> This article is about someone who suck his neck waaaay out, and got his head bashed in for it. Don't do that.

No. No no no no no no no.

You're saying what happened to him was justified, or that it should be expected. This is wrong. Nobody should have to change their life to avoid being abused. Instead, we as human beings should stop the abuse. Here are some examples of your position put in other situations:

  Don't dress like a slut and you won't get raped.
  
  Don't be out and gay and you won't get gay-bashed.
  
  Don't look weird and people won't treat you like shit.

The article is about a man who sat on a bench with a typewriter. He didn't "stick his neck out". He did not invite people to abuse him, whatever you think. What you are doing is a textbook example of victim blaming. And i'm not angry with you; I just want you to know this position is exactly the mentality that perpetuates abuse. Try to blame less and be more supportive, because the only way we can stop abuse is to speak out against it and show we won't tolerate it.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.

   Instead, we as human beings should stop the abuse. 

you can't be serious. Tell me, how do you intend to elevate the bottom 0.1% of humanity?

If you pretend like it doesn't exist, you will get burned. If you didn't know and you got burned, then you have my sympathies, but there is nothing that can be done.

What you are advocating is the continued abuse of victims because they should have known better. Your defense of this is that you can't do anything to prevent bullies or abusers. Here's why that's wrong.

1. 'there is nothing that can be done'

There's lots of things that can be done; they're just not things you care about, or things you want to help with. That doesn't mean things can't be done.

We can educate people on why bullies exist, how to identify them, and how to stop them. We can show in the real world the effect of bullying, and the effect of stopping it. They do this now in small programs for some schools, but it needs to be expanded.

We can also lead by example. As adults (well, some of us are adults anyway) we can show bullies and victimizers that what they do is not acceptable, and we can hold them accountable for their words and actions. Not only can we address them specifically, and treat each other with respect, 45 states have laws on cyber bullying. If common human decency doesn't work, we can report them to law enforcement.

2. 'the bottom 0.1% of humanity'

Bullying exists in all walks of life in different ways. And i'm not talking elevating, i'm talking educating, and protecting other people. There is nothing wrong with trying to protect vulnerable people.

Why would you advocate that people should be hurt? Whether they 'pretend it doesnt exist' or not, it's still wrong, and because there's something wrong going on, we need to work to make it right, not just throw up our hands and say "oh well thats what happens when youre a hipster" !!!

You might not be entirely aware of the scope of the problem. When I said the bottom 0.1%, I was being generous.

How much social education do you think it takes to make socipaths not sociopaths? I am asserting a fact. Most actual bullies are really just mildly, or even completely socipathic. and socipaths can not be cured.

Anti-social factors that manifest as socipaths have an incidence of about 1/100 in any given population. So of the several hundred people you saw on the street today? Maybe 2 of them would have no problem stabbing you in the back for a nickel. The population of my town suggests that approximately 2,300 residents are socipathic. My school likely had ~15 sociopathic kids. I've personally known 2. What kind of education regime did you have in mind?

and about the hipsters: For every innocent caught in the crossfire of ridicule, there's at least a thousand more narcissistic children who were just attention seekers. They posted online about how important they were, and were ridiculed for it. That process was necessary. People need humility. The Subject of this article emulated those children exactly. Whether he deserved it or not, that's what happened.

> Bullying on the internet is trivial, you arn't trapped, you arn't forced into these situations. You can hide if you want to.

Yeah, just stop going online, it's so simple! I know almost your entire social life is online, and the identities we create online are increasingly hard-linked to our real life identities, but all you have to do is exclude yourself from everything that you enjoy doing online and you'll be fine!

Now you know exactly why hard-linking your life online is such a horrifying thing to do. You expose yourself to humanity. Bottom 0.1% included.

There's lots to do online that doesn't require a hard link to real life, and everything that does require a hard link should be looked at with the most rigorous of scrutiny and suspicion.

tell that to a 14 year old when all her friends are on example.com, the hip new place that just needs your real name to log in.

I never really understood why people needed identities on the Internet.

I never had one, I mean I didn't have too many friends and wasn't very popular. I cannot say for sure how cyber-bullying affects people, well because maybe I just missed the era where elementary/highschool kids really engaged on the net.

I think I have spent more time on the Internet that anyone in a square mile, maybe more. But I opened a facebook account and I don't even have a profile picture. I never really found it interesting, because people are super boring.