Anti Bullying week 2018 is November 12-16th and Pineapple Support is launching an online campaign to help tackle cyber bullying, combating negativity with positivity.

“Being bullied is oftentimes thought of as simply having to put up with unpleasant behavior. A more realistic perspective is thinking of bullying as a traumatic, torturous, and systematic destruction of a person’s self-worth and self-belief. The damage inflicted can be devastating.”

Social media plays a huge part in the life of every person working in the adult industry; twitter in particular is one of the most popular sites as it is the only mainstream platform without censorship. When a performer opens a Twitter account it allows their fans and any one of Twitter’s millions of users, to interact with them, they become instantly accessible.
Small thoughts are published often without due consideration and once out for the world to see, it is too late to retract a statement possibly said in anger or with a few too many wines in the system. Public reactions to single posts have resulted in textual attacks from strangers, fans and peers. These attacks can get personal and incessant.

In this TED talk Monika Lewinsky speaks of her experience with cyberbullying and how compassion helped to combat shame – The video is 20 minutes but a wonderful watch.

The recent examples of cyber bullying have been in short, disturbing, with young men and women taking their own lives due to the way in which both the public and other industry performers have treated them. We should never underestimate the power of words and the effect they can have, particularly if a person is already feeling vulnerable.

This effect works both ways and Pineapple Support is starting a revolution of kindness and compassion. The #BullyBusters campaign combats the negative remarks of cyberbullies by encouraging others to leave positive comments, to reach out to individuals and show support. This should be done without engaging in any conversation with the bully or with any reference to the bully’s comments.
If you see someone being bullied, simply write something nice about that person and #bullybusters to encourage others to do the same.

 

 

While researching for Bullying Awareness Week we came across some useful blogs about what to do if you or someone else is being bullied on social media, the links are below.

https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/cyber-bullying-and-online-abuse

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-harassment-cyberbullying