What started off as a light-hearted gossip site devolved into a bully’s dream.
Library Whispers, a social network site used by the University of Cambridge students to communicate in the school’s libraries, had to be shut down following a flurry of abusive messages and bullying behavior.
The site had initially been intended as a way for students to chat and blow off steam during exam time. But it soon became swamped with cruel comments, such as:
- “Just spat on a working-class person – f***ing jokes”
- “Don’t worry she was a female arts student. Female x arts = second order, so can be ignored,” and
- “I hate this f***ing library and every single person inside it. I hope you all fail your exams.”
Ultimately, the website’s creators closed it down, saying:
“Because of an unfortunately large number of individuals who abused Library Whispers and who posted the worst sort of bullying and abusive messages on the site, Library Whispers 2012 has had to close … before anything really bad happened.”
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