Don't Let Social Media Bullies Bring You Down!
*Irish Dancing Magazine's April 2019 issue article, partial reprint, by Julia Topper, Ph.D., edited by IDM
Irish Dance is not immune to the impact of social media. Far from it: our community has come to rely on it to help us communicate with other dancers around the world and share our love of our art and sport.
It has become far more than just being able to register for a feis online: with the explosion of social media, we can see the latest designs for solo dresses, see snippets of steps being practiced by world champs in their studios, and follow along in real time as competitions post recalls, give awards, and show off their parade of champions.
We Snapchat with feis friends we normally only get to see once or twice a year, and Facebook groups help us out with advice for buying hard shoes or finding cool feis to attend halfway around the world.
But with all the good unfortunately comes some major negatives: mainly, cyberbullying and harassment.
It comes from all sides of the Irish Dance community and does serious damage. What is cyberbullying, where is it happening online in the Irish Dance world, and how can we deal with it?
What is Cyberbullying?
The federal government website StopBullying.gov defines cyberbullying as “bullying that takes place over digital devices” and “includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else.”
'The website also notes that it is unique because we are constantly plugged in, so it can be experienced twenty-four hours a day without relief; can be public and permanent if the content isn’t removed; and hard to notice because our teachers and parents may not be able to see it as easily as bullying that takes place at school.
Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are some of the most common places that this bullying can happen.
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Instagram Bullies
Instagram is a great way to share dance photos, videos, and memes, and there are dozens of Irish Dance accounts that share amazing content every day.
Unfortunately, they are often targeted by bullies through the “ask me a question” feature in Stories, direct messages, and comments on posts.
Photo: Instagram has many fake accounts where people often are found bullying others
Interviews with Irish Dance account owners revealed several stories of harassment by other dancers and even owners of a dance school.
As one account owner told us, “I uploaded a video of a girl dancing about a year ago and just recently I got a DM saying to delete the video and upload someone else instead…they gave me a deadline to remove the video and post the photo they wanted up or further action would occur…I was scared at the time as grown adults were blackmailing me so without questions asked, I went and did what they said.”
In other cases, owners of accounts were aggressively asked to reveal personal details about themselves, were sought out by followers at competitions, and one girl received mean messages making fun of her dancing after she posted a video of her current steps.
One account owner had her followers harassed after she posted pictures of solo dresses they were selling: “At one point, I was posting dresses for sale on my account…I had an issue with another account because they were personally messaging the owners of the dresses I was posting saying very rude things about the dress, “Your dress is so ugly it will never sell” even about the appearance and size of the person! This happened to several people, so I had to message the person asking them to stop harassing my followers.”
