At what point is it cyberbullying?

As someone who is chronically online I have picked sides in internet drama that had nothing to do with me. Why? Because I thought I had all the information. And if it’s online, I felt like I had the right to judge who was “in the right.” Sounds ridiculous right? That’s kind of what cyberbullying sounds like.

But I think this is something a lot of us do, and constantly on a daily basis. We see one clip, or one comment, and we assume it tells the whole story—point blank, period. I’m here to say that’s a really dumb way of thinking. Why are we forming such strong opinions on situations that don’t even concern us?

Social media makes it incredibly easy for people to become bullies, I know I for one never expected to say that but it’s true. Take the situation between Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber, for example. After Gomez posted a TikTok about her eyebrows, rumors started that Bieber and Kylie Jenner posted a video making fun of her. From there, the internet went crazy. Bieber was accused of being a mean girl and even copying Gomez But then it flipped. Hailey herself became the target of bullying, hate and online harassment and to this day it’s still happening.

Cyberbullying has become completely normalized. Remember in elementary school when we had assemblies teaching us not to bully people online? Yeah, clearly that didn’t stick. We forget that influencers and celebrities are still real people just like us common folk.

But let’s be real—not everyone has good intentions. That brings me to the Anna Paul and Mikaela Testa situation. Anna is known for promoting body positivity and mental health. She even started her own skincare brand. But Mikaela, who has been receiving hate and death threats for years, recently started
exposing Anna. She shared personal experiences, messages, and evidence—claiming that Anna’s brother, Atis Paul, harmed her and that Anna is protect-
ing him while marketing to a young audience and based on this information alone I already believe I should be on Mikaela’s side.

What I’m trying to say is, we don’t really know these people. Not celebrities, not influencers. They show us what they want to, and we fill in the rest. Like go look at Wattpad and that in itself shows how much we think of people, we already believe we know them but we don’t and I believe we never will.

It’s like what our parents and teachers always told us—be careful who you trust. The world is scary, and it’s way too easy to believe someone just because their life looks perfect online. The sad part of all this, influencers and celebrities are not the only ones getting cyberbullied. It’s like the saying goes, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it. These are real people with real emotions. If you don’t like what you see, block them.

* This only reflects the opinion of the author, not of the newspaper as a whole.