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My post about the horrible new cyber bullying game and the brave young lady who spoke out against it gave me incentive for this and my next post. I was always intending to write one or more posts about cyber bullying and after last week, this is as good a time as any.
Like I have done with several topics, I have decided to look at cyber bullying through the books I often cover on Peaceful Rampage. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no cyber bullying in either "We Need to Talk About Kevin" or "Endgame." In Jodi Picoult's "Nineteen Minutes," the only instance is when the bullies spam their victim's personal email to a girl he likes all around the school. That leaves my own book, "He Was Weird" and Simon Lelic's "Rupture." It's the latter, I'll focus on in this post.
If you aren't familiar with the story, "Rupture" is about a teacher who is bullied by both colleagues and pupils to the point where he snaps and carries out a school shooting. The police detective assigned to investigate the shooting uncovers something called the "Bum Blog," which is written by pupils and hurls insults at this particular teacher. What's worse is the fact that the Head Teacher knows about this bullying blog but allows to go on because of free speech. Simon Lelic only treats us to a few highlights of some of the things written in the "Bum Blog" but it is enough to let us know that this blog is nasty. A clear cut case of cyber bullying and it leaves the detective with little doubt as to why the teacher shot up his school. Further proof that even in fiction, cyber bullying stinks.
To buy He Was Weird, go to https://www.amazon.co.uk/He-Was-Weird-Michael-Lefevre/dp/1909740942/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489443538&sr=1-1&keywords=he+was+weird
Published by Michael Lefevre
