Woman, How Dare You?

I just saw Huffington Post blogger Gretchen Kelly's 2015 post that has gone viral again: The Thing All Women Do That You Don't Know About. I had to send her a tweet of thanks and to tell her this post was a gift to all womankind. It gives all of us validation.

What Gretchen's entry tells us is that this is the every day physical life of what it is like to live in the skin of a woman. What it doesn't include is the every day vitriol half the population faces online for merely existing.

While the offline experience is innuendos, cat calls, grabs, and outright physical abuse, the online experience is outrageously venomous because hiding behind a keyboard seems to allow the perpetrator to feel safe from repercussions. Plus, see the offline behavior, court and sentencing examples of situations that were called out, and -- because perpetrating any of this behavior against a woman is an acceptable part of society.

No, this isn't a man-hating piece. If you read Gretchen's post, she is not calling out all men, just the assholes.

Online, there are assholes and there are those who don't know what it's like because they have never walked a block in a woman's body.

If there is anything this election season has offered us (besides the need to have a shower) is that these issues are becoming conversations. No, we don't report it offline any more than we report it online -- until our lives are threatened, which is, sad to say, more often than you'd like to believe.

This may not be the experience of every woman online. It depends on how active you are online and what you talk about, ... and gaming. God forbid a woman would participate in what some young males consider their domain. It probably doesn't matter what platform you're on, although some tend to rally the haters more.

Here are some examples:

Twitter abuse, why cyberbullies target women: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23488550

Young women twice as exposed to cyber bullying as men: http://sciencenordic.com/young-women-twice-exposed-cyber-bullying-men

Why women aren't welcome on the Internet: https://psmag.com/why-women-aren-t-welcome-on-the-internet-aa21fdbc8d6#.n8m2xwjtk

We're Human Beings, Man

This is heartbreaking. You may remember Paris Jackson as the "leave Britney alone" girl when she posted a YouTube video about all the Internet comments Britney Spears was getting for some of her behavior.

She received so much abuse over her public fame that she tried to commit suicide. She was 14 years old. Fortunately, she did not succeed.

What Paris did do was take a hiatus from social media. Upon her return, the abuse resumed. For God's sake, people. She's only 18 now.

But it doesn't matter if she's 18, 38, or 78, nobody deserves the hate trolling that some think the Internet has given them license for. A pox on all of these assholes. 

The world needs more caring people like Paris Jackson, so leave Paris alone! 

Don't Blame Twitter or Other Platforms for Cyberbullying

It always baffles me when the advice given to someone who is bulled, by their lawyer or their friends, is to delete their Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Cyberbullying and trolling isn't the platform's problem. It isn't even the network privacy settings. It's the fault of the assholes who are perpetrating the bullying. Period.

Mike Klein (@kleinkleinklein) said this in a post on TechCrunch: "Online abuse is omnipresent and not exclusive to one platform over another. It’s a behavior that starts with a mentality, not a platform."

So in other words, blame the person, not the platform. Sure, the owners of the platform are held accountable to waive their magic fairy dust to rid these trolls from abusing the decent, law-abiding users. However, they are not miracle workers and face it, it you have trouble managing 200 emails a day, imagine what it might be like to manage over one billion Facebook accounts every day. It's why the reporting option doesn't always get you justice, kind of like our court systems. But for all platforms, there are two surefire buttons that will rid you of THAT bully:

Delete and Block.

I was watching one of my Facebook friend's post comments get hijacked by a single "friend" who decided that nobody else's opinion mattered but his, Instead of editing his first post and add to it (like most of us might do), he posted thought after thought, but really, they were more hate speak, trolling, and bullying than intelligent thought. I unfollowed the feed so that I wouldn't keep getting notification of his diatribe. The only reply my friend made was that he was confirming the point she made in the original post. He continued and continued.

A week from now or a year from now, when Facebook gives people a look back at their activity, will that person still stand by his diatribe? Will he be proud to see it? Or will he finally see it with the eyes of the people who do not know him, who use his posts as a way to determine his character?

You do have control as to what you post, but also on what you see in your own feed. If you don't like what you see day in and day out (as when I hear friends complain about the drama in the Facebook feeds), then get better friends. YOU choose what you see. If you like the friend but don't like the posts, unfollow them while still remaining friends. You don't have to keep them as friends, especially if you don't know them well. But when you open up your networks, if you are not inspired, educated, entertained, or even interested by the home feed, find better friends to follow who will offer you that option.

