Do you find a difference in.. -

[DropDaBomb]

When ever I hear the term "cyber bullying" in the media I always sort of scoff a bit. The way they talk about it and describe events always seems like simple trolling to me.

I've always thought of the two as different things. For my Cyber Bullying is when people from your life that you see in person, go online to harass you, normally extending from offline harassment or in secrecy. This stuff has pushed a few under aged members of society to suicide.
Trolling is exactly that, trolling. You're not able to affect their life, the person normally brings it on themselves and it's easy to get away from (walk away from the computer).

I've always wondered if I was the only one who thought of it this way, and if so how do you interpret the terms? And on a broad question, should the media cover it in both terms?

Edit: I hit cancel post because I changed my mind but it posted it instead carry on.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I think that the major difference is that cyber bullying is culturally similar to actual irl bullying regardless of whether the people have met irl whereas trolling is quite culturally different.

First I think it is important to differentiate targeted and untargeted trolling. Targeted trolling is towards a specific individual (such as Brianna Wu) whereas untargeted trolling is what someone does on a site where they post provocative things in order to get a reaction from nonspecific people.

Generally anything involving politics whether genuine or not is trolling an usually it is directed towards loud people who wouldn't attract conventional bullies (at least with their online personas). Actual personal attacks are quite rare in trolling and it is very unlikely to end with suicide. Theoretically it could occur irl but that would likely only occur with someone with high public exposure for extremism but there are examples

By contrast cyberbullying is mostly personal attacks and will generally be towards someone who is shy and will involve personal attacks. There is no political agenda genuine or false behind it. I think that a large amount of tumblr infighting is cyberbullying rather than trolling

That being said I approve of both but only engage in trolling

 

[SPARKLETWAT]

Trolling goes into IRL if you're doing box floods, prank calls, hacking someone's company website or making a fat autistic man do things on camera for the internet to consume it.

 

[CatParty]