Rebecca Sedwick, cyber-bullied to death

I’ve been thinking a lot about cyber-bullying lately, which should not be a surprise as I have been on the end of a cyber-bulling campaign that’s lasted for well more than a year.

However, cyber-bullying has also been on my mind because I have been reading about this horrible example of cyber-bullying in the New York Times, which led 12-year Rebecca Sedwick to commit suicide by jumping to her death.

In jumping, Rebecca became one of the youngest members of a growing list of children and teenagers apparently driven to suicide, at least in part, after being maligned, threatened and taunted online, mostly through a new collection of texting and photo-sharing cellphone applications. Her suicide raises new questions about the proliferation and popularity of these applications and Web sites among children and the ability of parents to keep up with their children’s online relationships.

For more than a year, Rebecca, pretty and smart, was cyberbullied by a coterie of 15 middle-school children who urged her to kill herself, her mother said. The Polk County sheriff’s office is investigating the role of cyberbullying in the suicide and considering filing charges against the middle-school students who apparently barraged Rebecca with hostile text messages. Florida passed a law this year making it easier to bring felony charges in online bullying cases.

“A coterie of 15 middle-school children.” Let that sink in for a moment.

Bullies were often bullied as children. Was little Mark Koldys a victim in his childhood? That would explain a lot. Hell, that sweater alone would be worth slapping him over.

Just like analog playground bullies, cyber-bullies don’t work alone. Bullies can’t work alone because bullies are, essentially, cowards, pure and simple. Bullies most often become bullies because they were bullied as children. When it becomes their turn to be the bully, they need the mob mentality to give them the courage needed to attack.

Which brings us full circle to my coterie of cyber-bullies: The Flying Monkey Squad.

The Flying Monkey Squad — and that would be primarily Mark Koldys, aka Johnny Dollar, and Ashley Graham, aka Grayhammy — needs the mob mentality to support their cruelty. And, make no mistake: Cruelty is the exact reason The Flying Monkey Squad exists. The mob mentality allows them to cackle and laugh at their latest, cruel attacks on whomever they decide is the Enemy of the Day.

Sadly, I am almost always Enemy of the Day. Nary a day goes by they don’t Tweet about me. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their Twitter feeds [Johnny Dollar & Grayhammy.] Looking at their feeds will demonstrate better than anything I could type how they act like a coterie of obsessed cyber-bullying 12-year old school girls.

Like 12-year old cyber-bullies, they pick and probe for a topic that will get a reaction. One day it’s teasing me that I can’t afford the Harry Nilsson Box Set because I mentioned casually on facebook that it was not in my budget. Duly noted by the Flying Monkey Squad, who used it as an attack.

Then later, when they didn’t get the reaction they were hoping for, they thought dissing Harry Nilsson might piss me off and bring me out. So, that’s why one day they spent hours calling Nilsson every name they could think of.

More silliness: You know how 12-year old girls will also make fun of people’s looks? That must be why The Flying Monkey Squad returns to the topic of my beard over and over again, because that’s how 12-year old girls attack. The Flying Monkey Squad even got James Rosen to make fun of my beard, which must make him 12-years old as well. You’d think that my laughing at all their beard bullshit — even to the point of creating a photo album on facebook, called My Beard Over The Years, filled with epic beards — would make them realize that I already know I have a beard and that their japes don’t bother me.

But, no. They even made fun of my beard again the other day — just like 12-year old girls would do. It clearly demonstrates their crazy obsession, because Bitstrips is just a bit of fun I have on my facebookery and neither Mark Koldys or Ashley Graham are among my facefriends. [In fact, they keep their facebook walls hidden.] However, because nothing gets by The Flying Monkey Squad (clearly my most faithful fans) even my facebook tomfoolery is not beneath their cyber-bullying. It’s HIGH-LARRY-US they’d spend any time tricking up an image. It’s HIGH-LARRY-US they think it’s a clever attack. But then, again, I’m dealing with 12-year old girls in The Flying Monkey Squad who are obsessed about my every facebook and Twitter utterance: