How to Know if Someone is Cyber Bullying You on WikiHow

Cyber bullying is very, very common these days. On websites such as Facebook you can easily unfriend or block people that might be bullying you, but on other sites it might be harder to get away from cyber bullies. Here are some tips to know if someone is cyber bullying you here on wikiHow and what to do about it.



Steps


See if they leave an excessive amount of messages on your Talk page: Some messages are ok, but 10 or 20 or so in a row is a huge red flag. That might be the first sign that someone is a cyber bully and that they intend to make you their next victim.
See if they leave jokes on your page for you to see that might be possible sexual harassment. That is a clear sign of a cyber bully.

Try to ignore this person as much as is possible. Any attention you give them will only feed into their very strange obsession with bullying you or online stalking you.
Notice if they make a lot of "major edits" to your articles to "punish" you for ignoring them. It drives cyber bullies crazy to be ignored, because they thrive on being able to have power over others, so they will make you notice them one way or another. One way that they do this is to make major edits to your articles and practically rewrite and undo everything you have written. If you won't reply to them when they write on your talk page, they know you will respond to them trying to rewrite your articles. This is a desperate measure on their part simply to get attention from you. They want you to get angry. But no matter what they do, continue to ignore them. Don't encourage this kind of manipulative and controlling behavior.

Tell normal people that you maybe have be-friended to help support you. You can't fight a cyber bully alone. Most of the time, they absolutely will NOT listen to reason. You may try to nicely tell them to leave you alone or stop sending you messages, but for whatever reason, that seems to be impossible for them. Get others to help you knock some sense into them, if that is possible.

If you are Christian, pray about any cyber bullying that you are going through. Ask God to help you where you cannot seem to help yourself.

Realize that there are thousands of crazy people in the world today, so interacting with one online is highly likely. Every city has about 100 or more registered sex offenders, so you might be interacting with one online and not even realize it. This is all the more reason to pray about your situation, and pray for your cyber bully. Jesus says that we are to pray for our enemies.

Try to not let the cyber bully affect you. Keep your cool. Don't let them get under your skin. They thrive on getting a reaction out of people. It is their number one source of entertainment to ruffle your feathers if they can.

Know that cyber bullies are usually very lonely and sad people. The reason they bully others is because negative attention is better than no attention. In the same way a child might act up and cause trouble if their parent doesn't pay enough attention to them, so a cyber bully will act up to get attention.


Tips


Ignore the cyber bully if you can, as much as you can. But sometimes that doesn't work.
You might need to be more firm with them to tell them that certain things are not ok.
Understand that a bully becomes a bully because they were once bullied themselves. It is displaced anger from things they have gone through in life. They can't get back at the person who hurt them, if it was a parent etc, so they expel their anger onto you instead, in any way they can. It is like the kicking the dog syndrome in psychology. At work a man's boss may pick on him so he blows up at his wife, and so his wife blows up at the kid, and so the kid kicks the dog. Make sense? Don't let someone make you the dog. :)

Knowing what causes a bully to act the way they do might help you to have compassion on them rather than get angry at them.




Warnings


Never, ever, ever give out your personal information online. Never give your phone number, address etc. Even if someone appears to be "Christian" or you think they are a good person, that doesn't matter. There are hundreds if not thousands of child molesters in churches all over the world. Someone acting like they are Christian can sometimes just be a cover.