Disengaging from a Cyber-Bully

Reader’s Question

I had an argument with someone on an online forum. This person has a doctorate and touts how much money he has and how successful his life is. He also berates those who disagree with him. When I mentioned my support of President Obama, he made a racially insensitive remark and called me derogatory names. So, I left that forum. However, this man used my email address to follow me to yet another forum and started to post me in PMs. I found out that he has also been posting excerpts on the old forum.

This man seems to have a deep need to get the support and backing of those on that old forum and to make me look bad by saying how mentally deluded I am and that I have a “God” complex. Is there a term for this kind of behavior? I used facts and supporting evidence to make my contentions in the posts, but his response has been to hurl insults and to cast me as socialist or communist or “brain dead.” What makes a person follow someone from site to site to keep an argument going and to be so vicious and relentless in their attacks?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Intolerance of the ideas, opinions, lifestyles, or identities of others that are not shared by the intolerant person is the definition of bigotry. The root causes of bigotry are still, however, the subject of much debate. From a purely psychological perspective, there is also debate about the underlying reasons for bigotry. Classical perspectives suggest that the bigot is actually an insecure individual tormented by his own lack of genuine self-esteem and his inability to come to grips with his own fears, and who feels the need to build himself up at the expense of others. Other perspectives suggest that tolerance, like any other human behavior, must be learned, and that human beings are innately prone to intolerance and prejudice until they learn better.

Regardless of the motivation this person might have for using you as the whipping boy in the discussion forums you mention, it takes two to fight. Sometimes it’s simply best to disengage altogether. That doesn’t mean that an aggressive personality won’t come after you. In the mindset of aggressive personalities, it’s not over until they say it’s over. But in fact you can put an end to it by simply refusing to engage. Over time, a creature who won’t put up a fight is of no real interest to a confirmed fighter. You see this kind of thing throughout the animal kingdom. So, even though it might take some time, disengagement is the key.

The added benefit of refusing to engage with such a person is that eventually the spotlight shifts from you as the whipping boy to them as the aggressor. Without you to compare himself to, the aggressor simply appears a bully. There is a scene in the movie Ghandi in which pacifist resisters to British rule simply stood ground without engaging. As soldiers fired on them mercilessly at first, many soldiers had to face their brutality and the senselessness of it head-on. If they had encountered resistance, they could have “justified” the fight. In the end, they could barely tolerate themselves.

You can’t control what this other man does, but you can completely ignore him and disengage from him. Rather than second-guess why such people do what they do, it’s best to avoid giving them either a forum or any inadvertent reinforcement for their actions.