Cyberbullying is the big issue of the 21st century now that everyone owns a means of accessing the Internet, be it a laptop or an Iphone or a router inside your cybernetic brain which allows you to blog telepathically. So of course America made a TV movie about it so that parents could sit their children down and scare them into throwing out every piece of technology they own after the horrific viewing experience that is Cyberbully. This little movie looked so intriguingly bad that i tried to watch it, suffered through 22 minutes, and the rest of it I learnt about by consulting Youtube reviews. Now I have my topic of the day! XD
Originally aired last year (about five years too late considering what the Internet looks like in this movie), Cyberbully is the story of a girl who gets bullied online. She also gets bullied in real life but that problem is soooo last century. This girl has a couple of friends and together they share thought-provoking dialogue about boys and social networking and the class bitch who likes to make fun of them because it's an American high school and someone must fill that role for the school to have any credibility whatsoever. I know this is just a TV propaganda movie, but the dialogue seems to recite the plot for the benefit of the viewers, rather than having the camera do that job by, you know, showing us what's happening. Instead we get:
"Have you heard from your dad?"
"I haven't heard from Dad since he had an affair and left us a couple of months ago."
"That must be why you're in such a vulnerable place right now and therefore more prone to getting upset if someone were to use the Internet to harm your reputation."
"So how about that new social networking site! I sure hope we don't get cyberbullied and then one of us tries to commit suicide which causes our parents to campaign to get the Internet legislated, triggering a debate about whether the Internet should be legislated when its up to the user what they choose to put online!"
"High school sure is hard!"
Yep. High school is hard. One of my many personalities wrote a post about it once. But the thing about high school is that nothing that happens will matter once you graduate. So suck it up and deal with it. This girl has no problem dealing with the real life teasing, it's when things get all cyber that the shit hits the fan.
So her mum (Mom) buys her a laptop for her birthday, which makes no sense because her mum is super strict when it comes to the Internet. She childproofs the home computer, forbids most websites, monitors every single thing her kids do online, all that kind of stuff. She says she bought it so that her daughter can write to her heart's content since she wants to be a journalist. But still, why spend all that money on a laptop? The girl doesn't even use it for that. She sets up an account on some social networking site with a stupid name like FaceSpace or TwitBook. The site seems specifically designed to promote cyberbullying. It has no privacy settings as far as I can tell; no boundaries or the ability to report bad stuff. It also asks you private questions like "what colour underwear are you wearing?" Seriously, what kind of site is this?
As soon as she sets up the account, her brother logs in using her password and updates her status to say "I'm a nasty slut who needs to be spanked" or something as uncomfortably incestuous. All he has to do is guess her password which is easy because it turns out to be the name of their old pet cat. There's an important lesson to be learnt here for all parents and the children they're forcing to watch this drivel. That lesson is: don't have kids; they're awful; check the condom for holes next time.
Naturally everyone starts putting up nasty comments because it's an American high school and kids are awful. The next time she goes to school the class bitch makes fun of her. Suddenly this is more upsetting than before because now it's the Internet's fault. There's another film about the dangers of the web called Megan is Missing. In that, a girl meets a creep online who kidnaps and brutally murders her. There you go, kids - an actual warning about the real dangers of the Internet, because getting tortured to death is much worse than accidentally giving someone who hates you something to tease you about.
This airhead acts like her life is ruined. But I can't tell what's changed. Some other stuff happens to her which sucks. She ends up losing her friends, the boy she likes doesn't want to go to the dance with her because he's a vampire and he's worried he'll lose control of his animalistic urges and drain her blood. Someone shoots up the school, aliens invade Earth and the dead come back to life and start eating everyone's brains - all because of the cyber bullying.
It all culminates in a rather hilarious video posted on TwitFace in which the class bitch pretends to be our airhead protagonist and makes nasty comments about her apparent promiscuity. Unfortunately our airhead protagonist doesn't find it that funny and makes a response video about how she's going to kill herself. Only one person who sees it decides to take it seriously and rushes over to her house just in time to find the girl has failed to off herself because she can't take the cap off her bottle of sleeping pills. That's right, she can't take the cap off. If only the Internet were as idiot-proof as a bottle of sleeping pills. This is the point where everyone who is on the edge of their seat rooting for her to succeed slumps back in dismay. Because unfortunately she survives.
After that she goes to some kind of cyberbullying support group. I like to imagine that while they're talking about how much it sucks to be trolled, someone next door is telling Alcoholics Anonymous about how they got drunk and ran over a child, and how they've had to live to with that guilt ever since. Why can't we see that??? Her mother tries to get the Internet legislated, but a judge or some other kind of law person tells her there's no use because the Internet has a delete button. There you go. Problem solved. We'll just delete the Internet...or hold it hostage in our recycle bin while demanding discounts at online stores. Isn't it amazing how anyone can be a criminal mastermind in today's society?!
In the end, the girl and her friends confront the class bitch and everyone in the cafeteria applauds them as they pour water on her, gazing in silent satisfaction as she melts into a puddle of cyberbully goo. The Internet is then deleted and nailed inside a wooden box which is placed in a large warehouse with the Lost Ark. Countries all over the world are seen celebrating the end of its tyrannical reign.
The movie ends and parents everywhere applaud.
And that's Cyberbully. It's a film designed to be shown in Health class. But I can't tell whether it's a warning about the dangers of putting personal information online or about how stupid people can be.
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