The internet lets users connect and communicate on a vast level. Although the internet allows for such communication and connections, there are many cases which show bad online behavior such has cyberbullying, hate speech, and general misconduct. Today, we’ll go over a couple stories of misconduct and how it can affect both the villainized, and the villains and how we can further protect our selves using lessons from these stories.

Warning : This blog showcases the death of a minor

Jessica Logan was young, blond-haired and blue-eyed Ohio high school senior who commited suicide after her sexts sent to her boyfriend was leaked after they broke up together. She was cruelly harrassed for months by her classmates at school, who called her vicious names. Jessica would start skipping school and hide in the bathrooms in order to avoid being teased by her peers. She told her story on a Cincinnati television and her purpose was to make sure no one had to go through what she did. A couple of months later, she attended a funeral of a boy who took his own life, and took her life when she got home. The bullies, the boyfriend, and all the other classmates were not charged for any criminal accounts. This is a tragic tale of a unfair and unjustified incident.
Things we can learn from this is to check in on our loved ones and be careful what we send to people. 

Another example of bad online behavior is when an online dispute between two people playing videos resulted in a death of an innocent person from a Wichita Police Officer.  On December, 2017, a fatal swatting incident occurred in Wichita, Kansas. Swatting is a criminal charge that is defined as an act of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person’s address. The incident involved four people, Andrew Thomas Finch, Tyler Raj Barriss , Shane Gaskill, and Casey Viner,  . Casey Viner threatened to swat Shane Gaskill after an argument between them in the  game Call of Duty: World War II. In response, Gaskill gave him a fake address for his home, which Andrew Finch, a innocent , occupied. Viner then instructed Tyler Barriss to place the necessary fictional call in order to start the swatting. When the Wichita Police arrived at the location, Finch was shot and killed by police officer Justin Rapp as he was leaving his home because he believed Finch was motioning to grab a weapon. Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, Viner was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, Gaskill was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, and Officer Rapp was not charged for Finch’s death. 

As we use the internet, we cannot ensure safety on the internet, but we could have ways to prevent or lesson the chance of bad behavior. We must learn that all of our actions have consequences and even innocent people can be harmed.