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David Mathew
disclose this information to the police, and Rob was reluctant to involve the police. He now wishes
that he had involved the police, and much earlier on.
It is somewhat ironic that a piece of work that Rob had authored earlier, during the year in which
everyone seemed happy, had been on the subject of bullying. Thus it was that Rob had some
recourse to information that he never thought that he would use practically; now that his health had
been affected (headaches, anxiety attacks, vomiting) he looked back on this work and at some of the
references therein. He was alarmed to note how little of what he’d written could be used in his own
case. For example, victims of cyberabuse are advised to block emails or remove names from
contacts; but how is this possible if one’s bully is also one’s manager? Similarly, when a YouTube
‘joke’ had been sent to everyone in the department as a link, with the single line in the body of the
email that read ‘One for Rob…’ and the film contained content that addressed something personal to
Rob, the victim was unsure of how to proceed. After all, everyone had been sent the joke film. How
was he meant to say that he alone had found it offensive without appearing as a crybaby?
Eventually Rob screwed up the courage to approach a Union representative. Next, on his eventual
return to work, he reported the cyberbullying to his manager’s manager, even though he suspected
that the latter would be futile. So it proved: the manager’s manager merely told Rob that his
perception was wrong and that what he thought was happening was not happening at all. It was all in
his mind: his tormentor didn't mean him any harm, and so on. Rob was flatly informed that
cyberbullying did not exist in the Institution for the simple reason that it was not acceptable. This was
the extent of the mitigation: it does not exist because we say that it not allowed to exist. (Surely this is
the workplace equivalent of a child holding his hands over his own eyes and assuming that no one
can see him because he is now in darkness. It is workplace equivalent of putting fingers in one's ears
and chanting: Can't here you! Can't hear you!)
There followed months of meetings (while the counselling continued) and Rob was eventually forced
out of the Institution with a payment of several thousands of pounds and a copy of a contract that he
was obliged to sign that said that he accepted this payment as a redundancy package. Needless to
say, the contract said nothing about bullying: Rob, or rather the man whose real name I must not
disclose, had effectively been gagged on the subject, legally, for ever. If the title of one of Slavoj
Žižek’s many papers – namely, ‘Is this digital democracy, or a new tyranny of cyberspace?' – was not
applicable enough in this instance, then let us take a glance at what the author has to say. ‘Our social
identity, the person we assume to be in our social intercourse, is already a "mask" that involves the
repression of our inadmissible impulses,’ Žižek’ writes. ‘The fact that I perceive my virtual self-image
as mere play thus allows me to suspend the usual hindrances which prevent me from realising my
"dark half" in real life. My electronic id is given wing’ (web article).
3. Unpatrolled boundaries
When cases of cyberbullying are of a severity to make the news (ref the Houghton case,
NetFamilyNews 2009) there is often a reference to the anonymity (or attempted anonymity) or the
perpetrator. The idea is for the audience to recognise the sly and insidious fashion with which the
bully reached his/her victim. Arguably, however, the case where the bully is completely upfront and
'open' is worse. In cases such as this, it becomes a matter of misdirection and stealth. The bully
knows enough about the victim to be able to hurt him by using languages/images that might be
regarded (by others outside the dualogue) as innocuous enough. This serves, of course, to make
matters worse. If the bully is hurt by words/images that might be innocent in an uncontextualised
situation, the bully is thought to be 'too sensitive' or 'not tough enough'. It represents another slur on
the bully's character, and now a wider audience is allowed to join in.
The workplace bully is an abuser of power, whether this power is actual (where the bully might have
influence over someone’s career, for example) or supposed (where the bullying has been left alone
because it is easier to accept than the challenge to its existence would be). Either way, relationships
in the workplace should be governed by the same sort of boundaries that survive in any other
relationship; and where cyberbullying has been ignored we see a clear example of unpatrolled
boundaries. No one is checking. According to Wenger (2000), members of a community are bound
together by a collective understanding of what their community is about; they hold each other
accountable to his joint enterprise. In the absence of a possibility to maim or kill physically, the
workplace bully’s only real ‘weapon’ is the use of technology, and the only real target the victim's
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