“Poor girl, you said one lie, now you have to live with it.”
“There’s nothing Gossip Girl likes more than a good fight.”
“And who am I? That’s another secret I’ll never tell. You know you love me — Xoxo, Gossip Girl.”
These aren’t just silly lines from the popular CW television drama “Gossip Girl,” which revolves around privileged high school students who get anonymous text-messaged scoops on recent scandals and threats — it happened here at our school for more than two months before being recently taken down, and it is the kind of thing that must be taken seriously.
During December break, an unknown student, possibly several, created an Instagram account called “gossipgirlofshs.” The account seemed intended to spread nasty rumors about certain students in clearly personal attacks.
With more than 100 followers (most of whom were Saratoga High students), “Gossip Girl” asked in her account biography for users or followers to send in “interesting gossips” for “her” to post anonymously. Instagram users, tempted by the option to be anonymous and unaccountable, could send in any gossip that they hear about their peers, with no regard for the truth or for their feelings.
Despite the ubiquity of social media, it comes with many costs. What we use for efficiency, entertainment or simply communication can turn into a forum for cyberbullying, which was exactly the danger of gossipgirlofshs.
Although Gossip Girl did not publicly post the gossip that she received, the account had forwarded several private direct messages to users of Instagram, one of them to an underclassman the Falcon spoke to on condition of anonymity. She received a post recounting every last detail about her behavior at a specific party that she had instantly regretted attending. It also threatened her, saying that “she needs to stop, or else sh*t will go down.”
The victim of this message reported Gossip Girl to Instagram, as the post made her feel “incredibly uncomfortable that someone knew something so private about [her] and was so willing to spread it through Instagram.” Feeling threatened and “creeped out,” she revealed the post to a few close friends, who told her to ignore it because the message was only private and fortunately did not get spread to other students.
Even though she is attempting to move on and forget about the message, she still feels unsafe walking on the same campus as Gossip Girl as well as the person who sent gossipgirlofshs the message.
There is a clear correlation between anonymity and cyberbullying. Under a mask of anonymity, people feel powerful, knowing they can say whatever they want without having to worry about being accountable for the consequences or encountering victims face-to-face.
Moreover, the moderators of the gossipgirlofshs account — who were also anonymous, of course — had the complete power to post whatever they want, no matter how credible or unbelievable the rumors or “tips” actually were.
Why was gossipgirlofshs created in the first place? It might be that Gossip Girl could have simply sought attention to boost her self-esteem — she probably felt insecure about herself and fed off of the tips that users sent her. Either way, she did not deserve any validation for posting these tips, as they had no credibility whatsoever.
Of course, this was hardly the first time people used social media for cyberbullying. Take ask.fm, for example, a social networking site in which people answer harmless questions about themselves from anonymous users. Whenever I would visit my peers’ ask.fm accounts, I realized only a select few are using the site for its intended purpose. I scroll through derogatory interrogations or insults, some along the lines of: “What is going on between you and _____?” or “You’re kind of stupid and ugly. Lol.”
True, the students and askers could just be immature or inquisitive or nosy. But no matter what the intention of the forum is, “anons” always have the power to make threats and offensive comments.
In order to solve this rampant problem, students should instead focus on more positive pages like “Saratoga Compliments,” where the moderators make sure that nothing derogatory is posted for anybody to see, though they can sometimes misinterpret sarcasm. On ask.fm, I have also seen victims tell the anons to stop sending intrusive questions in their response, or report the anons to the website. Other users should also stand up for those insulted by the anons.
In Gossip Girl’s case, all she did was trying to spread rumors. Students, aside from reporting her to the school administration or sending her messages to stop, ignored the account and did not give her anything to spread as they should have.
Gossipgirlofshs was deleted as of Feb. 8, no longer invading people’s privacy and threatening them. It is almost admirable that Gossip Girl finally put an end to the damage that she had created through forwarding tips that she received. The account spreading threats and rumors, however, is not a one-time-only situation. Hopefully, students can all learn from the end of Gossip Girl and not be tempted to post deceptive gossip under anonymity-cloaks of their own.
