Cyber-Bullying is for Cowards

The growth of the Internet has brought with it some of the greatest innovations, communication tools, and information gathering abilities known to mankind.  At it’s best, the Internet keeps us informed, entertained,  allows us to connect with family, old friends, and make new friends.  In an instant we can view photos being beamed back to earth from space, read the latest news from around the world, stay up to date on politics, search for jobs, purchase music, and on and on. It’s quite remarkable given the fact that just a few short years ago we were amazed that cassette tapes were replaced with compact discs and we could record television on a VCR.

But with innovation such as this, there is a dark side that has surfaced.  Cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking have become all too real phenomenons in our society.

For fans of Big Brother this has become more and more evident over the past several seasons.  The inability by some fans who we refer to as “cat-ladies” (meaning haters) to separate the game they see on television from real life has evolved, by some, into the realms of cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking.

Of course the latest case of this was the recent incidents involving Big Brother houseguest Shelly Moore when some crazed, psychotic fans took it upon themselves to create web sites, message board posts and campaigns to intimidate and threaten her family.  These threats were serious enough that the FBI became involved.  Shelly has made it clear in her post-house interviews that she is not able to go into many details about what was done by law enforcement but we, like most Big Brother fans were relieved to hear her report that things have settled down and that she and her family are safe.  What really impressed us was the fact that Shelly handled the whole situation with grace and class further putting to shame those who participated by comparison.  It was also good to hear that the show also became involved in assuring that Shelly’s family were taken care of and safe during the height of the lunatics rants and threats.  We as fans don’t have to know everything and we shouldn’t.  Just the fact that all seems to be well now makes us happy.

Shelly has not been the only one victimized by the crazies of the Big Brother world.  Other examples include the fact that Ronnie’s wife was threatened to be killed, Natalie’s father had letters sent to his place of employment trying to get him fired for what some loonies thought were poor play by her in the house, and letters written to Dan’s school attempting to get him fired for, get this, being a poor example of a teacher for drinking beer from a paper cup on the show.  People who do these things have problems and issues that go beyond being just a passionate fan of the show.  It indicates instead a deep-rooted problem in their psyche that needs professional help in our opinions.  Not only that we would say that while these cowards like to sit in their darkened rooms and type to the glow of their monitors their demented posts, we wonder how funny they think they are when law enforcement pays a visit to their front doors?  Not so much we’d be willing to guess, and with the problem of cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking growing, we expect to see more and more involvement by law enforcement in the future.

So now let’s move on to some information and hopefully some helpful tips.  To begin, we want to show the definitions for cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking as they are in fact somewhat different.

Cyber-bullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. The term “cyber-bullying” was first coined and defined by Bill Belsey, as “the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others.”

Cyber-stalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization. It may include false accusations, monitoring, making threats, identity theft, damage to data or equipment, the solicitation of minors for sex, or gathering information in order to harass. The definition of “harassment” must meet the criterion that a reasonable person, in possession of the same information, would regard it as sufficient to cause another reasonable person distress.

Profile

Preliminary work by Leroy McFarlane and Paul Bocij has identified four types of cyber-stalkers:

1. the vindictive cyber-stalkers noted for the ferocity of their attacks;
2. the composed cyber-stalker whose motive is to annoy;
3. the intimate cyber-stalker who attempts to form a relationship with the victim but turns on them if rebuffed; and
4. collective cyber-stalkers, groups with motive.

According to Antonio Chacón Medina (“A new face of the Internet: stalking”), the general profile of the harasser is cold, with little or no respect for others. The stalker is a predator who can wait patiently until vulnerable victims appear, such as women or children, or may enjoy pursuing a particular person, whether personally familiar to them or unknown. The harasser enjoys and demonstrates their power to pursue and psychologically damage the victim.

