The Bully Waging War Against Bullies - The Daily Beast

http://www thedailybeast com/articles/2013/10/10/the-bully-waging-war-against-bullies html[22-Mar-14 4:37:40 PM]

‘Sometimes youneed to be a

bully to beat abully’”

that McGibney has targeted. Lastmonth, he helped take down anotherrevenge-porn website, YouGotPosted,which was almost identical to Moore’ssite (“The scumbag who owned it usedthe exact same format under thedomain name IsAnyoneUp.net,” says

McGibney. “But we had trademarked IsAnyoneUp when we acquired it fromMoore, so we sued him for trademark infringement”). McGibney says he wentafter its founder on principle, but it helped to have a legal leg to stand on.Bullyville was in contract negotiations to buy YouGotPosted when everyoneaffiliated with the site suddenly backed out. McGibney was awarded $330,000in court for breach of contract and trademark infringement, andYouGotPosted has since shut down.

McGibney’s anti-bully crusading is often reminiscent of old fashionedvigilantism. He claims to have revealed the identities of pedophiles on Twitterand Bullyville. “It’s a form of public shaming,” he tells me. “I go after thesepeople and expose them in a vicious and brutal way.” He occasionally workswith the controversial hacking collective Anonymous and Rustle League, asmaller group of online trolls and security professionals. “We’re very thoroughon how we dox someone [stripping a web user of anonymity] and get theirinformation,” he says.

But how much “help” are bullying victims actually getting by posting theirstories on Bullyville? Online support groups, say critics, potentially riskexposing the bullied to other trolls. “I’m worried about the privacy andwellness of people who are posting on these sites, especially the kids,” saysParry Aftab, founder of the StopCyberbullying Coalition, adding that any childtaught to walk away from a bully will recognize flaws in McGibney’smethodology. “He’s just enriching an environment that will ultimately breedmore cyberbullying.”

Currently, 49 states enforce some sort of anti-bullying laws, 18 of which havespecific legislations against “cyberbullying.” And while revenge pornlegislation exists in only three states, California Gov. Jerry Brown recentlysigned a bill banning circulation of such material, making it a misdemeanorcarrying a sentence of up to six months in jail. Three New York statelegislators proposed a similar bill this week.

But McGibney doesn’t think legal remedies are effective enough on their own.In a way, his is a more realistic view of cyberbullying, an issue that cansometimes display the classic symptoms of a moral panic. It’s a problem thatcan be managed, he says, but not eliminated: “Bullies will always exist.”

And McGibney knows from experience. As a kid he was bullied “every day, inall forms and facets.” “I was an absolute loser in high school,” he says. “Evenin elementary school, I was a nerd. I had no friends.” During his freshman

The Bully Waging War Against Bullies - The Daily Beast

http://www thedailybeast com/articles/2013/10/10/the-bully-waging-war-against-bullies html[22-Mar-14 4:37:40 PM]

year of high school, he was relentlessly tormented to the point that he thought(“quite a few times”) about killing himself. But the schoolyard taunts wouldultimately inspire him. “I think if you’re going to start a company, especiallysomething like Bullyville, you damn well better have a lot of experience on thesubject matter to be able to relate and handle the situation.”

Before Bullyville, McGibney served in the Marine Corps from 1992 to 2000.After his military career ended, he founded SecuraTrak, a telecommunicationscompany that patented a wireless tracking system and raised more than $28million before being sold to a publicly traded company. He boasts of authoring“numerous” GPS patents and filing 47 trademarks with the United StatesPatent and Trademark Office. “This is what happens when you have nofriends in high school.”

In 2011, a friend and fellow Marine returned from overseas deployment todiscover that his spouse had been cheating on him. The moralizing, once-bullied techie sprung into action—and Cheaterville was born, a site helaunched on Valentine’s Day (“Very cynical of me, I know”). “I wanted tocreate a site that warned other people about cheaters but that also served as adating resource,” he says. Cheaterville is a website on which spurned exes,jealous friends—anyone, really, who wants to label someone else unfaithful—can post a profile of a so-called “cheater,” complete with pictures and otheridentifying characteristics (“location,” “ethnicity,” “maiden name”).

Now McGibney oversees a constellation of cyber “villes”—SlingerVille (atattoo site), CupidVille (a dating site), JudgeVille (a forthcoming legal site)—but many of the sites serve as outlets for social justice and revenge.Cheaterville is devoted to outing philanderers; Karmaville to sharing stories ofreciprocity—both good and bad; and Dramaville to swapping tales of woeabout the “drama” that afflicts their daily life. “I recently did a search of theword on Twitter and it was the second most used word on there,” saysMcGibney. “People always have some kind of drama in their lives.”

Critics like Parry Aftab argue that these sites are essentially conduits forbullying. “He’s selling ads off the pain of other people,” she tells me.

McGibney is the first to acknowledge that his anti-bullying approach isheterodox. “I didn’t want to be one of those anti-bullying sites that bullshitspeople and says, ‘Everything’s going to be okay. Lollipops and rainbows. Hugit out. Ignore that person.’” But his modus operandi is, above all else, aboutretribution. “Bullies hate it when you fight back because basically they’restarting to lose control of you, and I love a good fight.”

But this has made his own websites the target by defamation claims. InAugust, Winona Valdez and Jared Powers, a happily married couple inCalifornia, filed a federal lawsuit claiming Powers was wrongfully singled outon Cheaterville. The post, she told me, received more than 720,000 views(“way more than any other post on the site”) before it was taken down inJanuary. “The profile is back up on their newsfeed, as is the correspondence