TAKE BACK THE INTERNET:
Business cyberbullying affects commerce, trade, and impacts the ability to do business. This blog is about empowerment, such as what to do when you discover you are the target, show the laws that surround this issue, and how to take steps towards recovery — both emotionally and through taking back the Internet. For more information: http://debbieelicksen.wixsite.com/businesscyberbullies
The workplace can be a gut-wrenching environment for some when you have a bad boss, a job you hate, or your income is such that you need a second job. Sprinkle in the element of cyberbullies and the stress factor goes through the roof.
As the bully's weapon of choice tends to be email, texts, and social media, while those elements may seem hidden from the workplace environment, the impact it has on a company's bottom line can be devastating.
Workplace cyberbullying is seeping in your computers like a flock of locusts during The Great Depression. Trolls are hungry for power and do not care who they take down or why.
News reporter Shauna Hunt encountered a team of neanderthals outside a Toronto FC soccer game, which on it's own is not so unusual, at least for females these days. But where the story got interesting was that one of the perpetrators was fired from his job, once his employer caught wind of his ugly behavior. He and his gaggle of cavemen buddies were also banned from attending the pitch for a year.
Because the venue was owned by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the fools may end up being banned indefinitely from all MLSE events, and certainly from all Major League Soccer games at other centers.
Some might think that women can't take a joke. We can. We just don't like being demeaned, especially in our workplace.
Like Hunt says in the clip, it gets old very quickly. The string of incidents keeps growing. And with respect to the "man" in the video, I'll bet money his mother is not laughing. If she is, she is more a candidate for child protective services than mother of the year.
As women, we're mad as hell and we prefer not to experience these acts of moronism any more.
Personally, I experienced the lack of respect a different way. In the city where I did most of my reporting, the players were, for the most part, great to work with. I had very few issues with them. The behaviors that impacted my ability to do my job came from management. On more than one occasion, I'd be in the middle of a one-on-one interview with a player, who would be in mid-sentence to answer a question, when a PR director or team president, or another member of the team that wasn't on the playing field, would barge in, and interrupt only to talk to the player about something mundane. I could tell it even annoyed the player, who was forced to recalibrate his thoughts to resume the interview after the team representative finally left the scene.
The examples of the harassment of female reporters are endless. Below are just a few that will give you the idea of the working environment.
That is how +Stephanie Frasco describes being cyberbullied by an adult.
It's true that even if your intentions are good in doing, saying, or sharing something, there are people who will rake you over the coals for it. Haters hide behind the keyboard, lying in wait, for the sole purpose of ruining someone's day and there is no amount of explanation or counter-argument that will be good enough to get them to stop or take it back.
Stephanie responded to the web by posting this blog piece, to which her key advice is to just play nice.
That's probably the best advice ever. By fighting hate with love, venom with inspiration, we can change the Internet for the positive, one post at a time.
North Americans are swallowed in personal debt. This is true for many businesses.
The business cycle can be unforgiving when you're an entrepreneur. An accident, illness, death, bad employee, and a weak economy all wreak havoc on those who are barely hanging on by a thread.
Running a business isn't for the faint of heart. It does take long hours and sacrifices to get anything off the ground. Even the most sound business mind can falter on a decision that sends one's finances out of control. If there are employees counting on the job to feed their families, that adds to the pressure to make things work. As confident as one might look on the outside, the psyche of an entrepreneurs can be quite fragile. Sprinkle in a cyberbully and in some instances, it's enough to send a business owner over the edge. Canadian household debt is 163.3% of disposable income. Canada has the highest debt to income ration in the G7 countries. Over 1 in 3 Americans are nearing or experience financial disaster. Overwhelming debt and lousy incomes make many people easy targets for creditors, who use the Internet as a tool to shame them and compound their ability to get back on their feet. This is a CRIME. There are laws on the books in both Canada and the United States that address collection laws and what creditors can and cannot do. Know your rights. Here is a guidebook on how to fight back.
Unfriended is a movie that was released this week (April 17, 2015) that is penned with a brilliant premise.
While it was created for the horror genre, in reality, it could fall under fantasy, at least in the idea that every cyberbullying target will fantasize about what they might do to their own bully.
The storyline goes like this: girl gets bullied online; girl commits suicide; girl's account comes to life and haunts her bullies online; bullies die off one-by-one. Can it get any better than that?
This is not to advocate taking any action against your bully, but we can all dream.
Relationships. They take a lot of work to keep it together. Part of that effort might involve a webcam or a camera, where couples "get naughty" with each other and use the pictures to spice things up. But what happens when that relationship goes sour. What happens to the images then?
Statistics show that the divorce rate in the United States and Canada ranges from 40 to 50 percent. There are no real numbers as to the solvency of non-married relationships.
Because we know a lot of breakups end badly, because it is so easy for a disgruntled partner to use the Internet for payback, the many of the United States have specifically introduced Revenge Porn as part of legislation. This is an effort to try and protect people from having unwanted images published without their consent. Even social media is stepping in to take action against those who use intimate images as a revenge tactic.
Enter the social media prenuptual, which is actually takes care of the postnuptual should the couple separate or divorce. More and more couples are spelling out in black and white with a notarized signature that they will not engage in revenge porn should the relationship end.
