Ditto’s Video Bloggy Thingy: Comment Bullys

Hi Everybody – Ditto here, and for this week’s video bloggy thingy I wanted to talk about something I call ‘Bullying by commenting’.

I have a lot of videos, a lot of blog posts, and I spend more time than I care to admit filtering and moderating and blocking and reporting posts, to make sure that my videos and posts are safe and family friendly. I do have pretty thick skin, and I know that for some reason, a cute furry orange monster who wants to promote online safety and positive online experiences for kids is a prime target for some of these people, but it still gets to me after a while.
One thing I want everyone to do it think before you post something – you might think your comment is ‘just a joke’ and you might genuinely not mean anything hurtful by it, but think about it and try to put youself in someone else’s shoes, someone else who might not ‘get the joke’ or share your sense of humor, especially if the ‘joke’ is about someone’s appearance, or religion, or race, or is saying something abut them that is not at all true.

I was able to confront someone recently who was constantly posting really hurtful things to my facebook and youtube pages, and I asked her why she was doing it.  She actually said it was just a joke and saying stuff online wasn’t ‘real’ – she apparently really thought that, and I had to tell her that no, it was very ‘real’, and saying those things were not a joke, there was no universe where they would have been considered ‘funny’ or ‘witty’, and that all she was actually  hurting people – not just me, but anyone who was reading my profile or the comments under some of my youtube videos.  It was sad, really, that she hoestly thought she wasn’t hurting anyone or doing anything wrong…

Also, since I know none of my fans or followers would be doing these things, I did want to say that if you see hurtful or hateful posts on anyone’s pages or blogs or videos, report them.  If every time an online buly posts something mean, they get reported as offensive or as spam and they get their accounts suspended or closed, they’ll stop doing it, because it will become too much work for them to continue.  If they dont’ have an audience, there’s no reason for them to keep up the efforts.  I’ve seen it work a number of times, so the more people we have doing it, the happier and safer we’ll be.

Well, that’s it, I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season, and I can’t wait for New Years!!  It’s going to be fun – I think I’ll do a midnight video…  assuming I’m not sound asleep!!