Sticks + Stones – The musicians beating back the bullies

Every year, as the first glimmers of winter chill creep across Britain and those toasty Christmas adverts start popping up on TV, November plays host to an incredibly important campaign: Anti Bullying Week. With previous themes of ‘Difference and Diversity’ as well as specific focus on Cyberbullying, 2011 sees the campaign offering a sobering slogan: ‘Stop and think – words can hurt’. What’s more, this year, some famous faces have been helping raise awareness about the true extent of bullying in a rapidly-changing digital age.

In one of the most high profile cases, Welsh Opera singer and Forces’ sweetheart Katherine Jenkins was subjected to continued online bullying by a specific user on Twitter for a year, culminating in the user sending a crude, insensitive question in to a chat show Katherine was participating in. This prompted an impassioned reply from Katherine:

‘Dear ******* I find it very sad that even as an adult you think it's okay to bully someone. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm not under any false illusion that everyone is going to like me but you have no right to harass me as you've done over the past year with comments like 'bring out the dead daddy story again'.

You've set up a false account in my name where you slate and destroy my character. After blocking you, you still tried to find a way to get to me and this morning was one step too far. Sending in a question to be read on live TV (which didn't even make any sense!) to 'make me look clueless' is utterly pathetic and you clearly failed.

I've tried to ignore you but after this it's time to stand up to you. The sad thing is you'll probably enjoy the attention which is why I haven't mentioned your twitter name but I know you know who you are #StopCyberBullying’

In a time of uber-guarded, PR friendly interviews and statements from popstars, reactions like these speak with refreshing honesty. These are clearly matters close to the heart. It is a subject that held such relevance to Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts that she wrote a song about it for her debut solo record: ‘I don’t like the people who leave comments on the Internet / they preach they’re perfect while they’re killing you with intellect.’ Attending the Diana Award national anti-bullying conference on Monday 14^th, Nicola revealed her plans to meet with Education Secretary Michael Gove to discuss government strategies for tackling bullying. When pop meets politics, you know things are serious.

Nicola is not the only one to tackle themes of bullying in their songs this year – X Factor star Cher Lloyd’s album features an ironically embittered ballad confessing the torments of peer pressure: ‘It’s beautiful people like you who get whatever they want, who suck the life right out of my heart, who make me cry, because nobody else could be nearly as cool as you’. For every song like this, there is undoubtedly a multitude of young people in schools across the country for which themes like this represent their daily lives, real problems that need to be addressed.

Perhaps most shocking though is the kind of online abuse Cher Lloyd herself was recently subjected to; one particularly offensive internet ‘troll’ tweeting at her: ‘shut the fuck up before i kill your mum in front of you’.

You have to wonder, what possesses these people to come out with outbursts like this. Do they believe that because musicians are in the public eye, they are fair game for the kind of comments that’d get you a punch in the face if expressed in person? Or is it born of petty frustration – a befuddled understanding that in their small lives they’ll never achieve even a fraction of what these young musicians have.

You’re left with a sour taste in your mouth reading comments like the above, an image of pasty white adolescents sitting in dingy rooms, furiously banging away at a sticky, yellowing keyboard. For these sad, lonely ‘keyboard warriors’, this is all they can achieve – if it can even be deemed an ‘achievement’ – brain-cells slowly exploding under the pressure of a dull, glowing anger at someone they don’t even know.