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is enough!’ May she be a standard bearer for those who have to suffer at the hands of cowardly bullies who hide behind anonymised false identities while they vomit their vitriolic and often unsubstantiated ‘point of view’, provoking additional spewing of hatred and attacking from others simply ‘because they can’.
Who Got the Power? Dr Elle Boag, associate professor in Applied Social Psychology at Birmingham City University, on Jesy Nelson’s fighting spirit and what you can do to take back control from cyber bullies ) So, it’s confirmed, after nine years of being part of Little Mix, Jesy Nelson has left the building… and why? Because Jesy has had to endure unrelenting trolling and cyberbullying since appearing on The X Factor in 2011. Jesy has been targeted for the past nine years about her looks, her body shape and her voice… all of which, in my humble opinion, are odd things to target as I think Jesy is beautiful, has an amazing singing voice and has the figure that many women aspire to or would even go ‘under the knife’ to achieve. However, mine and many hundreds of thousands of voices upholding such a view has little effect on the negativity wrought by the lesser number of cruel online bullies who remain anonymous in order to spread their spiteful and incendiary ‘voice’.
Previous research has found that seven in 10 young people report experiencing cyberbullying and 26% report feeling suicidal, so clearly the psychological impact of cyberbullying impacts deeply, leading to serious mental health illness such as depression and anxiety, low selfesteem and loneliness. I remember watching Jesy speaking out about her experiences and the experiences of others in her Odd One Out BBC documentary last year and at the time wondered if it would relieve the venom that stalks her on social media platforms. Clearly the answer to that is a resounding no, but how Jesy has navigated her own ‘story’ since then is testament to her tenacity and resilience. So kudos to her fighting spirit and strength of character by saying in the most public way possible ‘enough
So why do cyberbullies and trolls do it? Well to answer that honestly, you would need to ask them… and we don’t really know who they are as they hardly step up and identify themselves. One of the key reasons that trolls ‘troll’ and cyberbullies ‘bully’ online is because they are anonymous. It has long been recognised that anonymity leads to de-individuation and subsequently all manner of negative behaviour. Just think back to any and all crowd-based disturbance – it is individuals within the crowd that cause the most harm, act in the most violent, antisocial and even criminal ways, simply because they are anonymous, and their individual actions are less detectable. It is a small number in the grand scheme of
“I remember watching Jesy speaking out about her experiences and the experiences of others in her Odd One Out BBC documentary last year and at the time wondered if it would relieve the venom that stalks her on social media platforms. Clearly the answer to that is a resounding no, but how Jesy has navigated her own ‘story’ since then is testament to her tenacity and resilience.” things, of individuals who start the ball rolling by trolling and cyberbullies continue in their wake once the poison has been injected into the comments on social media platforms. As with trolls, cyberbullies are anonymous and their actions are kept, albeit very close to the line, within the parameters of what is ‘legal’. In the UK cyberbullying is not, in itself a crime – shocking, but true. There are specific laws that might be breached by trolling someone online, such as the Malicious Communications Act (1988), the Protection from Harassment Act (1997) or the Communications Act (2003) to name but three – but how do you prosecute someone who is anonymous? Who ensures that their actions are as close to illegal as they can get, without crossing that line? Basically, you can’t. So why are celebrities such as Jesy being targeted? Is it jealousy? Or is it something else? In answering this question, I can only voice my own view, one that I have talked about for some time. It may be explained by the fact that we now pretty much all have social media and can ‘connect’ with celebrity accounts