In the case of being trolled or cyberbullied, if it's an onslaught and too much to handle (as in the case of Twitter pooping), don't delete your account, rather change your notifications. You don't have to be alerted to every tweet. You can take a break, but when you do, find the strength to shake off these strangers who have no clue as to who you are and are just living in their parents' basement jerking off to Spiderman comics. They don't deserve your reaction, your fear, your sadness, or your anger. Mute them as if they are the political pundits you hate to see on the cable news station. When you see them, think about Foghorn Leghorn: "Your mouth is flapping and nothing comes out."

You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be on the platform, front and center like everyone else. These cyberbullies are just mosquitoes in a forest of tweets. Slap them away.

Who Are Adult Cyberbullies?

Workplace bullies follow you home on the computer.

Stalkers lurk on your ever post, your every digital move.

Your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse seeks revenge and talks trash about you on Facebook or publishes your private intimate photos and videos on YouTube and in spam text.

Disgruntled clients create a web page to destroy your business.

Unsuccessful job candidates seek revenge and create a web page to destroy your business.

Creditors troll your Facebook and send messages to your friends to ask questions about you. 

Strangers take issue with your looks, your name, your profession, your gender, your social status, your sexual preference, or your existence.

You don't have to go far to find an adult cyberbully. They sit in every nook and cranny of your computing devices, lying in wait, ready to pounce, just because technology makes it easy for them to do so.

@notonmyinternet shared a link to a 2015 New Yorker article that talks about how the Internet has changed basic bullying. Bullying researchers are finally seeing that cyberbullying isn't just a school age problem. It's as equally, or more, prevalent in the adult world.

The article admits: "To date, no one has systematically studied how different bullying settings affect bullying behavior..." Three years ago, when I began researching business and adult cyberbullying, there were very few links to people talking about it. The search engines would only bring up school bullies. Today, there are a handful of links, but most still revert to children.

There is a lot of room for psychologists and academic researchers to step up their game. Our lives and our economies depend on it. If you think about the impact cyberbullying has financially on adults and businesses ... if only there were more statistics. Because only then will our law enforcement have any teeth to prevent it.

Leave Leslie Alone!

Bitch, please! No, not Leslie Jones. I'm talking to you, the Twitter trolls. 

Like, really? You can't find a life of your own that you have to invest a group assault on one of the best female comedians of our time? Shame on you. 

Sadly, no amount of calling out or shaming a Twitter troll will change their behavior. If anything, it ignites them, because in their meaningless friend-less lives, their only source of being is to make others miserable. A pox on your houses.

I mean, have you even watched Saturday Night Live? Is this a woman you want to challenge in some dark alley known as your existence? She will beat the ever-loving crap out of you and not even have to stand up to do it.

That's probably the point. Chances are, the assholes behind these attacks are intimidated by the mere fact a woman exists, so in order for them to feel like men, they have to tear "the little woman" to shreds in the most heinous way possible: a rape of her digital footprint. They also know the chances of being persecuted are slim, if not none, because law enforcement is already light years behind technology and it will take them centuries just to catch up to now.

Closing a Twitter or Facebook account, turning off the computer and mobile device is not going to solve anything. The pricks are still online wreaking their wand of toxins, whether you see it or not. 

All you can do is be true to yourself, carry on with life as best you can. Yes, your footprint may have the smear (I speak from experience of a cyberbully troll) for a long time, and maybe forever. Women have a much harder time to recoup than men because, you know, misogyny. But still, we can only move forward, try and stay positive, live our lives, and beat the shit out of them digitally by posting positive shit to try and drown out their chasm of cancerous crap. 

The rest of us can help by sending digital love to the target to help lift their spirits.

Hey, Kid? What's App?

Alternate messaging apps are a fantastic tool, convenient and easy to use, but they are also a pedophile's dream. 

WhatsApp, Snapchat, KIK ... these and other messaging apps have become a mainstay in the daily lives of both adults and children. The chat/browse/share aspect of technology is not going away any time soon. 

But in using KIK as an example, the app uses names, not phone numbers, to set up an account. While you can get away with creating a fake account in pretty much any media, in the instant messaging apps, it's a lot easier because you have direct online access without going through a browser, where your activity is tracked. 

