Unfriended

This is a real-life digital mystery, even though it's fiction.

Let's face it. It is a fantasy of anyone who has ever been cyberbullied.

It starts with a video of a girl passed out at a party, and the video, including suggestive viewpoints, was posted on YouTube. As what might happen in real life, there is a piling on of shaming and laughing at the subject. Her response was to post a video of her own: of her shooting herself in the head.

On the first anniversary of her death, a group of friends, who were part of the shaming, are trolled in a Skype call by an unknown guest who is using the dead girl's account. One by one, each of the group gets picked off and murdered online for all to see. The mystery person seems to be in control of their devices and they can't shut them off.

It's revenge on steroids.

While this movie only received one star in the cable description, I thought it deserved at least two and a half. 

Anyone who lives online like I do, who communicates mostly through video chat and Facebook, will not be able to look away. The entire movie takes place inside a Skype call and a Facebook chat. If you live in that world, you'll be able to relate.

It's a brilliant way to capture the essence of how this story line might impact the characters. The aesthetics could be better in that it was difficult to read the screenshots.

There may be a lot of people who don't understand the concept of this screenplay, not because of a generational gap, but because of the digital-analog gap. If you use your phone simply for telephone calls, you may not get this movie, outside of the creepy terrorizing part. 

But for the targets of cyberbullies, we can only dream.

Cyberbully, the Movie

Adults sometimes forget that a teenager's world view is much smaller than theirs. For the child, school, family, and friends are their world, with an emphasis on friends. These friends are most likely people they've met in school, so their world is even smaller.

When the Cliquesters zero on a target, it's fast and furious and a group assault. It's a mob mentality as friends join enemies to pile on. Most know the mean rumors aren't true, but that doesn't seem to matter. Everyone acts as if they are true. What makes it worse is when the key instigator is a fake profile that helps to egg on the mob. 

For the target, he or she feels isolated, like they are the only ones going through this. Because their world is so closely tied to what people think about them, when the Internet betrays them and they are exposed and vulnerable, they don't have the wherewithal to handle the abuse. So they internalize it. They can't stop reading what comes next. They might even retaliate with a mean post of their own, but it just elevates the assault. Friends turn judgmental and people believe the lies. Without the mental capacity to bolster their own self-esteem, the target feels lost and may see only one way out: suicide.

The target is not alone, as the lead character Taylor Hillridge (Emily Osment) discovers when she attends a group session, where she meets other cyberbullying victims. They find strength in knowing they have an ally. They also learn how to take back control of their psyche. 

The key tips the movie advises a target of a cyberbully to do are:

1. Print the evidence. Have physical proof of each verbal assault that shows names, times, and platform.
2. Block them. After gathering the evidence, one by one, go through and block every person who has trolled the feed.
3. Tell someone you trust. Whether it's a parent, adult mentor, or teacher -- make sure it is someone who you think will be sympathetic to your predicament and not sit in judgment. 
4. Report them. There may or may not yet be any laws in your jurisdiction, but the only way it can start is if someone tries to file a statement with law enforcement.

Cyberbullying is not the target's fault, no matter what they've done or were perceived to have done. The four points listed above help a target empower himself or herself against their bullies. It's a start, and knowing there is a block and delete key is a powerful ally.

Cyberbully the movie is a good portrayal of how easily the online experience can deteriorate for a teenager, or an adult. It was written by Teena Booth and directed by Charles Binamé. Kay Panabaker, Meaghan Rath, Kelly Rowan, Jon McLaren, and Robert Naylor also star in this film.

Twitter Trolls, Sharp Knives and Labor Laws: Inside the New Kids Reality TV Trend

One concern common among any television show featuring kids, though, is the intense scrutiny faced by anyone in the public eye. When Season 14 of “Project Runway” wrapped its run last month, winner Ashley Nell Tipton immediately received enormous backlash on social media, with users claiming she didn’t deserve the title, only winning because she designed for plus-sized women.

But the spinoff show has taken some measures to protect the kids.

Twitter Trolls, Sharp Knives and Labor Laws: Inside the New Kids Reality TV Trend

Twitter Pooping

+Michael Nuccitelli Psy. D. describes Twitter Pooping as: "a colloquial expression used to define the cyberbullying tactic of using Tweets to disparage and humiliate a target ... Twitter Pooping tends to be frequent insults and provocations that often use 'net lingo' to fit the harmful message the cyberbully is attempting to convey."

Tweets can be dispersed in rapid succession, much like an AK-47, by numerous people, sent at the same time.

We know there is a legion of Twitter trolls who respond with insults and unrelated garbage when they take issue with a tweet or someone's existence. Twitter Pooping actually takes that to a new elevated level. Such as if your cyberbully enlists 10 of his friends and they set out to spend the next three hours firing off hateful tweets to your @twitterhandle at breakneck speed, flooding your Inbox and Mentions for seeming eternity.

