Have
you ever been attacked through social media? It doesn’t seem like a harmful
tool until it’s used hurt someone with whom you are personally connected.
I
don’t use Yik Yak because of the negative connotations I have heard associated
with it, and what happened last month confirmed my fears. A good friend of mine
from high school took a screenshot of a Yak that was obviously singling his
Tourette’s syndrome in an offensive manner. Instead of ignoring it and moving
on, he posted a mature response on Facebook:
“To
my non UCI friends who couldn't see what happened today/tonight: I was given a
bit of a speed bump in the mid morning after my probability class. It looked
like someone was scared I was going to break the curve for the class, so they
went on the social media app, yik yak, and talked smack about my Tourette's. I
decided to give a very Vistamarian response to the strings. I posted my
response on 3 class facebook pages and it got 600 + likes and counting on all
three of them followed
by lots of fan mail and friend requests... here was the post and the photo
below:
Hello
all, I’m positing this string of posts from Yik Yak to the class Facebook page
because they were regarding ME! Firstly, I want to give everyone a brief
introduction to Tourette’s syndrome. Tourette’s is a neurological condition
that causes individuals to have certain “ticks” (i.e. uncontrollable habits).
The “weird noise” that the people on the Yik Yak string were referring to was
my tick, which happens to be a noise that sounds like a strange hiccup. Before
I go any farther, please know that this string had no negative emotional effect
on me personally. I’m extremely proud of the person that I am today and I have
no shame whatsoever about having Tourette’s because it wasn’t a life choice of
mine. Regardless of my feelings (or lack of) about the string, whoever started
this string should be completely ashamed of themself because it is strings like
this that make tons of young adults across the country commit suicide. And
would you really want any association to a suicide? The reason why I wanted to
direct this to everyone’s attention is to show that the general majority of UC
Irvine does not tolerate this kind of behavior. We are a thriving and a diverse
university that embraces everyone regardless of gender, sexual orientation,
mental conditions, etc. Unfortunately, there are a countable number of people
on this campus who are also affected by strings similar to this. And I can only
hope that more people will take the initiative to drill into our Anteater
community that such behavior is not acceptable! Lastly, I hope that people who
are put down know that there are tons of students on campus, like me, who do
care about everyone’s wellbeing and are here to help; all you have to do is
ask. Thank you and goodnight!”
His
courage to take a stance against this bully on social media is inspiring.
Instead of using profanity to take out his anger on this person, he decided to use
his response to inform everyone about his condition, and prevent this
misunderstanding from happening in the future. The beauty of social media,
other than the irking posts on Yik Yak, is that it can be used in this way as
an educational tool to spread empathy towards medical, cultural, spiritual, and
many other human conditions. The sad reality, however, is that the world of
social media is used for more harm that good. With rare posts like that of my
friend, we are only given a small spark of hope that this will ever change.
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