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James "Kimo"Rosen is a retired Professional Photographer living on the
Garden island of Kaua'i with his best friend Obama Da Dog.
This blog also appeared on the May 26,2015 edition
of The Garden Island Newspaper;http://thegardenisland.com/news/opinion/mailbag/letters-for-may/article_a5643934-1510-5892-9240-8cff394aab0a.html |
Kimo's World #73
The Modern Day Bully
One of the major forms of modern day bullying are comment boards that are available in almost every major periodical.
The worst commenters are the ones who hide behind fake screen names, monikers or post anonymous.
It's easy to throw rocks at someone if they don't see who you are. Commenters need to man up and if you have something to say let us know who you are, after-all you know who we (the writers) are. Whats fare is fare.
Look at most of the comments to stories and even to the letters to editors, most comments are very venomous towards the writer. A journalist named Shawn Vestal, a columnist for the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Washington wrote a column comparing anonymous commenters to monkeys "throwing poop" —
Check out the Facebook pages of any professional sports team or TV show and most comments are hateful.
Check out the editorial page in your local newspaper and forum pages. Many of the comments are bound to be mean spirited, degrading and negative.
How can we ever expect world peace when we cannot even respect differing opinions, even on a local level?
Is this not the modern day bully?
My vote is for The Garden Island Newspaper (TGI) to implement a rule that if you wish to comment you must use your legal name, same as writing a letter to the editor. This will assure for less potential legal actions and liabilities.
http://thegardenisland.com/news/opinion/mailbag/letters-for-may/article_a5643934-1510-5892-9240-8cff394aab0a.html
