CYBERBULLYING

So something is really heavy on my heart. Like most people, I own a twitter account, and to stay in the "loop" of things, I follow a few top celebrities like the Kardashian sisters and Rihanna.

I know some of these celebrities have posed for the NO H8 campaign, which helps fight to end hate, and a lot of them speak out against bullying, but can they be doing a better job at preventing it?

Both Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have over 12 Million followers on twitter, and some of those 12 million followers are die hard fans. Fans who reads not only every tweet the celebrities write, but also the tweets written by others to the celebrity.

The problem here lies when a celebrity responds to something negative from a fellow tweeter. Almost instantly the reply sends a huge retaliation alarm to all fans to fight back in support of their celebrity

For over 7 hours last night I watched a teenage girl get crucified by Rihanna's fans over a tweet the teenager sent to Rihanna to "You are not a thug, stop it"

Rihanna replied back to the young girl: "Shut up Bitch, Swallow"

If you took the time to click of the teenage girl's page, you would see she lists Rihanna as her favorite singer on her bio, and that she is a young teenage girl from California.  The girl who meant no harm, later tweeted she wants all this to just go away.

It hurt me to hear the ugly and nasty words the fans had to say to her, I can only image how this teenager felt at the time, it was a massive cyber attack.  No one likes to be hated, or disliked, so when you have hundreds, even thousands people bashing you, it can be quiet dangerous for anyone's mental state. Not only were the fans very offensive, and humiliating to the girl, Rihanna's response took the cake.  And she [Rihanna] knew she was only setting fuel to the fire, that her fan's would get involved.

Celebrities are not blind to the fact that CYBERBULLYING exists, and it exists right in front of their eyes, literally on their page.  All the messages to the young teen has a Rihanna mention in it (@Rihanna), and if you know how twitter works, you know Rihanna reads her mentions and notifications, and this topic went on for several hours at a time, so there was plenty for her to see.

It is like having a whole gang or army behind you, defending your every word, and fighting all your battles for you verbally.

Another incident was when a 23 year old Reem also from California called Kourtney Kardashian "a bitch" over twitter, sending every Kadashian fan on a crazy hunt to bring this girl down.

Kourtney Kardashian made acknowledgement of the tweet by responding something like along these lines like go live your happy little life.  While her response wasn't bad, she knew her fans wouldn't let the young girl get away with calling their idol a bitch.

Fans wrote messages like "a person like you shouldn't be alive" "you are so rude, you don't deserve to live" Again, I watched hours go by and thousands of tweets towards this girl judging her from her looks in her default picture, to every word she once tweeted.

What the people forgot to read was her 5 word bio. "I have had three hearts" 

Reem is a two time heart transplant recipient. Her whole life she has been dealing with a bad heart, and finally in 2002 she had her first heart transplant, unfortunately few years later that heart failed, and recently September 2011 she got a new heart, a third heart.

Can you imagine this woman's struggle? Her childhood memories is filled with doctor visits, hospital beds, while waiting for a match on a new heart and yet she had to endure to read words like "she shouldn't be alive," and other horrible comments from people around the world siting how her life is worthless.

In the mist of her receiving all the back slash, I tweeted her, told her how amazing her blog is, which was also listed on her bio, and what an inspiring person she is.  I wanted to take some heat off of her, and give her some caring words to read, and all I did was pray it would make a difference in her life at that moment.

I felt bad, it hurt to hear those people say those things, words can not only hurt, but it can kill.  THIS IS CYBERBULLYING at its best, and its not going to go away until the celebrity speaks out against it, and pleads to their fans to stop harassing, the tormenting, and the insulting others for them.

I know I can't change the world, I am just one small voice, I don't have the influence of a celebrity, but the cyberbullying is happening, it is real, and it is dangerous and it affects REAL LIVES!

HELP ME BRING MORE AWARENESS TO CELEBRITIES TO HELP STOP CYBERBULLYING!