Welcome Readers to Kid-Safe Productions’ first Official Blog.

For our first blog, we thought it would be good to start by naming a “trait of the month” to capture what we’re mostly about here at Kid-Safe Productions.  “Compassion” came immediately to mind. I mean, where would we be without compassion? In fact, that’s really not a difficult question to answer when we look around.

Compassion is an essential component before anything else. Without compassion, we can’t sympathize or empathize. We can’t make any true and meaningful changes in our own lives without thinking first, compassionately about others and how these changes could affect their lives and our environment.

And then, of course, there is the abuse of compassion.  Take for example, the troller.  An online “bully” who’s mission is to visit various public RIP and mourning pages to add – on purpose – insensitive and hurtful comments about the subject of the page. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.  Some of us have no doubt already “met” and maybe even engaged a troller.

My Experience With Trolling

I recall visiting a facebook page of a young teen boy who had recently committed suicide due to bullying.

Clearly, the deceased young boy’s friends and family had created this page to give the public a forum to voice their grief, and to express their compassion and sympathy. I myself visited the page not just to leave my condolences but also to see if what I could learn about the boy who, despite having a full life ahead, chose to forego it due to the hurtfulness of bullies in his school. Memories of my own teen bullying experience drove me to the page too. I wanted to know what made me the same as, or different from this lost boy. I was looking for answers.

If used properly, this facebook page could have been an excellent healing tool for many people.

When I arrived, I saw that the site had many uplifting and positive messages … and right alongside those messages were the trollers’ shocking expressions of, among many insensitive thoughts, a “thankfulness that the world was rid of one more [derogatory remark]“.  A few people responded to the troller’s insensitivity in comment replies.  The troller retorted defensively, and used the opportunity to add more hurtful comments about the deceased.  Stunned, I continued to read in disbelief as the site was hijacked by this individual. With expert precision, the troller managed to extract negative and hateful comments about himself, all from perfectly ordinary people who had only gone there to mourn.  The troller had drawn them from their peaceful, loving thoughts of compassion and engaged them directly in an all-out brawl of words; complete with swear words … on both sides.  At one point, I could barely distinguish who the real troller was anymore as everyone was in complete attack mode.

And yeah, I put my 2 cents in too.

Until I suddenly realized the pain and anguish this must be bringing the family. My compassion at that moment? Overwhelming. I deleted my comment and left the page. I had a sick feeling inside.

As I’m sure you can tell, the mission of trollers appears to be nothing more than the entertainment of themselves through the deliberate enragement of readers in order to focus the attention directly on to themselves.  Make no mistake it’s not just any kind of attention the troller wants. It’s the down and dirty negative attention they seek. And they usually get it, until an overwrought friend or family member, undoubtedly, now more deeply in mourning than before, musters the strength and courage to arrange the blocking and deletion of hundreds of negative messages.  Jamie Hubley’s own RIP page (Jamie was another young teen who recently committed suicide due to bullying) exists now as nothing more than an eerie, comment-less empty page with a solitary photo of him. I’m sure it does little to comfort anyone anymore.

Recently, an internet troller known as “Nimrod Severn” was outed by the BBC in England and was bluntly asked “have you ever thought about the people that you’re hurting?”.  You hardly need to hear this guy’s response. He was void of any compassion and also seemed quite proud of himself. And yes, he most certainly did use swear words to fortify his answer as well as to voice his position on what he unapologetically considered to be his “right to free speech”. He demonstrated questionable intelligence by stating he wasn’t concerned about possible jail time for what he did and continues to do, citing “9 weeks in jail” as “nothing“.

Sigh…

In any case, you can be certain never to see another comment made by Nimrod Severn again, as I’m sure he’s already changed his handle and no doubt continues on as if nothing happened…

Or maybe not.

Maybe … just maybe he will actually think about his actions now and …

sighhhhh.

Compassion To Deal With The Lack Of It

The only thing I can really say about trollers, and pretty much most all bullies, is that they obviously need us more than we need them and I would encourage us all to simply ignore their comments when we run across them. Clicking on “report” or using anti-abuse options available on the site we’re visiting will be more effective than giving them a piece of our minds. Think about it, when we do that, we are, literally, GIVING THEM … a piece of OUR minds! Let’s keep it for ourselves instead; along with our integrity. As a wonderful side effect, we can stick to our compassionate purposes while surfing the net.

What’s Your Take On Compassion?

So, It’s decided.  “Compassion” is truly important.  It can be more than just a trait of the month. Let’s make it our trait of the year … and maybe beyond.

During the next 12 months, we will talk a lot more about compassion and we’d like to hear from you on the subject too as often as possible.  Let us know some examples of compassion that you have seen or experienced, and tell us what it means to you in your everyday life.

Thanks for Reading and Writing!

Uh, and if there are any trollers wanting to leave their special brand of comment, we’re not likely to respond.  “Heeling” ourselves may be one of the more effective methods we can use to “heal” our experiences and the experiences of those we love from the rampages of trollers … and bullies alike.