What To Do

If you are a Victim of Cyber-stalking

• Victims who are under the age of 18 should tell their parents or another adult they trust about any harassment and/or threats.
• Experts suggest that in cases where the offender is known, victims should send the stalker a clear written warning. Specifically, victims should communicate that the contact is unwanted, and ask the perpetrator to cease sending communications of any kind. Victims should do this only once. Then, no matter the response, victims should under no circumstances ever communicate with the stalker again. Victims should save copies of this communication in both electronic and hard copy form.
• If the harassment continues, the victim may wish to file a complaint with the stalker’s Internet service provider, as well as with their own service provider. Many Internet service providers offer tools that filter or block communications from specific individuals.
• As soon as individuals suspect they are victims of online harassment or cyber-stalking, they should start collecting all evidence and document all contact made by the stalker. Save all e-mail, postings, or other communications in both electronic and hard-copy form. If possible, save all of the header information from e-mails and newsgroup postings. Record the dates and times of any contact with the stalker.
• Victims may also want to start a log of each communication explaining the situation in more detail. Victims may want to document how the harassment is affecting their lives and what steps they have taken to stop the harassment.
• Victims may want to file a report with local law enforcement or contact their local prosecutor’s office to see what charges, if any, can be pursued. Victims should save copies of police reports and record all contact with law enforcement officials and the prosecutor’s office.
• Victims who are being continually harassed may want to consider changing their e-mail address, Internet service provider, a home phone number, and should examine the possibility of using encryption software or privacy protection programs. Any local computer store can offer a variety of protective software, options and suggestions. Victims may also want to learn how to use the filtering capabilities of email programs to block e-mails from certain addresses.
• Furthermore, victims should contact online directory listings such as www.four11.com, www.switchboard.com, and www.whowhere.com to request removal from their directory.
• Finally, under no circumstances should victims agree to meet with the perpetrator face to face to “work it out,” or “talk.” No contact should ever be made with the stalker. Meeting a stalker in person can be very dangerous.

We would add to this list that dependent on the level of threat, a person should immediately contact their local law enforcement for advice, direction and their potential involvement.  Cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking are crimes, make no mistake about it.

Additionally, to report Facebook cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking, click here.  Report Facebook Violations

This is only the tip of the iceberg that we presented here.  Having access to the Internet means you are empowered to find out more information on your own as to what to do about these crimes in your local areas and we at CLG encourage people to become involved with stopping this disturbing pattern of behavior.

We also want to thank Shelly Moore personally who inspired us to write this blog post.  While it may not be much it’s meant to show that we care about her, her family and all those houseguests who decide to give up a few months of their lives to entertain us.  The should not be victimized for their stint on a reality television show.  Actually, no one should.

 

Big Brother 13 Retrospective

The Agony & The Angst

 

Final Thoughts on BB13

It’s hard to believe (actually, it isn’t) but Big Brother 13 is over.  Like many seasons before it, this installment had its highs and lows and some game flaws that didn’t go unnoticed by viewers (such as some obvious production manipulation).  In the end, it won’t be considered the best season of Big Brother, or the worst.  As someone once said, “it is what it is.”

We at CatLady Gazette are always happy when its over.  The last time we were truly excited about the game was season 10 when there was enough drama, comedy, gamesmanship and competitiveness to last throughout the course of the game.  Hopefully, Big Brother will find that recipe again.  We will hope.

Congratulations to Rachel for being crowned this year’s winner.  Talk about someone who underwent a metamorphosis!  During season 12, the cat-ladies absolutely loathed Rachel.  She was the victim of their undying hatred mostly due to the fact that she was fighting against their chosen favorite (and their Jordan replacement) Britney.  However, this season that all changed.  As soon as she aligned with JeJo and seemed to loyal, and more importantly, working towards making one of them the winner, she received all the sugar-coated love the cat-ladies could muster.  That was okay with us because you see, we didn’t mind if Rachel won the game either.  We believe she earned the victory through winning competitions and an improved social game and ultimately was the only logical person to claim to have played the best game.  Porsche was a close second.  Adam and Jordan?  Well, in our opinion they shouldn’t have been on the show to begin with but we’ve made that abundantly clear.  Rachel played a much smarter game and we also agree that she plays the game better when left on her own.  The laughable part of this is Jeff and Jordan’s claim that they had somehow made Rachel a “better person.”  Give us a break.  They need to focus on themselves before they turn their attention to others.  They had nothing to do with Rachel being Rachel and if you think they did, then you ARE a cat-lady.

