Online Abuse Doesn't Kill Because It Hurts. It Kills Because It Convinces the Victim They Don't Deserve the Space They Take Up in the World.

Online abuse leads to almost 12 deaths in every 100, 000 teens. Targets are twice as likely to commit suicide than others in their age group, but if you want the statistics for adults, you won’t find them. The world is still waking up to its effects on people older than 24. We know that it destroys businesses and families, but we don’t know how many it’s killed.

Some people call it suicide. Neil Marr called it bullycide. He coined the word because he insisted the victim didn’t wield the weapon. The horde did. I agree, but most of the world does not. They’ll tell you it’s just the internet. Only sticks and stones break bones. If someone commits suicide on the basis of mean internet comments, they should’ve gone offline and found a shrink.

Those justifications miss the point. Victims don’t commit suicide because the experience is painful, even though it is. They do it because a vitriolic horde has convinced them they don’t deserve the space they take up in the world. If you’re worthy of months, or even years, of vitriol, you start to believe you deserve it. That’s all bullycide is: A shame so profound it swallows you whole. Bullycide is believing you’re unacceptable. That’s how all those useless, useless words become deadly.

When you’re sitting in your living room reading reams of rage, you begin to develop fault lines. When a wave of a hundred turns into a tsunami of thousands, it becomes well-nigh impossible to keep believing in your value. If the strangers don’t get to you, the lost friends will. There’s always a few of those in every mob, and they’re so much easier to believe.

Hordes don’t care who they target. They often choose a victim who has a mental illness or fragile self-esteem. Neither of those two things are worthy of criticism, so please stop telling me their inability to withstand online abuse makes them complicit. Stop telling them they should get off the internet if they can’t take the heat. You’re pushing a kind of ableist apartheid, and it’s unacceptable.

The only people responsible for bullycide deaths are the abusers. The only people who should get off the internet if they can’t stand the ecosystem are the abusers. The sticks and stones trope always comes from people who’ve never experienced online abuse. It’s naïve victim-blaming, and it has no place in a compassionate conversation.