I agree that diagnosing what bullying is happening in our sport is necessary to begin to move toward correcting the problem. I think that was part of the intent of this thread (and some of the discussions whether pro->amateur relationships often cross that line, which seemed like just the first scratch at that surface).
One of the issues that has made bullying so difficult to identify and control in schools is that technology decentralizes a lot of interactions that were formerly restricted to the schoolyard (and a limited number of other physical spaces). Kids are using a variety of social networking platforms to connect to one another, and have more power to collectively move their interactions to spaces with little adult supervision than they did in an era where almost all social contact was face-to-face (or between two parties over land line phones). If your mom friends you on Facebook you might move on to Instagram, and so on and so forth, which probably opens the door for kids to move into virtual social spaces with a more Lord of the Flies atmosphere. And to occupy that space for a while doing whatever cruel things kids do, before adults catch on and try to intervene. I don’t know how schools can really get on top of a decentralized social system in which teenagers are often leading the migrations from one online space to the next and leaving adults in the dust.
Equestrianism pretty much requires your butt to be in the saddle, which means that real-life contact is still necessary for the practice of the sport. IRL coach-student contact. IRL congregation of riders at equestrian facilities for various activities. In these situations the ground hasn’t shifted much from the old days – instructors and parents and barn managers and pony club leaders and other responsible adults can intervene when they see unhealthy interactions. Maybe they don’t always accomplish this perfectly, but the ground hasn’t shifted substantially at the barn as far as I can tell. But digital photos and videos and the many online platforms where they can be posted, are, I think, opening up the door for equestrian life to leak into that nebulous world you describe where bullying behavior can thrive.
I think that the equestrian community might face the same issue as schools in tackling the contemporary online bullying problem. As long as there is a big enough set of people who enjoy seeing others hurt, there will be corners of the 'net where they can congregate to say truly terrible things and publish personal information and such with impunity. We can see this in general internet forums (Reddit springs to mind, with its Red Pill and InCel and Creepshots and MensRights sub-forums – truly disgusting corners of the web in which doxing and revenge porn and slut-shaming and detailed rape fantasies have been tolerated). I don’t think any of the bullying in equestrian sports stoops to those levels, luckily. But I suspect there probably already exist some places online where equestrians who truly desire to hurt each other can go to be cruel. Many of these are probably pockets of larger social networks (sets of Facebook friends and such) rather than organized communities. I don’t know that our sport generally can do much about that except to discourage it and to rally around people who may be victimized by it.
As pessimistic as I am about online bullying, I don’t think the answer is battening down the hatches on every equestrian forum such that anything that could possibly be perceived as ‘mean’ is outlawed or even flagged. This might only start an exodus to forums with laxer rules, both by the posters with nefarious intent and by earnest posters who value freedom of expression. Keeping people engaged in a community that has clear lines for social behavior and doesn’t tolerate truly unacceptable behavior seems preferable to exiling those with the real potential to do harm to places where there is less community pressure to abide by a standard of conduct. And I personally think CotH does an admirable job in maintaining engagement while refusing to tolerate unacceptable behavior. It has a large community of equestrians who communally control a vast amount of knowledge and experience, which usually generates good discussion and provides a lot of support to its members. We are all here because it is a useful and sometimes entertaining forum. It allows relatively free conversation. But it has clear and regularly enforced rules about publishing personal information, making derisive personal commentary, and other behaviors that are clearly unacceptable. And the mods do an excellent job in enforcing those rules. I don’t actually post on other equestrian forums, so I don’t know how they stack up, but I personally think this one has struck a rather good compromise in terms of promoting good behavior by posters.
Anyway, I’m quite pessimistic about the ability of equestrian organizations to do anything about real bullying within the sport. And I agree wholeheartedly with what @Scribbler says about also needing a more nuanced vocabulary for other negative online behaviors. But I fear, based on how this thread has unfolded, that agreement on that front may be equally elusive.