These are not just off-hand comments. This is a planned and targeted attack with one goal in mind: destroy the psyche of the recipient.

There is no thought or remorse about what the end result might be. Most of these creeps are anonymous, but often, some are not. The only power they can ever feel about themselves is behind a keyboard when they beat up on someone else, whether it's someone they know or they just decided to poop on someone at random.

  

Geotags

Everyone seems to want your location on the Internet. When you log into Facebook, open up Google, or join a new site and a prompt asks if you want to allow the site to use your location, what do you click?

Click no. Hell no.

Geotags are the geographical metadata attached to your device, that are telegraphed when you post from that device onto the Internet.

There may be times when using your location is unavoidable, such as if you want to use a weather app on your phone. It kind of needs to know what city you want the information for. That said, you still don't need to give the app your specific location, so disabling geotagging is not going to affect it.

If you open up Google maps on your mobile device, see where the arrow leads to before you open up the search bar. It leads right to the shingles on the roof of your house.

Check your settings right now on your phone or tablet. Make sure your exact geographical location is an empty box.

Here's why. When you take a photo of your kids in the back yard with your device, the geotag will publish your location right down to the shingles on your house. You might not think much about it, but what if you posted that picture on Twitter or Facebook? Then somewhere along the way, you mention a big trip you're going on. Vacation week in Hawaii. Thanks to your photos, now people know exactly what color your shingles are and that your house is going to be empty for a week.

Maybe people know you're single and live alone with a cat. That's all a sex offender needs to know after the geotags on your photographs can lead them straight to your house.

Perhaps I'm overreaching. The odds may be very slim, but why give crime a chance? Turn off your geotags. Strangers on the Internet do not need to know which house you live in. Heck, they don't even have to know the city, unless you post it.


 

Catfishing

This is the online version of a female walking down the street past any group of men who hoot and holler, who decide to follow you, who try to pressure you to respond to their catcalls and then get mad when you don't. This online version is called catfishing. They tend to start like this:

Although to this one's credit, there is more wording than you would normally see. Usually it's just "hi" and they keep sending the same message, then they get mad when you don't respond. I usually delete or block them.

But textbook definition of catfishing online is someone hiding behind a false identity who tries to lure you into a relationship. We've seen numerous versions of the offline version of this: on Investigative Reports, Dateline, and 20/20. It never ends well. It doesn't always end in murder, but it likely always ends with a parting of the funds.

Dr. Phil has listed a few things to look out for when you decide to entertain the thought of online dating.

• Fake photos.
• Above average poor spelling and grammar.
• They're ready to jump into marriage before you say hello.
• They ask for money.
• Too many questions.

If it seems creepy, it usually is a creep. Forget politeness. When you get continuous Google chat popups like the one above, or Facebook direct messages, just block and delete. No explanation or response is necessary.

Women ain't got time for catfish.

Hacking Is Life

It's happened to everyone at some point on the web. Even to those seasoned and technically-savvy veterans of the Internet.

It is guaranteed to happen to those who surf the Net without a parachute and in complete and total ignorance.

You've been hacked.

It's a good chance everyone who has ever owned a Twitter or Facebook account has been hacked at some point. How? When you don't pay attention to what you are clicking. Some of those too-good-to-be-true or sexy salacious stories come with a hacksaw. You usually know when one of your buddies tells you they've just received some weird message from your account.

How do you get out of a social hack? Change your password. Log out. Log back in with the new password. Use a complicated password, like: iReallywantTogoto1henew5tarwarsMovi7 or something half that long.

You really do need a unique password for every account. Don't use the same one across the board or something simple, like benandsandy if those are your kids' names.

Even if your computer is Fort Knoxed, you can still get hacked. Your information is as secure as the IT from the companies you deal with. If Amazon decides to save money on IT and put it into a new launch instead, unless they have a blackhacker on staff, all their information is put at risk if their IT is not as tip top as they can pay for.

Need an example, besides Sony (which isn't just about movies but also your Playstation)? Here are some biggies:

Netflix
Go Daddy, Dropbox, Nissan, Mastercard, Visa, Reuters... in 2012
Facebook, Microsoft, NBC, Twitter... in 2013
Target, Michaels, AT&T, US and Canadian governments, Home Depot, Apple iCloud... in 2014
Anthem, IRS, JP Morgan Chase, British Airways... most recent

There is no getting around it. The Dark Web, where all of this information gets sold as hackers make money on your behalf, is bigger than the Internet you are currently using.

You can't hide. Even if you decide to put a moratorium on Internet travel, you can't control what other companies do when you shop in person, or how secure your cable company's records are. You can only use best practices and be diligent: strong and unique passwords (so what if you have to write them down in a book), don't do banking from a public wifi (coffee shops, airports), make sure your computer is fully upgraded and not too old for upgrades (I don't use my Windows XP laptop online anymore), have a really good and fully updated antivirus program.