It begins in childhood; when a child gets out of line, he should be corrected by the adults in his world. The adults should be older and wiser and have the means to correct the behaviour, or at the very least, make an impact. Today, all too many parents, teachers, church and other youth workers hide from that responsibility. The result is adults who still have the manners of a child. Rude, self-serving, stingy, mean, the entire gauntlet of bratty emotions all residing in the grown-up psyche of the product of the over tolerant adults from his past.
The problem is, now that you have a spoiled adult, what can you do with him? He throws fits that result in lashing out at others, exhibiting childish behaviours with larger overall results. These cowards sit at work, or to the side in social circumstances, flicking in pot shots, trying to undermine so-called friends or co-workers. Normally the actions are clandestine, effecting themselves positively, while tearing down others. Sometimes it is overt, being openly hostile and rude.
The internet provides a new medium for the unruly adult. There is great concern over how children are treated on the net, when adults have as much to fear and more, for all of the things that go on to attack identities and infect computers, and there is little proof that adults are any more well equipped to handle it than the children we protect. The spoiled grown-ups represent another threat, a threat to peace of mind when they start personal attacks and character assassination from behind the anonimity of a keyboard.
In fact, with the web, nasty, defamatory comments and attacks have the potential to reach anyone who knows or may know you. Once the attacks are made, they are committed to cyberspace forever. With redundant backups of systems, once something is thrown out there, there is no retrieving it. Most instances do not allow for you to delete or edit your comments once made and even when it is possible to erase the rantings of the rotten adults, it has been seen by someone, even if it is only you, and the attack has had an effect.
When these people want to get personal and ruin you, a few choice words sprinkled here and there can be done in all apparent innocence, and people who have never known you personally can have an impact on your life that leads you to disasterous outcomes, when others read and buy into the lies and slanderous things your sometimes anonymous detractors have to say. So one maladjusted person attacks and even though they are stopped, the negative posts have been read, and innocent observers now have the wrong ideas about you and act on it, causing you more damage without realizing that they have been lead down a false path.
Replying to the slanderous attacks has little effect. It causes the childish ones to dig in their heels and reiterate the propaganda that they started with, all while remaining relatively safe behind their keyboards. It’s an overly developed form of bullying, and not acceptable. In this age when tolerance and acceptance are preached from all corners, it is too bad that the detractors can’t learn to accept whatever it is that causes them to knock you down in an effort to elevate themselves.
What these people need are spankings, or some form of correction that they never received as children to discourage them from bullying, gossiping, fighting and otherwise trying to ruin other peoples lives or activities. They need to have their computers taken away to keep them from spilling their garbage onto others.