Without question, our favorite episode of Big Brother 13 was the double-eviction night.  OMG OMG OMG, that was hilarious.  For the big bad-ass, suburban wise-guy competitor to be ousted by two “lesser” players, Kalia and Porsche (in his opinion) and by clown shoes, “C’MON!,” was priceless.  Jeff who continually complained that real competitors should win Big Brother was nothing more than a bitter, bullying, sore loser who carried his anger even in to the jury house.  Anyone who can’t see the irony and humor in this situation is without question, a cat-lady.  The fact that he complained also that he wasn’t even given a “chance” to prepare for the double-eviction is doubly sweet in our opinion.  We wonder if he had those same thoughts when given a bogus power during his first season to oust Jessie?  No?  At least Jeff had the chance to compete and save himself.  He lost fair and square.  Man-up Jeff.  You got got.  You’ve been okey-doked.  Actually, you just suck, lost, whined, bitched and moaned.  Hilarious.  Buh-bye!

Hopefully you won’t be back.  We’re overly tired of you.

Which brings us now to our final thoughts on the game and the cat-ladies.

We will be the first to admit that we have been very hard on Jeff and Jordan this season.  This is not only for their own behavior (entitled, bullying, bigoted, whining, complaining, non-game-play bitchy ways) in the house, but because of their die-hard sanctimonious cat-lady fans.  Or should we say, fanatics?

However, here, one more time is the difference between you and us.  We would NEVER try to invade on those houseguests lives who we didn’t like during their seasons.  We won’t post on their Facebook pages, we won’t follow them on twitter, we won’t call and write their bosses or loved ones.  They are now out of our lives and more than likely, after tonight’s final episode, we won’t even think of them again.  They’re history.  You on the other hand will hold on to your hate for weeks, months and years.  As you did in the case of Shelly this season, you may bring your frenzied hatred to new levels that boarder on psychotic.   You will stalk them on twitter and Facebook to continually remind them how much you hate them.  You will make evil, disgusting hate posts on your protected message boards much to the glee of those who think like you.  You will never understand or own the fact that you neither know these people and will probably never meet them in real life.  To you, Big Brother, the reality show, is real life.  You are a strange breed those of you who justify your existence with an all-consuming hatred of reality television personalities.  Take our advice and get off the sofa, put down the snacks, and go outside for some fresh air and exercise.  You may discover there is more to the world than what exists inside that electronic box in your basement.  Just remember the words of Eric Hoffer and if this fits you, you are probably a cat-lady: “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”  Well, yeah.  Maybe that’s all you’ve got.

So until next season we wish you all well, including all the houseguests who made up this year’s cast.  We look forward to the next season where hopefully the game will once again become the primary focus rather than a manipulated show designed to appease the cat-ladies of the world.  Big Brother’s real fans deserve that much at least. Give it to us CBS!

Meow!

 

Our All-Star Cast

Hey cat-ladies!  Take a look at the picture to the right.  WE SAID LOOK AT IT!  Except for that annoying “floater” in the center, we realize that this would be your dream cast for Big Brother All-Stars.  Aren’t they cute and cuddly?  Look at those expressions!  Like you, we’re convinced they’re just made out of magical rainbow sugar!  Our strategy in this scenario is to float between these two powerhouses but we fear our secret will be out of the bag quickly.  You see, within a couple of weeks, JeJo would be evicted.  ::::insert sad face::::  Why you ask? Well, the answer is because we have the ability to think, add and spell.  “Unfair! Unfair!,” we hear you cry.  Take heart though, you will then have an entire season to trash us on your message boards and can split the America’s favorite choice between JeJo so it won’t be a total waste of their, or your time.  Damn us anyway for being able to keep track of our clown shoes?  Who do we think we are?  Harumph!

