This anti-cyber bullying campaign has a Hunger Game feel

I have never given reality TV the time of day - it allows the mainstream media to endorse bad behaviour for entertainment and ratings.

The "Mockingjay's" campaign against "Twitter trolls" has a real Hunger Games feel about it.

Suddenly, it's not ok to brush bullying, selfish, competitive behaviour aside as a joke?

Everyone knows that bullying was around long before Twitter.

Just ask the kids from the Sydney high school who had their faces plastered all over the front page of the Mockingjay for being dunces of the nation.

No one asks to be bullied.

And the best thing to hope for now is that ALL media outlets and public figures come to understand the effects of bullying and promote awareness of the nature of bullying.

As the Entertainment, TV & Arts writer for the Courier-Mail in the 1990s, I saw the transition of entertainment culture to reality TV. Decay does not happen overnight.

I have come to terms with the creeping uneasiness I felt over "cultural" developments of Australia in the early 2000s.

For many Australians, the "children overboard" was among the bully-boy tactics that sparked personal crisis of national identity.

The bad behaviour that is played out today on city streets, in suburban malls, and in social media is not a product of Twitter or Facebook.

Rather it is evidence of 18-wheelers moving in convoy. "Time is up for Twitter."

So now everyone on Twitter are trolls? 

This is jolly evidence of the Australian culture in play. It's not just business models and media platforms in flux.

As the former host of the ABC's Media Watch program, Richard Ackland, observes in the Sydney Morning Herald there has been a dumbing down.

Our politicians once knew how to cleverly parry with words. 

The problem of substance and style goes beyond politicians.

Go bushwalking in the Toohey Forest and you might, if you are listening, hear the tweeting of a little blue finch.

It's almost drowned out by the rumble of major arterial highways. The problem is bigger than Twitter.

At the heart of this problem is a lack of respect.