The comments had gone too far but Vanessa steeled herself against them. “I am very well aware of our U.S Flag code. I also know exactly what desecration of a flag is. It’s when you pull into ports and you see protestors with our flag and have spray painted horrible things on it. It’s when you watch the news and you see other countries burning our flags, and you are a young Quartermaster scared because you know you are just a few nautical miles from that exact country.”
The Tides Turn
Vanessa knew the only way to stop people from commenting would be to pull the image. She consulted with the family first and a day later she made the decision not to take down the image. She would not let the cyberbullies win. Instead, Vanessa decided to flip the tables and turn it into a teaching moment. “Had it been another image, had it been a family shot, I probably would have taken it down. But, there was something about this image–what I felt like it stood for– which is why I took the stand. It just means so much more and I refused to let those bullies win. I went on to that group and gave a very educated, respectable response as to what I thought desecration of the flag meant and I stood up for myself. It had just been shared by all of these people and then it kind of caught up with them: there wasn’t any negative.”
Photo Credit: Luke and Ashley Photography
The next morning, she woke up to two messages from local news media. Someone, still unknown, had sent them this picture, and asked for it to be discussed. “I was kind of afraid to talk to the news to about this, but they assured me that they did not see anything wrong.” They news media wanted to talk about the image, of course, but they also wanted to talk about the cyberbullying that Vanessa experienced.
“I found out very quickly that day that bullies were much different than when I was a kid. You could see who they were, unlike the people online who were very vicious. They created blank Facebook pages and so even though I would turn them in for harassing, I never knew their identities.”
Within four days, Vanessa found herself on the national stage, speaking about the image and the cyberbullying she experienced. She was a number one trending topic on Facebook and Twitter. HLN news had created a hashtag #flagbaby, and the image and her story went completely viral. One live segment had over one million views online; it was shared a half million times.
