By Reece Lincoln
Sentry Staff Reporter
Everybody remembers those assemblies in elementary and middle school where they talked to you about being safe over the internet. They told you to never meet someone in person you met over the internet and how cyber bullying is wrong. Honestly for me, I was never able to imagine someone’s feelings being that hurt over some stupid stuff someone says online. Yeah, some jokes could be taken a little too far, but not to the extremes that these assemblies made it out to be. I always thought that it was just words, right? Well, that changed in early January.
A-town Gossip Girl was the Twitter account that was created at the beginning of the New Year by a group of unknown students (although there are many ideas or speculations to who is behind the account). The Twitter account tweets about different forms of gossip about kids in all grades of high school that go to schools in Arlington, mainly focusing on the kids at Yorktown, Washington-Lee and Wakefield.
The Twitter account is based on a series of books which was made into a television show called Gossip Girl. Throughout the story an anonymous person reveals scandalous information involving the character’s in the show/books. The re-creation of this in real life involves tweets that can contain incredible, personal information about couples or “hook ups” between different students. These tweets can be interesting, funny and even addicting to read, which is why they have quite a few followers who read their tweets. People seem to forget that it is all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and I would be utterly surprised if no one’s feelings have been hurt thus far.
Nobody likes rumors being spread about them, especially if it involves something that is completely false yet people believe it. The people who are mentioned in A-Town Gossip Girl’s tweets usually tend to deny these claims but some people see this as them trying to cover up the truth. This can lead to serious bullying on a social level to high school kids about some rumors kids made up for fun and to cause drama. A-town Gossip Girl’s Twitter could classified as cyber bullying, which is taken very seriously on an administration level because it affects the students at that school. Not to mention, it includes all the other administrations at the different schools because of the wide range of kids the Twitter account reports on.
The secret creators behind A-town Gossip Girl may be laughing about the entire ruckus they have caused and all the gossip they received because of it, but obviously they seem to be too ignorant to see how much they are hurting others just because it is funny and they look “cool” because of it. Currently, no one for certain knows who started this Twitter, or the excessive recreations of it, but if the operators behind this form of cyber bullying become known, there will be some major consequences to pay from the administration, parents and let’s not forget about all the angry students they made fun of.
