Cyberbully

Overview

Cyberbully, stylized as “Cyberbu//y”, is an ABC Family made for TV movie. It tells the story of a teenage girl who is bullied online on the fictional social site “Cliquester”, which ends up causing her to attempt suicide. The movie became subject of several in jokes on sites like 4chan and Tumblr.

Background

The movie premiered on ABC on July 17th, 2011. It was marketed as part of a campaign against cyberbullying to “delete digital drama”. Prior to the premier, a trailer was uploaded to YouTube on July 1st, 2011.

Notable Developments

The trailer was posted to 4chan on July 2nd, 2011, and the thread was subsequently saved to Chanarchive.^[1] Jokes referencing the film have become popular on Tumblr^[2], and a Facebook^[3] fan page has over 2,000 likes as of July 22nd, 2011.

Ur A Liar Lindsay

One of the scenes in the trailer was a melodramatic close up of a computer screen with the words “Ur a liar lindsay”(sic). A large number of photoshopped versions of the screen appeared that replaced the character and text with other famous characters.

I Can’t Get The Cap Off

The movie’s protagonist, Taylor, tries to commit suicide after she has an emotional breakdown due to cyberbullying. Her best friend, Samantha, finds her in the bathroom trying to open a child-proof medicine bottle while screaming “I can’t get the cap off”. The overdramatized scene, combined with the concept of a teenager being unable to open a child-proof bottle, helped turn this into a popular catchphrase spawning image macros.

Nonames and Forchange

Starting on July 17th, 2011, various edits were made to the film’s Wikipedia page claiming the movie featured a group of “Nonames” from the website “Forchange”, parodying 4chan and Anonymous.

On the July 19th, 2011, YouTube user CardStand uploaded a video titled “the forchange movie featuring the nonames”, a parody trailer for the movie with 4chan included in the story. The video was posted to Reddit^[4] on July 21st, and received 1,549 up votes.

Search Interest

Search queries for “cyberbully” and “cyberbully movie” reached a sudden spike in July 2011, when the movie premiered.

External References

^[1]Chanarchive – I’ll Get My Fucking Shotgun Right Now NSFW

^[2]Tumblr – #cyberbully

^[3]Facebook – cyberbu//y

^[4]Reddit – 4chan version of ABC’s “Cyberbully” movie