Ian made a plan to get back at Mike for telling some personal secrets about him. He created a fictional profile on a social networking site so he could carry on a fake online romance with Mike. The cyber romance went on for weeks. Mike was hooked by a person he thought was a student at a neighboring high school, a friend of his friends. At that point, Ian told all their friends about his trick on Mike. When asked why he did it, Ian said, “To teach him a lesson.”
Eric gets a lot of pressure from his parents to do well in school. Other kids in school tease him because he tries so hard but still gets bad test scores. He gets instant messages and text messages during the day and at night. The word loser is in most of them. Eric thinks he knows who is behind the messages: Alexis, the most popular girl in the eighth grade. To get back at Alexis, Eric sends her this message: I’m going to kill you for doing this. Your friends, too.
Kevin sends his friend José a short video he made at home—a reenactment of a famous fantasy movie scene. José, laughing at how Kevin looks, shows it to some other boys at school. The boys laugh at Kevin too and decide to post it on a video-sharing Web site. Millions of people view Kevin’s video. Nasty comments are posted. Every day, Kevin goes online to check and sees more comments like “idiot” and “fat nerd.” Every day, he goes to school and hears more cruel comments from his classmates.
A group of girls were fighting with one of their friends, Nicole. They created a “Rate Nicole” group on a social networking site. They posted embarrassing photos of Nicole from middle school and high school and invited their hundreds of “friends” to join the group to look at the photos, and tell Nicole how she stacked up. Cruel and crude comments were posted on the group’s message board. One message said that some girls were planning to beat up Nicole. At school, Nicole got text messages on her cell phone saying, “Take a look at what everyone thinks of you.”