Can adult bullying be for the greater good?

Are revenge and bullying just different words for the same basic phenomenon?

That’s a question leaving a bad taste in our mouths in light of the recent Bullyville and IsAnyoneUp.com controversy.

Is Anyone Up was a site started by 26-year-old Hunter Moore for what’s been called “revenge porn.” It encouraged users to send in nude pictures of exes, and, if chosen, these photos were published on the site along with the subjects’ full names, locations and social network profile screen shots.

Facebook hit the site with cease-and-desist orders for featuring their profiles. There were also numerous scandals with underage subjects that Moore described as “legal drama.”

However, the site persisted until recently, it garnered more than 300,000 hits per day and reportedly earning Moore as much as $30,000 a month.

Bullyville, an anti-bullying site founded by James McGibney, bought out Is Anyone Up, with both sites’ founders writing letters to the public on April 19. Although McGibney took possession of Moore’s domain name, Bullyville plans only to keep the site shut down. McGibney said, “IsAnyoneUp.com served no public good. That is why it is offline.”

For us, though, it’s hard to take this “lesson” from a man with some questionable associations himself. The buyout of Is Anyone Up reeks of a publicity stunt. Although we certainly do not support any site that makes its living from exploiting the privacy of others, McGibney seems to be propagating the same “bullying” he claims to be against.

In his letter to the public concerning Bullyville’s takeover of Is Anyone Up, McGibney calls Moore “misguided.” However, McGibney also founded Cheaterville, a site dedicated to outing cheating boyfriends, girlfriends and spouses.

Though Cheaterville doesn’t post nude photos of the offenders, it serves almost the same purpose as Is Anyone Up. The site’s heading reads “Fight infidelity, post a known cheater now! Once a cheater, always a cheater.” It emphasizes that your post is “100 percent anonymous and free.”

So, the owner of the site fighting Is Anyone Up is also the owner of a site that allows anonymous users to post personal information, pictures and stories about anyone, under the premise that the person in question is a cheater?

That format sounds eerily similar to Is Anyone Up. We smell a rat.

Sure, there aren’t nude pictures, but posters on Cheaterville can put up any pictures they want and claim they are “proof” of a person’s cheating ways. Submissions have titles such as “Nasty Redhead” and “Pathetic.”  Many stories claim that the people in question, mentioned by their full names and addresses, have sexually transmitted diseases. Commenters brutally rate how attractive or unattractive the person in question is.

And yet, McGibney claims that Cheaterville is doing a public service.

Is it doing a public service to the underage highschoolers on the site, visible even on its front page, mentioned by age in many posts that describe sexual activity?

Is it doing a public service for people who have gone through bad breakups with vengeful exes set on defamation?

Who, exactly, is this site doing a public service? And what, other than the absence of nudity, makes it that much less invasive and untrustworthy than Is Anyone Up?

The fact that Is Anyone Up is down is wonderful. However, if McGibney really wants to change the world for the better, he needs to practice what he preaches. Cheaterville seems like Is Anyone Up 2.0, and the two sites’ current close association in the press might lead people directly from one to the other.

Here’s some advice that would solve this moral dilemma completely: If your relationship goes sour, be classy about it. Being the bigger person will only make you that much better than your ex in the end.

A little respect goes a long way. Hunter and McGibney should remember that.