Member Since: 11/3/2011
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Beliebers defaced fan-made memorial for hockey player
Quote:
A Justin Bieber fan’s concert experience took a devastating turn Wednesday night when she became the victim of a “horrible” cyber attack.
Fan graffiti was left on a pillar outside Rogers Arena after Thursday night's concert — but that pillar happened to be a fan-made memorial for the late NHL player and one-time Vancouver Canuck Rick Rypien, who died last year.
That sparked a flurry of outrage on Twitter, but one Belieber became the sole target of the abuse because her name, Simran Mann, was written inside a heart beneath “J.B Concert Oct. 10/2012.”
A girl with the same name was tracked down on Twitter and users directed abusive comments at her, like “die in a giant fire,” “I will find you and I will kill you” and “Please hang yourself, so I can destroy your grave.”
“I get this is a very personal issue — it’s a memorial,” said Jennifer Shapka, University of B.C. associate professor in the department of education. “[But] those are absolutely horrible things to say to someone.
“The level and the insidiousness of the attacks are perhaps stronger than the situation would call for ... they’re essentially talking to an anonymous person — they can’t see the impact of what they’re saying on her.”
And those impacts are “truly devastating:” anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, problems at school, substance abuse, school dropout and in the most extreme cases, suicide, Shapka said.
On Thursday, Amanda Todd, a Grade 10 student from Coquitlam, committed suicide as a result of cyberbullying.
While Simran Mann has deleted her Twitter account, “this is probably not the end for her,” Shapka said. “One can hope that perhaps [Todd’s story] can educate the other ... look at what the outcome might be for this poor girl.”
UBC associate professor of sociology Christopher Schneider said cyberbullying “needs to stop.”
“[It] expands the web of bullying,” and “amplifies harm,” he said.
“When you look at face-to-face bullying or traditional types of bullying, there might be a couple people ... that are picking on one person,” he said. “Online, this could then magnify into hundreds, thousands, potentially hundreds of millions of people.”
People who may have no connection to the issue could see it in their news feeds and partake.
“They don’t realize the actual harm that they’re doing because they have no connection at all to the person,” he said.
And although some users were tweeting death threats toward Mann, “there seems to be no immediate consequence for the people that are engaging in this criminal conduct online,” said Schneider.
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A damn mess 
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