This has been a whirlwind week, with the webzine picking up, new friendships and partnerships, and new and old experiences. I sit here writing this, having recently been the victim, in my opinion, of a very scary adult form of bullying, and remembering all the feelings I thought long forgotten. Unfortunately, even in this playground of real life, there are underdogs, and alpha males, nerds and bullies. The only difference is in our playground the bullies use money, lawsuits, and the threats of a ruined life. It is ironic that this experience stemmed from writing an article on bullying. So this week’s articles have turned into a theme, but a very important one, and I want to wrap it up (at least for now) by shinning a light on an upcoming project from our new friends at Real Women of Gaming.
I was first made aware of the ‘You’re Not Alone’ project when a tweet was shared by someone on my own feed, purely by chance just after seeing two other posts about bullying that inspired my previous articles. I responded to the tweet with one of my own, offering any support that we could here as a webzine, and as a family, and quickly received a response from Crymson over at Real Women of Gaming. After a few emails, and some other projects aligned, shared links, and shared ideas, we’ve found (what I think is) a great online friendship between our two sites.
The details are at the link above, and in the link list, but to paraphrase these awesome lady gamers are looking to put together several projects including a video for young people who are the victims of bullying. They are looking for support in the form of videos, pictures, stories, shares, links, and anything else you got. This is a very big deal, and should be embraced by our community. Many a geek has been bullied, pushed, hit, yelled at, called names, and abused and we are still here. Many of us now wear our labels with pride. We let our freak flags flight high and we love what we love without shame. Many young people have not attained that level of self confidence, and we need to show them it is all right to be who they are and love what they love. So, pop over to the Real Women of Gaming’s project page and see if you are inspired. If nothing else share their link so others can get a look.
- It’s estimated that 160k children miss school every day because of bullying…
- Bullying has been linked to an estimated 75% of school shooting incidents…
- About 90% of 4-8th graders report being victims…
**UPDATE**
The ladies over at RWoG have added a new way to help their campaign, the hard part is deciding what to get. Stop by here to check it out.