So with over 275 million users in KIK alone, it is open season for anyone with an ulterior motive. Such as when a CBC reporter created a fake profile of a 13-year-old girl to see who might approach her. It took only minutes to receive a number of sexually-motivated texts from random people who even admitted their real age. 

Robert Cairns (@robcairns), who has 25+ years experience in the technology field as a programmer, network support analyst, and Internet security consultant, works with the Toronto police on cyberbully and Internet security issues. "Kids are ahead of their parents on tech issues. A seven year old understands search." 

You can blame the app, blame the Internet and take away your kids' computers, try and sue the messaging app companies or Google, but that is never going to solve the real problem. Education is your first line of defense. 

Yes, kids may know a lot more than you do about Internet things, but that isn't your excuse for not learning about it yourself. Cairns has some tips on how to help keep your kids out of the hands of pedophiles.

Check their Internet history, but first, you need trust. I can tell you first-hand that when I was a kid, long before the Internet was born, if my mother gave me an ultimatum and told me not to do something, I did it anyway just to spite her. It's all in the approach. Just think back to when you were your kid's age.

Cairns advises against policing as a tactic. Nothing beats a two-way conversation. Teach them what they can do that is positive. Ignite their imagination. Empower them. Teach them how to use block skills; go to someone who can help.

Do something together with technology just to try out stuff and not be afraid.

Set up computer/Internet mentoring where they can ask questions. Let the stronger kids mentor their peers.

Be aware of the dangers, but don't let the dangers control your fears. Education, learning savvy computer skills that include what to look out for, using that sixth sense, and using the block and report button for cyberbullies, that is how you beat the odds.

Nowhere Safe

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. That is the problem with the ease at which the Internet and all of its tools can play into the hands of those who seek revenge and incite mob mentality. 

Bullies bully to make themselves feel like they are more important than they are. They use the Internet because it can do the most damage to someone's reputation. It takes a special kind of psychopath to create an account in someone else's name and use it to publish their own thoughts, which are contrary to the person they are impersonating. It masks the psychopath's crime and it makes the innocent a target.

This is the true story behind the movie Nowhere Safe (2014), directed by Brian Brough and written by Brittany Wiscombe.

Ashley Evans (Danielle Chuchran) is a good student who becomes the target of two mean girls who create a plan to impersonate her and make her a cyberbully. Things get so ugly, that Ashley and her mother, who is a teacher her daughter's school, Julie Johnson (Natasha Henstridge) are forced into a midnight move to a new community where they hope to rebuild with a clean slate.

It's a lesson on choices. Do you run or do you fight? Ashley and her mother chose to run. When the past finds its way into their new lives, where the whole nasty journey looks like it may continue, they choose a different route. Ashley finds her voice and ultimately gets her life back in the process.

Racist Cyberbullies Who Target Olympic Athletes -- Their Parents Must Be So Proud

Somewhere along the line, some doorknobs of society chose to wake up on any given morning (more likely a late afternoon) to hate on Olympic athletes participating in the 2016 Olympic Summer Games. Truth be told, it isn't just the athletes in the Rio Olympics. Assholes have no boundaries.

Yes, as the head of Rio's cybercrime unit Alessandro Thiers reports, this is how some people choose to be famous. 

Be careful what you wish for.

The beauty of this particular story in Rio is that these racist cyberbullies are getting a taste of fame -- of the big huge billboard kind. Yes, payback is a bitch, my friends. Their hateful tweets are being broadcast physically in billboards spread about the city. Perhaps a public shaming for public shaming is better than the weak Internet laws that are prevalent worldwide.

It likely won't stop the hateful tweets. How proud their parents must be when they drive by one of these billboards and see their son or daughter's name authoring such intense hatred for humankind. 

The thing is with the Internet, folks, there are ways to find you, even if you throw up a fake name. If someone is hellbent to pursue the ends of the earth to open a can of whoopass justice on you, once you are found out, your name will be linked to your actions for everyone to see, even your employer. 

Here is the full story about the campaign to stop these morons from their toxic attacks. It makes you think if these people are so well versed in athletics, that they feel they can hate on a Black athlete who lost an event, why aren't they in the Olympics?

Race, Body, and Slut Shaming -- Shame on You for Shaming

(Warning: I am not going to talk nice in this entry.)

Didn't your mother always tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all? Then why the hell do you think it's okay do talk shit on Twitter?

Behind every social media account is a real live, breathing human being. Yes, that includes celebrities, too. Even the trolls and bullies are real people behind their sometimes anonymous avatars. But for some reason, there are people representing the lowest denominator of society, because their lives suck, they have to make everyone else's suffer.

Now we're not talking the fun memes we see circulating. While they make fun of someone's very public error, they're not intended to seriously hurt someone. In fact, a really good meme can actually get a nodding approval from the target, such as the original Texts from Hillary. There are some very clever and humorous tweets that also play into a high profile train wreck, such as the Melania Trump speech at the 2016 Republican Convention. It's like a Saturday Night Live skit. Consider it an honor that so many people took such an invested effort to feature you. It compounds the mistake, but the furor is short-lived. There will be memes that keep their staying power, usually an image, but for the most part, there is no malice intended with these kind of posts.

When they get vile, nasty, and highly personal, that's when you have a problem. Here are some terrible examples, but they are tame compared to some:

No plagiarism here, folks. These are screenshots of real tweets, and some may even be real names. Because like we see in racism and bigotry, haters are proud of their opinions.

You don't always win if you try to engage a troll or cyberbully. In fact, it adds fuel to their toxic fire. They live for it. Crave it. You know why? It's the only time anyone will acknowledge their miserable existence. 

A lot of the targets are female and especially females who are non-white. But, when it comes to body shaming, and hell, even slut shaming, women can be the worst culprits. No surprise, really. As a female, if you've ever worked in an all-female office, there is a lot of "Ooh, she did this and that." "Did you see what she was wearing?" The Mean Girls cafeteria is a real thing.

Kudos to Jennifer Aniston for going on the offensive. It probably thrilled the trolls to start their engines, but hey, she was at least able to control her message. And she did not address anyone directly. That's the key. A shut down can work and spread like wildfire because it empowers the others who have been there. Usually, they are not directed at one troll, but sometimes they can be. When that happens and the shutdown spreads, it's a beautiful thing. The troll can't usually fight back because his toxic excrement gets lost in the positive energy.

So Dear Shamers: 

Race shamers: Our DNA roots us all from Africa. Get over yourself. Barak Obama is your very distant cousin.

Body shamers: I'll bet the last time you looked in the mirror, you didn't see Ryan Gosling or Jennifer Lawrence staring back at you.

Slut shamers: Just because you haven't been laid in decades (or see the answer to body shamers above) ... and you probably just gave your girlfriend or boyfriend gonorrhea.

How to Piss off Your Trolls

How dare you.

What were you thinking? You know when you post an opinion about anything, some troll is going to crap in your space. It might even be someone you like.

There are other Internet trolls whose mission from their perceived god is to make life as miserable and ugly as possible for others. Why? Because they have nothing better to do. They'd rather get all up in your space than find a life of their own. All you have to do is be breathing.

Some trolls are outright cyberbullies. They don't just post contrary and negative opinions or get personal and tell you you're ugly, fat, nobody loves you, or whatever. They've got to take it a step further and cross that line to cyber-crime and purposefully try to destroy your online reputation and business.

The universal response for all three types of trolls is ignore. Do not respond. They live for that. If you do, the conversation will escalate and you will have dug yourself an impossible trench. However, if the comment is really ugly, or if it is a cyberslur, delete it and block that person from being able to post in your space again.

But do you want to know what really pisses off a troll? Ignoring their existence, for one. Going about your business as if nothing ever happened, for another. What this does is two things. One: it allows you to take control of your own Internet, regardless of what others may say about you. Two: You absolutely can't let them win.

Any response or acknowledgement you provide to an ugly post means they win. So stop it. Don't do it. If you have to sit on your hands, scream at the ceiling, and chisel the block button -- never let them see they have got your goat. It isn't easy. It may hurt like hell, but your only hope of sanity is to piss them the hell off.

Weaponized Code

Cross-site scripting is used to find weak spots in your Wordpress website. It may come in the comment section dressed up as spam, where the owner inadvertently opens the door to let the robbers in. Here is how easily it can happen.



Wordpress upgrades include patches for weaponized code vulnerabilities. It's important to be up-to-date. The Askimet plugin also helps keep your Wordpress spam in place. It adds another security layer to your website. I can attest to that first-hand.

The +Our Movie Talk blog wasn't just getting hundreds of spam comments a day, it was getting thousands. One time I opened up the Dashboard and there were over 20,000 comments. I nearly cried. As soon as I downloaded Askimet (it comes with a nominal fee), it all came to a screeching halt. Spam was captured in the spam folder, where I could look through to see if there was a legitimate comment (not going to happen when there are thousands). Instead, I just empty the spam folder with one click.

