Maclean's columist Eckler laments hurtful online comments
I suppose the worst thing for columnist and author Rebecca Eckler would be NOT to be talked about. And if insufficient talk is forthcoming, well, she'll provoke it. Quill & Quire's Quillblog notes that she manages to write 1,600 words in Maclean's on how people say hurtful things about her in online forums. It would take a heart of stone not to sympathize; some really vicious things are said about her online. Yet she goes quite over the top by comparing herself to cyberbullied teenagers who commit suicide.
[UPDATE: There is a story in Eye Weekly about this. See whether it makes the needle on your "so what" meter go right off the scale.
[UPDATE: There is a story in Eye Weekly about this. See whether it makes the needle on your "so what" meter go right off the scale.
posted by D. B. Scott at
2:59 pm
4 Comments:
Hey there, I don't think she is over the top in her comparison at all. It is a personal comment, so it really isn't fair for you to make a judgement on how the comments make her feel. I've read some of them, and they are brutal, absolutely brutal.
I thought I made it clear I sympathize. But Eckler, unlike a beleaguered teenager, has the means and the tools to reply and, as much as her feelings are hurt (and brutal is not too strong a word) I doubt it makes her think of topping herself, let alone actually doing it. I think that is an opinion I am entitled to, even if you disagree with it.
I felt that Eckler's piece was not a comparison to teenagers committing suicide, but that it highlighted the fact that online bullying is not exclusive to the high school Myspace set.
Fair enough; it's clear that, reading the same piece, people react quite differently. My feeling was that she was essentially appropriating the very real problem of teenage cyberbullying to dramatize her own experiences. I don't think the purpose of the piece was to highlight or comment on online bullying so much as to draw the spotlight on herself. Not a surprise.
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