Cyber-bullied

I was watching this movie 'Cyber bully' on youtube. The thumbnail suggested it to be a chick flick which it wasn't but i got pretty caught up as the movie proceeded. ( I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to experiment with a movie that communicates a message)  It inspired me to write. And inspired me to write a somewhat similar story that happened with me a year ago.

It was just another ordinary winter night when i opened my facebook group to find my pictures all over it posted by a fake account. I was shocked because i had been in habit of maintaing privacy over my photos and although i had heard a lot about this kind of thing, i could never imagine it happening with me. Also owing to my fairly liberal outlook on life , if someone asked me to take down my pictures for security, i would laugh it off. That is totally unacceptable to me today as well, as the idea of giving up this little harmless practice of freedom in fear of 'people' is too ridiculous for my mind to accept. Nor have i ever fancied myself with the notion that the world revolves around me. I naturally expect the world to have better things to do. In the meanwhile, I have my own little fun, never playing down my looks, never playing by anyone's rules.But even if worst comes to worst i never thought a leakage of photos, if it took place would make any difference to the close circle of my family and friends.

But when it happened, seeing myself being put out like that, seeing people's ugly comments under my own pictures was  unexpectedly heartbreaking . Even More heartbreaking was the helplessness i felt . As soon as something is on the internet, it is out there for the whole world to see, no matter how inethical or offensive that stuff is, the whole world can witness it and have its own share of the joke. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it but sit there and watch. That's what i did. I sat there and watched for lack of better options. I wanted to address this issue like many other issues i keep addressing but at that point it would have been the same as defending myself against a ghost .A person i didn't know, a person i couldn't fling mud back at. A person i wasn't aware of. And what did i have to defend? Those pictures were my own, real pictures. And i had taken them. I could disown nothing about the situation, My 'image' or 'reputation' was at mercy of someone who had obviously not taken it to much credit.  That had me feeling so bad that i was ready to take any desperate measure. In the end i was able to take things in my hand , getting rid of the fake profiles which were doing that and heaved a breath of relief which was though, short-lived until someone made a video out of my private pictures and played them with a particularly offensive Eminem song.

THAT gave me a pretty tough emotional turmoil. When the initial shock was over, I played that video over and over and tried to think of myself from a third person's point of view. I did not like what i thought. I did not like the girl who was being made a joke of. Some part of me fought to reason that she is to blame somewhere.  I decided there had to be something wrong with me and that belief was cemented, when in my vulnerable period, my closest friend turned on me acting all protective and trying to put everything in black and white . What hurt was how everything started to look like i was asking for this. Like when i was putting my pictures on facebook, it was my FAULT, instead of bad luck that someone in my friends was not as faithful to me as i would expect  ( SERIOUSLY? ) and girls like me deserved that fate.
The feeling , of being bullied, of being talked about, of being misunderstood, of getting the kind of attention that you do not want, i tell you, is soo suffocating . It makes you so lonely that you want to perish. You want to abandon the world and hide. I went through this. All for the sake of , what i would regard as a 'stupid video which was a failed attempt at defaming someone' previously. But now that the situation involved me,  i was not so sure about whether the attempt had failed or succeeded, i felt so vulnerable and helpless , i shiver to remember that feeling even today.

Once it was all over and the matter was (thankfully) dealt with , i sat back and thought about what to do now. I checked and double-checked everything i had done in my life and found to no surprise, not a single harm i had done to anyone. Not a single person i had hurt or offended. Not a single enemy i had made.Then why did this happen with me? Who was my enemy?
 I never found the answer. We never do , sometimes. We never know why world treats us like an outcast at times, why people you did nothing wrong with start to hate you? Why people who know nothing about you pass opinions about you with so much conviction? or why bullies bully? Why feeding on someone's weakness or exploiting an aspect of their personality makes them happy? Maybe digging deep into their psychology will yield some answers but that's not the point. When this stuff starts happening with you, you do not think about anyone's motives behind that certain act beceause you are feeling so abandoned and forsaken yourself that you want someone to READ your thoughts, KNOW the person you are and that is all you want from anyone.

And as i have learnt with time these people who stay with you because they know you, whose opinions about you do not sway with the winds, whose feelings are not dependent on third party's view of you and whose affection isn't wavered by someone's attempt to defame you. These are the only REAL people in your life who deserve to be kept close and loved.
 
You may not agree with me but tough times always provide you with a sorting system through which you get to find the precious people who are genuinely concerned about you and tell them apart from those who are only a part of your crowd, acting their part.

So, cyber-bullying in its severe form happened with me. I emerged through it with realization of myself and the people around me. It helped me in a way and taught me to be careful in other ways. That being said, i would like to take time to acknowledge the fact that many people unfortunately, do not emerge from the shit other people give them. I wish the criminals realized the extent of influence they exert on someone's life as they feed their egos on someone's misfortune.And i wish they could be brought to justice..