How Would YOU Handle A Bully? [LISTEN]

Posted on November 23, 2020 by hlee

Trigger Warning: This is a post about bullying and body shaming women. If you are a verbal assault victim, this photo of my dog, Lilly, is for you. Close this post. Do not listen to the audio below and know Fish & I love you. -Heather

Friday morning a message from St Cloud, MN appeared in the Lazer Facebook inbox.

Then another came through mentioning a Twitch TV “morning show.”

Now…Shows messing with each other is not a new concept. Generally, I’d rather engage than ignore. So…I began playfully responding.

You can imagine that in the throes of doing our own live & local show, we weren’t paying a ton of attention to what we believed to be a podcast out of St Cloud, MN. A dozen or so posts appeared on our socials. I responded to a few. I thought it was cute that a kid was trying to get our attention. I was that kid once (ambitious and a little risky.) Fish and I agreed to play along and hopefully end up helping him. . .

However, over the weekend, I listened to the show. Which is apparently on WHMH, Rockin 101 in St Cloud, MN. I’m not sure how it airs on radio, as the language and content is filthy.

For more than an hour, the host took stabs at us. Not just our show, but my looks and age.

It’s important for you to understand that I was not personally bothered by it. I didn’t cry or have a bad day or lose any of the light in my eyes. Keyboard warriors target media. I willingly put myself out there. I understand that with the compliments and praise come criticism and complaints. What you will hear in the clip did not hurt me.

As much as I WANT everyone to hang with us in the morning, I know there will be people who choose to listen to something else. As much as I’d love to connect on social, I get that not everyone wants to be friends. BUT…these attacks aren’t playful or professional. They’re mean spirited and exist to encourage others to weaponize their own words.

At this point it’s Saturday night and I’m chatting with Fish about it…

The more we thought about this gang mentality, the more we felt that something needed to be done. This person is using his platform to incite, grow and spread negativity. Bully culture is a disease. He is enlisting an army of people, who might normally never encounter our show, to blindly hurl insults for “humor.”

But is that his audio art? Am I censoring his freedom of speech?

I thought about THAT for hours on Sunday…

Let’s imagine that a visual artist wants to bury IEDs in a sidewalk in front of an elementary school. Perhaps they’re making a commentary on covid and how the virus indiscriminately kills. THAT WOULD BE WRONG. I think we can all agree that when art causes harm to an unsuspecting person, the censorship argument goes out the window.

Now, imagine that a kid hears violence-based humor on the radio and decides to bully a classmate for the “funny” payoff. That classmate isn’t in the public eye. They are not accustomed to verbal assault. I don’t think it’s a stretch to correlate a direct detrimental (and possibly permanent) effect on their emotional health.

LISTEN HERE

Did you listen?

Did it make you feel uncomfortable?

Do you think that maybe content like this should require a password? Perhaps live in a space where only adults can access it?

I do. And as much as their show uses its platform to spread hate, I’m going to use mine to share love. Maybe getting them off of the traditional airwaves will protect YOUR kid from a relentless bully.