Weaponized code can be used many different ways. Hacking is one. Cyber-trolling is another.

Cyber bots are set up to spam, create fake websites, and set up an all-out assault on Internet users. Code is programmed into a weapon and will hunt for certain terms. For instance, on Twitter, it might seek out the word "feminism," which will trigger a troll post that says something disparaging about women.

There are savvy individuals who create counter bots. So if a troll bot posts that they want to assault you, the counter bot might reply with statistics on violence and how to improve legislation on crime. For every cyber-troll, there is a cyber-hero.

Cyberbullying = Mental Rape

Candace Cameron Bure said it. She said what many, if not all, targets feel: cyberbullying feels like rape.

Digging deeper, Karma of the Poodle describes mental rape in a Yahoo discussion board as: "... where you are raped of your common knowledge or knowledge of your current life and have it taken from you and replaced with someone else's information done out of fear and abuse without your consent and willing participation."

Mental rape is being raped by words and images, which is the quintessential behavior of a cyberbully. A person is psychologically traumatized and it is not uncommon for depression and post-traumatic stress to set in as a result.

When someone has their digital footprint vandalized and destroyed, they experience mental rape. There is no other way to more accurately define it.

So what do rape victims have to do in order to start the healing process? The very same things a victim of cyberbullying must do.

Pandora's Project offers some advice in this post: What do do if you have been raped.

1. Find a safe environment to decompress and share your experience.
2. Solicit help from someone who has been through it or an expert who can guide you.
3. Do what you need to do to document, block, and delete your cyberbully and his or her friends from your life.
4. Report it (backed up by your physical screenshots and documentation) to the proper authorities, such as Facebook, Twitter, the police.
5. Find your way back to going about your business through empowerment. Surround yourself with positive and supporting people, find links and sites to help you expel the toxins.
6. Know that you are not alone. It doesn't matter what you've done, it does not give another person license to cyberbully or post trash about you. You are not responsible for other people's behavior.

A Girl Like Her

This story is etched in our mind, even before computers or the Internet.

I can see the clique bitch and her sidekick in my head today, nearly 50 years later: Susan and Doris. Their mission: to marginalize anyone who was not inside their little group. If they knew you liked a boy, they would recruit him. They'd invite you to parties sometimes, but you were always made to feel like an outsider, a freak. Yea, this 2015 movie, A Girl Like Her, made me grateful there was no Internet in those days. I was lucky.

Like the tagline says, A Girl Like Her is the story of millions. While this blog is mostly about business and adult cyberbullies, there is a correlation. If Mom or Dad is a bully, they imprint that behavior on their kids.

This movie ultimately shows how much the bully and the victim have in common, besides being linked to each other through torment. They both tend to have low self-esteem. The bully puffs herself up like a blowfish to make herself seem more important than she feels. The target might be a loner, an introvert who second guesses every move she makes.

Writer and Director Amy S. Weber has done a pretty good job of portraying this as organically as it can happen. It may be fiction, but you feel like you are watching the real deal, live and up front.

Everyone needs to see this movie, especially if you are a parent, a target, a bully, or any of their friends.

 

Microsoft Just Found a Brilliant Way to Lose Customers to MAC

Why Windows 10 WiFi sense is freaking everyone out - Jul. 30, 2015

If this CNN Money report is true, why on EARTH would anyone want to have this on their computer?

I am a long-time, loyal, and advocate of Microsoft. I've tried MAC computers and haven't yet warmed up to them, especially their price tag.

But this. This feature in Windows 10 is enough to make me go MAC. Seriously, talk about leaving yourself open to hackers and your cyberbully.

Microsoft, what the hell?

Winning Against Your Childhood or Online Bullies

Leonardo DiCaprio paints Kate Winslet

Success is what you would call the last laugh. Imagine if these targets had given up?

Never let someone else dictate your life based on what they might perceive as a flaw. It's only a flaw to them, to you it is your strength and your power.

So what do Kate Winslet, Eminem, Jackie Chan, the Dutchess of Cambridge, Elvis Presley, and YOU have in common?

Kate Winslet was called "Blubber" in school. Perhaps there was an internal smile of revenge during the scene in Titanic when costar Leonardo DiCaprio was painting her naked.

You will be empowered when you click this link.