cyber bullying exhibition

Luis Molina

Professor Amanda Reyes

English 105

Exhibition rough draft

Cyber bullying is a form of bullying that takes place on the internet, social media, or text and can often cause terrible consequences. Cyber bullying can cause kids and teens to lose their self-esteem, inflict self-harm, or even commit suicide. Thousands of kids and teens have become victims of cyber bullying for different reasons such as their physical appearance isn’t considered attractive by others, their race, their religion, their gender, or their sexual orientation. Cyber bullying has already claimed the lives of thousands of teens. I first became interested in the issue when I was in middle school and was bullied myself, I would later read many stories of teens who had taken their own lives because of both normal bullying and cyber bullying. I also watched many videos of teens who have been bullied tell their stories. I was very touched after reading these stories and watching these videos. As a person who was once bullied during his youth and an art enthusiast, I wanted to combine the two and create an exhibition that shows what it’s like to be bullied, how harsh the bullies can be, and how senseless this bullying is. I searched throughout the internet to look for art pieces that would best reflect my issue. A picture is worth a thousand words so these are the four I thought spoke the most about cyber bullying and some of these pieces were actually made by artists who were cyber bullied at one point in their lives.  

Piece #1

Summary: Lindsay Bottos was a student majoring in photography at Maryland Institute College of Art who is an avid Tumblr user since she posts most of her work on the site. The following photograph was used for her school project was later displayed in other galleries with more of her works. Since she posts many photos on Tumblr, she is open to being a target of online harassment. The piece is titled “Anonymous”; the piece is a photo of herself posing in front of greyish-blue background that she posted on Tumblr. She is a beautiful slim woman with pale skin and she is wearing a black and white striped gown, she has a nose ring piercing between her nostrils, and her short black hair is tied in a bun; the photo shows just her upper body from just underneath her breasts to the top of her hair. She took her original photo and placed a rude comment that she received over the photo. The comment is placed near the center but just slightly to the lower right corner of the photo. The comment was sent by a person with the username anonymous, the comment reads, “I can tell you photoshop your pictures to makes yourself look skinnier. Too bad I know what you look like IN REAL LIFE. Get your fat ass off tumblr and go run or something jesus.”       

Analysis: This piece is a response to cyber bullying because she is displaying how cruel and irrational other internet users can be. The commenter accused her of photoshopping her photo to make herself look skinny and called her a fat ass even though that is actually what she looks like in real life. Like many other cyber bullying victims she was harassed for her physical appearance. By displaying such a simple photo with the rude comment over it, she is showing how the comment contradicts the photo since it’s obvious that she is skinny and proves how ridiculous and nonsensical the comment is. Her photo shows how people will write a mean comment no matter what a person posts just to put another person down and cyber bullying can affect anyone. Lindsay is showing that there needs to be an end to this senseless/ridiculous harassment.

Piece #2

            Summary: This piece is titled “flying insults” and was drawn by Kristina Webb is a 20-year-old New Zealander who is also a Tumblr user and artist. She always posts her work on the site such as her photos, drawings, and paintings. In this piece, it’s a drawing of a crying teenage girl with long hair sitting in front of her lap top. The girl is drawn in a realistic black and white style while everything else is in color. Her laptop is covering her body so only her head and arm can be seen. Her head is resting in her head. The laptop is covered in stickers of the face book, twitter, youtube, and stop bullying logos. The back ground that she is sitting in front of is covered in many sticker with different insults and comments written on them. The insults and comments in the back ground read, “drama queen, failure, she’s so weird, vain, anorexic, fat, disgusting, nothing, big, crazy, emo, don’t associate with her, cow, no one understands, rumors, friendless, loser, uncool, I can’t take it anymore, nerd, social reject, loner, fool, I hate u, stupid, pig, go home, worthless, hopeless, fake, freak, ugly, weirdo, awkward, and geek. The insults and comments are all drawn and written in black, white, and red. The insults and comments are written in various fonts and styles.    

Analysis: This piece is showing all of the hurtful insults that can possibly be said to a victim of cyber bullying and how they can hurt the victim. The sticker that read “I can’t take this anymore” is what the girl is thinking, this sticker shows how a victim will just give up on life after believing that it’s hopeless and the harassment is too much to bare and starts contemplating suicide. This piece does a great job of showing the pain and sorrow a victim goes through while being cyber bullied. By placing the stickers of the face book, twitter, and youtube logos on the laptop it displays the types of sites where a young person can experience cyber bullying and who should moderate those websites. Kristina is trying to show how painful it is to be cyber bullied and that words do hurt just as much as physical bullying does.

Piece #3

Summary: This piece is titled “monster machine” and was drawn by Larry West who was inspired by his own experiences as a victim of cyber bullying. This piece is a black and white ink drawing depicting the computer as a monster and the victim as a puppet. The computer screen has a long beak with many sharp teeth, a long tongue, and large, wicked eyes. The computer’s body composes of a round, fat belly and a skinny abdomen; the neck is long and skinny which curves slightly. The monster’s arms are long and skinny with claws on the tips of the elbows, the knees, the toes, and the fingers. The computer’s hand is raised outward with strings attached from the fingers to a marionette puppet. The puppet has no face and looks like an artist’s wooden mannequin. The puppet has ball joints where a human’s points of movement would be such as the knees, the elbows, the shoulder, etc. The puppet’s arms are raised up in the air and the legs are positioned to look like the puppet’s walking. The corners of the drawing have black paint splattered on them. Below the puppet, are two computer Mice on the floor, one of them is right next to the puppet to the left and the other is to the right and in front of the computer monster.

Analysis: With this piece, the artist was trying to show monstrous bullies are by depicting the computer as an actual monster. According to Larry West, “In the early days of the modern-day internet, no one knew how to react to it. In the end, it was said they were just words on the computer by anonymous folks who were just mean, and their words meant nothing. But the hurt, the pain, and all the negative feelings were real and hurt even more than the physical scars of some attacks. This piece is how it felt when I was the victim myself. The person doing it is unknown. They're a heartless beast, fat with their own arrogance, weak themselves but controlling others with their dirty broken hands. The mice represent others ready to pounce.”  So basically, he’s saying that bullies in general are evil, heartless people and words do in fact hurt. He is using his first hand experiences as a victim and visually explain how it felt and what he thought during that time.

Piece #4

Summary: This piece is titled “under the skin” was also drawn by Kristina Webb who, as a reminder, is a 20-year-old artist from New Zealand who posts most of her work on Tumblr. In this piece, a beautiful naked woman’s upper body is shown. The piece is a realistic black and white pencil drawing. Her arms are crossed to cover her breasts. There are many various insults written all over the woman’s body including her arms neck and face. The insults written are written in black, these insults include pig, ugly, stupid, fake, fat, loser, loner, etc. Her hair is tied in a long ponytail and her mouth is covered with a strip of tape with the phrase “stop bullying” written on it. She sits in front of a white background and is staring right at the viewer. The only thing she is wearing are a few bracelets.

Analysis: In her piece, Kristina is making a statement that these insults and comments stick with the victims and hurts them very deeply. The woman being naked represents how the victims are vulnerable due to how on the internet, anyone can be harassed. The tape over the woman’s is supposed to symbolize how a victim of cyber bullying wants to speak out but is often silenced by others who say cyber bullying isn’t a real problem or tell them to get over it. The stop bullying message written on the tape represents the message that victims are trying to shout out but the tape won’t allow it. Kristina is trying to send a message that victims are silent and can’t speak out so we have to speak out for them, and these hurtful words will be stuck to victims for a long time should this harassment continue.