Well, that was fun.  But now let’s turn our attention to who we really think deserves to be on the next version of Big Brother All-Stars. (Sadly for you JeJo cat-lady fans, you will be disappointed as we do not believe either of them warrant a shot at All-Stars.  Why?  Easy.  They both suck.  See how that works?).

Our selections were made carefully and unfortunately, since we decided we could only pick fourteen houseguests, we used several factors.  Our number one criteria was entertainment value.  We believe we chose people based on multiple things they had done during their seasons that warranted us wanting to see them in the game again.  Secondarily, we tried to think of scenarios on alliances.  Our picks could go several different ways in making alliances and we believe there would be smaller alliances instead of a huge house split from the beginning, again, leading to a more entertaining season.  If we were stuck in our choice, then the tried and true method of tequila shots seemed to help.

Now, take a look at THIS memory wall for Big Brother All-Stars.  We said LOOK AT IT!

Did you look?  We said, DID YOU LOOK?  What an awesome cast this would be.  Funny, entertaining, witty, devious.  That’s what we want.  No stupid twists to give someone an unfair advantage.  Just strategy, competition wins, and social game should be the ultimate determining factors in who eventually wins.  Okay, we’ll allow a twist or two.  But, with the premise that if they are potential game changing twists, all the houseguests should have a fair chance to compete in some way to obtain it.  Forget about “America’s Choice.”  We’ve proven we can’t be trusted with that responsibility!

So here, again is our All-Stars list and a brief reason why we chose these former houseguests:

Jun – we want to see that same humor and snakiness she uses on Twitter to work her way through the game.

EvelDick – Had to leave BB13 early.  Bring him back, let him play his own game!

Ronnie – Absolutely deserves to be there.  Smarter, stronger, faster Ronnie!

Dani – A real gamer.  We love the attitude and competitiveness.  Should have won BB13.

James – We expect him to dominate competitions & begin his own version of pajamajam.

Michelle – the Portuguese Princess from Providence!  Hilariously funny.  Added bonus: Pillow forts.

Eric – Give him a chance without that stupid America’s Choice albatross around his neck.

Shelly – May still be playing if not for the rigged Pandora’s Box twist.  Turn her loose on a new crop.

Dan – Dan IS “The Man.”  As sly as they come, he will make everyone raise their games.

Matt – Just don’t give him a Diamond Power of Veto, or a Kathy and he’ll stick around longer.

Rachel – Without Brendon she’s proven herself to have a better social game. Let her do her own thinking!

Jessie – The man, the myth, the legend.  Can we please give the guy a chance WITHOUT twists designed to get him out?

Danielle – Ding Dong Dani who had one of the best moments in Big Brother history.  She’ll be smarter with her goodbye messages this time around.

Chelsia – Will play a smarter, more mature game.  Watch out, she may take the whole thing!

Those are our picks.  We wish we could have chosen more but again, we limited ourselves to fourteen players.  For those of you who are irate over our picks all we can say is … so what?  Make your own list dammit!  Ours will still be better than yours so neener neener poopy heads, take that!

Cat-ladies, get your score sheets ready.  We’re quite certain you have already penciled in those you are going to hate.  The best part of this cast is that all of them will just point at you and laugh.

Meow!

 

How To Make Big Brother Better

As another season is winding down, we wanted to take a few minutes and share what we think has gone wrong and what we believe could help make the show what it once was, or perhaps even better.  Cat-ladies please be forewarned:  This list does not contain the phrase, “The return of JeJo.”  If we were to add them at all, we’d ask clearly for them to never be on the Big Brother screen again as they are in large part representative of what is now broken with the show. Now shoo.  Adults are talking.

