Message from the Soap Box: Cyber Bullies. When does a victim cross the line and become a bully themself?

I bring this topic up because there are a lot of groups aimed at combating the cyber bullies in the indie world.  So the topic of this post is “When does a victim become a bully?”

I am in several groups aimed at combating the cyber bullies. Some are for Authors that have been bullied by people on goodreads. Some are for bloggers who have been bullied by authors (and yes that happens a lot more than people think it does). And others are for authors who have been bullied by other authors.

The ideas behind these groups are sound. Let’s face it bullying hurts people. I myself have been bullied on here by a tour group and an author. It’s not a pleasant experience.

The groups are created to give the victims of these attacks a place to talk about what happened and find out what things can be done to stop it and prevent it from repeating itself. When people in the group start crossing the line and start doing the same hurtful things the bullies are doing, they in fact become the exact thing they are combating against.. A bully.

All of these groups have the premise that the bullies are bad. They senseless attack people with false shelves on goodreads, nasty reviews for books they haven’t read, have their friends 1 star a targets book everywhere to destroy them. If they gain access to your personal information (address, phone number, work info) then shyt gets really bad and the online harrassment becomes very very real as they spam your personal information to their friends. At that point it’s no longer a case of bullying, it borders now on stalking.

When you have a group that’s supposed to be against this action, suddenly give their members the personal information of a bully, that victim then becomes a bully to.

We aren’t children anymore. We are adults. And not only that we are professionals. We are authors who want our books to do well. When you cross this thin line between victim and bully you will end up hurting yourself a lot more than you will your target.

There are better, more adult ways to handle being bullied. there are legal steps to combat it since there are laws against cyber bullying. Use those and save yourself from becoming the thing you deplore the most…

This concludes this message from the Soap Box.