This development frightens me. I shall certainly curb my on line bullying now. What was once a source of immense pleasure and the only reason to actually have Internet access: The ability to abuse others with little recourse, is now closed to me.

    The knowledge that I had reduced my victims to a cowering mess filled me with the most exquisite pleasure. And now it seems my victims will have the support of a UK charity, backed by such paragons of virtue as Danni Minogue and Girls Aloud. Well that certainly puts an end to my on line abuse activities. What's the point when my victims are going to respond "You can't bully me any more, Ronan Keating is on my side". As I have such monumental respect for these towering intellects, I will stop my bullying immediately. It's all very, very clever. I can see on line bullying will now become non-existent.

    Well I must go now, I have a dog to kick.

    Seriously:

    Surely a few lessons to the meek on how to say/type "fuck off and die retard" will go a great deal further to curb on line abuse than the ministrations of a charity backed by a handful on non-entities.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. Neil Casey-Johnston
    Thumb Up

    ...has anyone actually watched the You Tube channel?

    ....some posters seem to think online bullying is about a cyberspace slanging match. It's not. If you look at the campaign it refers to physical, schooltime bullying, videoed and uploaded to You Tube - and the ensuing humiliation that is caused.

    Just imagine your child having their head kicked in, filmed and then posted online while you sit back knowing people are 'gloating' in this form of entertainment. Maybe you just change channel and forget about it....

    This initiative is designed to protect the most innocent and vulnerable amongst us - the young - it deserves appraise, not criticism (and not all charities can afford to have Brangelina as their key sponsors so let's forgive the Z list...).

    Like many good causes this may not have the desired effect on the bullied nor the bullies but if it makes a difference to one child's suffering then I think it is worth its while.

  11. mahoney

    Captain on deck.

    If Picard asked me to, I'd walk from one side of hell to the other, wearing nothing but gasoline-soaked underpants. If Jean-Luc thinks it is an important issue, it must be extra-important.

    I'm not sure, but I think I wish I was Riker.

  12. Neil B
    IT Angle

    Well, that's my daily dose...

    ...of criminally ignorant, self-righteous, sanctimonious bullshit for Monday. Tomorrow I'll choose another random set of Register comments and the job'll be a good'un.

  13. Steven Foster
    Unhappy

    @Neil Casey-Johnson

    Unfortunately (or fortunately? I don't know) I haven't had the pleasure of seeing these Videos, but If the YouTube admins were as efficient in removing such videos as they are in removing "Copyright violations" aka 2 minute amusing clips/opening sequences/AMVs of your favorite shows, then I doubt this would be a problem.

  14. Nathanael Bastone
    Paris Hilton

    Well..

    "The organisation is calling on kids to put their own anti-bullying video messages on to the YouTube channel."

    They better be pretty sure of themselves, speaking out against bullying can be dangerous to your health.

  15. Jack Prichard

    Opposite, ehh, ?

    "playground bullying is a no-no now but what you do online is ok. In fact the opposite is true - "

    Sooo, playground bullying is OK where you can actually injury people but online bullying where to stop being bullied all you have to do is switch off your computer is bad and should be stoped, good to have that cleared up.

    What the hell is this? Crap 2.0?

    Jack

  16. lglethal Silver badge
    Coat

    The real problem is

    That kids are taught that what happens at school is the be all and end all of your life. Dont go well at school and your lifes never going to amount to anything. Get bullied at school and its going to go on your entire life. No wonder kids are bringing guns to school!

    As for this particular charity, a simple form the kids could fill out which sent an official complaint to youtube to remove the offending video written in the same form as a copyright violation would see the offending video removed quick smart. Remove dickheads receiving their 15 minutes of fame and you remove the majority of the problem.

    I honestly dont see why bullying is considered such a huge problem now, it existed when we were all kids and was probably worse. The difference is that we grew thick skins and realised that all those dickheads who were doing the bullying would still be working at the local BHS/Walmart/Big W for the next 15 years whilst we did something with our lives. Why dont the kids of today realise that?

  17. Neil Casey-Johnston

    Time to take responsibility....

    I saw a Panorama documentary called Children's Fight Club a few months back which investigated bullying and posting video online - what shocked me the most was not the fact that this goes on, but that Google/You Tube refused to intervene by removing offending content. Katherine Whetstone, Google UK Head of Comms said 'it was up to the community who use the site to flag up something if they thought it was inappropriate'. The underlying suggestion being that people are merely capturing real life on film.

    Nearly 20 years ago camcorder owners did just that by filming obviously staged 'stunts' to be shown on 'You've been framed' (more about earning 250 quid than 'respect' I would guess). The internet is just the new medium.

