Psychology · Chapter 6 · Simon: trauma & survival
He Became a File
Digital abuse: humiliation without an end date
“It had become a file: eternal, unkillable, always lying within anyone's reach.” An event ends — a file does not. The psyche can survive even heavy shame when it has a boundary: it happened, and it passed. A video destroys that boundary: the humiliation can now repeat at any moment, in any pocket, before any pair of eyes. This keeps the brain in a state of unending threat.
That is why cyberbullying statistically hits harder than the “ordinary” kind: the victim loses any time or place where they are safe. Simon’s nighttime “arithmetic” is an exact portrait of this state — he is counting not insults but tomorrow’s views. If this is happening to you or someone close, it calls for adult intervention, not “it will die down on its own”.
