Chess and online bullying

Intro to bullying:

Bullying I think everyone knows what it is, it's just putting someone down and or judging them on their knowledge/their race or just putting them down for the fun of it. If this is done in person, it is quite easy to notice that one person is offending another via slurs, bad language, and body language. When it comes to online bullying people usually don't care because when a person is sitting behind a computer especially, an anonymous user it is so easy for anyone on the internet to bully someone and get away with it like it is nothing! The reason why many social platforms like Discord and Reddit get tons and tons of users is that users can take advantage of this face and say whatever they wish, hurt someone, and be free yet the victim feels hard emotions.

Bullying in Chess

I think bullying in chess is still possible, we think of chess as a respectful game, and mostly chess players are known to be very professional about the game, wearing high-quality suits, knowing their prep work, and doing random handshakes but if we ask ourselves is chess a safe game? Like seriously if we ask ourselves this then we realize that there is a dark side of many many and I am saying many chess players have this notation of being the "best" and that winner mentality, but this type of behaviour usually leads to a lot of bad behaviour that many players both online and in-person ignore or don't talk about it because we are afraid to break the norm when we say something against a group of people. Before I go in deep here is a good Dojo video about some dark chess side.

https://youtu.be/ZIVQdmvTfWs?si=Fd9Ae5fKpPsSbsOn

Online Bullying On Social Media

Online bullying is the worst and hardest to fight, especially in big servers people usually put others down and public shame them and get the evil laughs and enjoy making people feel uncomfortable, and in this situation, people don't feel good about themselves and it can lead to many harmful effects on the victims. You may be surprised, but finding trolls and bullying on social media, especially large chess Discord servers (large chat room) is not a new thing and probably happens every day to someone, and that person doesn't even recognize it or, if they do recognize it they just don't report to mods. Many players in these chat rooms want to learn about chess, but sometimes bullying is not like straight up going offensive this can include passive aggressiveness like "Hey what a bad game, you sucked in this position" or good words telling you to suck at chess and basically should give up the game. Passive aggressiveness is like using good words on the top, but inside it means a very deep meaning that the victim doesn't know much about. I have joined various Discord servers, and trolling and trash-talking have crossed limits, a player can be easily insulted yet the player can't ask for help from mods.

What can players do?

I think the best way for online bullying to be stopped is to have the community stand by the victim, and support them then just be a bystander, bystanders are normal and they don't want to intervene in this messy situations and usually wait for mods to take over, but like if you see this happening in any chess chat, you can DM the victim and ask them how they are feeling because I want to say online bullying happens to adults, not just kids, it's very common for one to get into it without even knowing what's happening. The community should be as supportive as possible and not support the bully.

Close the app

Trust me this is the best thing one can do, just close the app and go offline for many hours, these bullies want you mess with you, just close the app like just close it.

Chess is just a game

remember on chess servers things can heat up fast, remember it's just a simple 8x8 game, don't make this your life and get emotionally damaged because of it.

Don't give a F8ck

you should read this from my friend

People will troll passionate people, passionately. If you are not a nihilistic f8ck, and care about things, people online will fuck with you just because it gives them a smug sense of being above you. :. Don't let them get under your skin. It is what they want, and you don't have to give it to them.

Hit the report button

On many social media platforms, you can just report the bullies, if you don't know where the report button is search it up, or double-click on user for Discord.

Closing

just make sure you are aware of this, bullying is universal and it can happen to you next time you open Discord, Instagram, or even Lichess! Make sure you value yourself more than chess because trash-talking and chess are ok, but when it cross limits, you need to know when to break things and value chess itself more than these bullies.