A while ago I wrote a piece about how a lone cyber-bully had set-up a website/blog from which (under a cloak of anonymity of course) he could write quite nasty personal attacks upon people he disagreed with when they had written on the subject of radio. My original article is here.
In order for him to internally rationalise that he was actually doing no harm and was justified in all he was publishing, he initially announced that he was a crusader. His crusade was to ‘destroy’ (his words) anybody who he had unilaterally declared had wronged ‘Radio Caroline’. Once he’d noticed a few people, even those on the ‘same side’ as him, had spoken out condemning his nasty work, he re-rationalised his position. From this point he declared he was providing perfectly acceptable satire and parody.
With a great effort he did actually manage to provide a few items of satire and parody, but very quickly he slipped back into his relentless direct bullying of those he’d decided should be punished for being different to him and his view of the world.
Again people stood up to him, trying to explain that what he was doing was wrong. This made him feel quite isolated. Very typically, as happens all so often in these cases, he turned to self-grandeur. His pretended his posts were coming from multiple contributors. He pretended he had a following of like-minded bullies slapping him on the back after he’d issued every missive. He didn’t want to admit that he was alone and isolated, he wanted people to believe he was part of a movement, a party of people having a great time together.
He also spent some time trying to bathe in the luxury of anonymity. He relished the fact that people were wondering in public who he actually was. He even wrote a piece rationalising why it was imperative that he remain anonymous to continue his work as a self-appointed vigilante akin to Batman. He really loved this rationalisation. It made him feel good. His ego was being self-stroked like it had never been self-stroked before. He was on a roll which was able to lead him forward to writing articles about how he was Robin Hood and all good people were contacting him in order that he could carry out missions for them against those he’d decided were worthy of being hurt or abused.
When this didn’t work and no new actual idolatry for his bullying came, he then pretended that he was merely an innocent webmaster, a king of innocent parody and satire, now trying to deal with evil people who were definitely not him, honest, but had been writing some pretty evil things on his innocent parody non-evil innocent website. He declared to the rooftops that he was now championing the fight against these nasty people who were writing cruel things on his website. The website went quieter and for a while became less vicious and cruel.
He couldn’t help himself though. Every now and again when he was losing an argument on a board dedicated to discussing ‘pirate and free radio’, he would scuttle back to his bullying blog and let rip (anonymously of course). The true colours of the cyber-bully are never too far away from the surface.
To this day, he retains the split-personality via his blog, trying different tacks to scare or frighten his victims and their families, whilst at the same time self-celebrating his self-declared grandeur and promising greater things are on the horizon.
Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t yet know exactly what is really on the horizon when it comes to karma. Let’s hope it’s a little bit kinder to him and his nearest and dearest than he has been to his victims.
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