    But I cannot help but wonder if you had no way of broadcasting such violent content, there may be less desire to film it and possibly even less bullying in the first place...

    Sure there will be the civil rights crowd saying 'you cannot censor the internet' but we all have to have a sense of responsibility for what is decent and acceptable and I would expect this to start with the media owners.

  18. Dave Harris

    @adnim

    "A few lessons to the meek..." Jesus, could you get a clue in clueland wearing cluemusk dancing the horny clue in clue mating season? People are bullied not because they're meek and don't have the confidence to say fuck off, they've bullied because some wanker thinks being bigger and ready to use violence thinks that makes them a bigger person. Strangely, the skinny kid with glasses will often opt out of a kicking (I did).

    My great revenge was bumping into someone who'd non-physically bullied me for years at school in a bar in London, and reminding him what a cunt he'd been to me at school. In front of his mate. Or colleague. Or boss. Or client.

    Boy, that felt good.

    @Neil CJ, you speak a lot of sense. Chapeau.

  19. adnim

    @Dave Harris

    roflmfao.

    No people are bullied because they allow it to happen. I was bullied at primary school, and despite being beaten up several times, I would not take the bullying. I always fought back, and I always came off worse. I too was that skinny lad, but the bullies soon gave up knowing that I could and would hit back. They came to learn that although they were bigger, stronger and harder than me, they were not hard enough to avoid a bloodied nose, a black eye or a kick to the bollocks.

    Bullies are bullies because they get away with it, as soon as it hurts to be a bully even a tiny bit, these dick wad cowards stop. Of course there are psychopaths everywhere who will just raise the ante. And it is hard to stop a bully unless one is prepared to go at least as far as they are.

    Secondary school was pretty much a repeat of primary school. Only here there were bullies that would stab you for fighting back. I was not prepared to go that far, so avoidance in these cases was always the best policy.

    I wonder if some would see the diatribe spouted in your first paragraph as a form of bullying, or just an inane attempt at humour? Whatever, I found it highly amusing, and don't consider myself bullied at all.

  20. Dave Harris

    @adnim

    Wasn't trying to have a go at you, only at what you were saying, and if you think that's a diatribe, you should see some of the stuff on the Graun's CiF pages.

    Bullies get away with it because they can, because people educate their children into a 'don't get involved, kid' mindset when they see it happening to other people.

    I'm pleased for you that you were able to fight back physically, and do some damage while you were at it. 'Nuff respect. Trust me, that sort of bullying I've fought back against all my life, and continue to do so (much to friends', and wife's, consternation). The trouble is that physical bullying, the 'I'm gonna kick your fuckin 'ed in, you ain't 'avin no kids' type isn't even the half of it.

    When I talked about violence in my first post, I wasn't necessarily talking about physical violence. No, the more pernicious problem is social bullying, which goes beyond "eurgh, she smells!' or 'you're talking to him? But he lives on Chav St'. It's the sort that, when carried on for years, seriously damages people and their perception of themselves, ultimately, in cases, leading them to have no self esteem whatsoever. Not a good place to be.

    I'd like to continue this offline, if you're willing. www.wavysworld.com, my address is on there somewhere.

  21. adnim

    @ Dave Harris

    I get your point. I remember the psychological bullying too. And I agree, a much more pernicious beast than the violent kind. My self esteem, confidence and self respect was severely injured as I child by bullying and other forms of abuse. It wasn't until my early twenties that I began to understand that my peers at the time of my childhood, and some adults had helped forge my poor self image. I wish I had seen this sooner. It was only the physical bullying I fought against as a child. The psychological bullying I did not recognise until it was too late. My lack of self confidence in a social setting did not fade until my late twenties.

    My "few lessons to the meek..." statement was meant to reflect the attitude needed to combat this particular kind of bullying. The lesson being to get the victim to recognise bullying for what it actually is and equip them to say in all confidence "Your bullying/words/bullshit means nothing to me". Victims need to be educated to the point that they understand the problem lies with the bully, and that the bullies are the ones with the defective personality.

    I have been made tough(more mentally than physically) and stubborn by my life experience so far, it does sadden me when the weak are preyed upon. In fact it makes me fucking angry, for there once was I.

    I see that we pretty much agree here, I should have been clearer with my "lessons to the meek" statement.

    Being somewhat introvert, inept, damaged, and lacking many social skills. I shall decline your offer of off line discourse. No offence intended.

    respect

    adnim

  22. Dave Harris

    @adnim

    None taken

  23. Igor Berger
    Stop

    I have been bullied

    But I thought back! Igor The Troll

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