• Get rid of game randomly selected twists that take away a player’s fair chance at winning the grand prize.  Over the past several seasons, arbitrary twists have been introduced into the game that appear to be put into place for the sole purpose of assisting those perceived to be fan favorites (for ratings).  This is an unfair practice to those players who have their game play damaged, up to and including eviction for nothing they did in the game to earn such an outcome.  Some recent examples of players who immediately come to mind who were victims of this practice were Jessie, Chima and Shelly.
• Announce all twists to viewers at the beginning of the season and in what week they will occur.  Want to reduce fan claims of “rigging?”  That’s your solution.
• No more “fans vs. favorites.”  No more duo’s.  Big Brother should be an individual game.  Either give us a season of deserving All-Stars or a season of new players.
• Do not draw names out of a bag to select POV players.  Use a spinning wheel with houseguests name on them.  For too long there have been claims that producers only put players names in the bag they want to compete in that week’s competition.  Again, a spinning wheel will reduce claims of rigging.
• Show more of what goes on in the diary room on the feeds.  You want more subscribers?  Let’s have more entertaining feeds instead of four camera’s on one houseguest sleeping.
• Stop with the “golden edits.”  It’s well known that most viewers of the show are not live feed watchers.  To edit the show to put someone in a better personality light than they actually have proven themselves to be on the feeds is not right and unfairly sway’s America’s vote for favorite house guest.  Show people for who and what they are.  We understand your concern that some things a house guest says may be sensitive but you can bleep that out.  Eliminating it as if it never occurred makes viewers angrier.
• While on the subject of editing, please try to use correct timelines.  On numerous occasions editing is done to show events on the show out of sequence.  Again, this is a manipulative effort by production for nefarious reasons, usually in order to show one or two individuals in a better light by destroying the context of the events.
• Stop giving free passes to house guests who blatantly break rules (e.g., singing, talking about production, etc.).  Impose penalties such as:

1. 1st infraction: Warning.
2. 2nd Infraction:  3 days on slop.
3. 3rd Infraction:  Week on slop.
4. 4th Infraction:  Penalty nomination.

• Announce all competitions at the beginning of the season.  When will there be mental and physical comps?  Let’s stop tailoring comps to help certain players advance in the game at certain times.  Everyone deserves a fair shot.
• Better comps.  Wow, the retreads of the comps are getting old.  Taking a quick look at previous seasons there were some awesome competitions, both physical and mental.  It appears production has gotten lazy however and just pull out the same tired old games.
• Stop listening to the cat-ladies.  We realize they are a vocal group who like to write emails and make threats but they are small in comparison to your millions of viewers who want to see a fun, entertaining, fair game.  All of us love the drama caused by the pressure cooker that is the Big Brother house.  But we’ve also seen how a small segment of crazed “fans” can bring hate, bitterness and threats to unbelievable levels.  We saw Allison Grodner’s “tweet” asking these people to stop.  Good for her.  But that’s not enough.  Big Brother should openly discredit these people and acknowledge that while they do exist, they represent a small percentage of the viewers who love the show.

In the end, we are asking for CBS to give us back the Big Brother most of us loved to watch.  Stop trying to be the Bachelor/Bachelorette or Celebrity Rehab.  When you look through the list of former houseguests who have entertained us, you will find that they were rarely cat-lady favorites.  They even hated the legendary Dr. Will (although they will deny that fact today) during his season.

We get it.  Really, we do.  A network television show exists based on its ratings but you cannot convince us that the majority of Americans are crazy cat-ladies who want to watch a manipulated show where certain people are given advantages to succeed and “win” a half a million dollars.  At present, the word “win” should be replaced with “awarded.”   We sincerely believe that if you give viewers a fair game that requires a mixture of social skills, physical competition skills, and at times, mix in some devious behavior, the viewers will turn out to watch.  Stop being lazy by re-hatching the same old same old.  Keep the show fresh and making your casting people do their jobs by providing smart, witty, funny, clever contestants.

One more thing.  Whomever’s nephew was hired to run the live feed cameras?  Fire them.

We will offer up our list of who we think deserve to be on All-Stars at a later time realizing it’s only our opinion.  If nothing else CBS, trust us when we say the cat-ladies are not the fans you need to make happy.

Meow!

 

We’ll just leave this here …

Because we like it.