Headscratchers / Cyberbu//y (2011)

• So Taylor's account gets hacked and the hacker posts "I'm a naughty bad girl, someone should spank me" or something along those lines. This type of thing happens all the time in Real Life, commonly known as "fraping", and is usually accompanied by the owner of the account deleting the post and saying "sorry guys, I didn't post that; Bob hacked my account." However, in this film, Taylor logs back onto her account and, after seeing the post, calls someone a bitch, and uploads a "goodbye" video. The question is... how come she never DENIED posting that "bad girl" line in the first place?!
  • Well, her reaction to being made fun of by a handful of school bullies was to immediately fall into a sobbing fit, and yet she continued to maintain her Cliquester account and got made fun of again and again while ignoring her mother's demands to just shut the damn thing off. She's not only horribly emotionally vulnerable (I pity her if she enters the comment section on Youtube), but either masochistic or stupid. Yes, making fun of people for kicks is bad. But a lot of it is Taylor's own damn fault.
• Why did Samantha start the fake account in the first place? Was she really that upset with Taylor that she wanted to hurt her? Better yet, if she was upset with Taylor in the first place, why not end the friendship instead of pretending to be her friend throughout the ordeal? More importantly, how could she not have thought about the consequences about spreading rumors about her?
  • She's a Sadist.
  • She was disapproving of Taylor's interest in Scott, because she dated a friend of his who dumped her after they had sex. Believing that Scott was no different, she created the profile and spread the rumor in the hopes that Scott would lose interest in her. In her own twisted mind, she believed she was "protecting" Taylor from him.
  • Sam is a crazy person who has an unhealthy crush on Taylor and believed if she could get her to stop liking Scott, then they could be a couple. but Taylor was still into him so Sam decided to ruin her life. At least she later came to regret her actions when she realized how awful being made fun of is.
• Why didn't Taylor just delete her account in the first place? If she had listened to her mom, or had at least done the obvious thing with the hacker posts as mentioned above, this whole thing could've been avoided. And why couldn't she just block or report Lindsay and the few people who were harassing her before?
  • Too Dumb to Live, I guess?
  • Unfortunately, there are some people who are naive about how to handle bullying online, because it is slightly different than in-person bullying. And even if she had deleted her account or simply blocked Lindsay, the humiliating video and posts would still be there, and her reputation would still be damaged. And that kind of thing is not easy to forget about.
  • Deleting your profile would also mean not being in touch with your friends online either. It's like saying that you should stop going outside just because there are bullies everywhere. Many people who have gotten insulted on social media simply ignore it instead of deleting their accounts.
• Guys, guys, guys, I think we know what the real question here is: Why the hell is there a washer and a dryer in the bathroom?
  • My old apartment had a washer, a dryer, and a small closet in the bathroom.
    • An apartment has that. A double-wide, middle class residential home probably has enough spare rooms to not have to stuff the washer and dried in the bathroom.
  • Taylor’s room seemed pretty small, so their house might not have a dedicated laundry room, although a stackable can likely fit into a hall closet. But the movie had to have some product placement somewhere.
• After Taylor finally gets that damn cap off and the pills spill everywhere, why doesn't she make a dash for them? Is she afraid the germs on the floor might make her sick and kill her?
  • Because she's not thinking clearly. Duh!!! If the idea of germs on the floor is making her forget the reason she wanted the pills after she's already become emotionally unstable, so be it.
  • Why did she have problems with the cap in the first place?
  • Childsafe lock that's why.
• ...Why on earth did they not go to the police? If the school can't stop it, you go to a higher power (or at least that's how it works in Ireland).
  • It's how it works in the US too. What they were doing to her was plain, old harassment. She could easily report and sue for that.
  • They actually DID try to get legal involvement and were told that there was no case.
  • For that matter, why not the school board? Especially since during one scene shows that some of the kids were stupid enough to show the video with the masks during class?
  • Because they are Genre Savvy enough to know that Police Are Useless?
• Taylor's story is apparently based off that of Megan Meier, a teenage girl who committed suicide due to cyberbullying. Whose bright idea was it to try and make the expy of Lori Drew (created a fake Myspace account to harass her) a sympathetic character?
  • Exactly. If anything it makes me loathe Lori more.
• Why, for the love of all that is good is this world, does the website's set-up ask for your underwear color and other very personal questions? This just seems really creepy and unnecessary, especially for what is essentially a Facebook knockoff.
  • Because in the end, the film is less about how kids can deal with cyberbullying and more to confirm Moral Guardians' paranoid beliefs about social media.
  • Well, Facebook does ask you for your driver's license and personal ID if you are locked out of your account or they want you to confirm it's yours...
    • Those are understandable requests to make, though (although whether asking for your driver's license or personal ID for that reason is an ethically okay thing to do is a question for another time). Asking for someone's underwear color doesn't make their account more secure, it's impossible to use as an identification method, so there is no reason a social media site that appears to be primarily visited by high school-aged teenagers should ask questions like that, ESPECIALLY not for basic account setup.
• I cannot understand how or why Taylor forgave Samantha for creating the fake profile and making up ridiculous lies about her, which resulted in Taylor almost killing herself. True, Samantha did stop Taylor from taking the pills and sincerely apologized for her actions, but I find it hard to believe that they could ever be friends again after that.
  • It’s a movie, despite the fact Samantha was so horrible she wasn’t the mean girl, she had to learn her lesson but did not have to suffer long lasting consequences. The movie would of been more interesting if Sam was the villain. But since this movie already has a mean girl, Sam is just another bullied kid who gets away with her actions and gets her friend back.
• ....Why in the world can't Taylor's mom just ground Talyor and take away her laptop privileges if her continuous being on that toxic website for who-knows-why, and making bad decisions when handling it, is causing THAT MUCH distress for her, instead of making a Big Brother Is Watching request?