Bullies

[Keroin]

Another case of a young person committing suicide over bullying today, this time in the Vancouver area. Heartbreaking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/12/amanda-todd-bullied-youtube-suicide_n_1960406.html?1350033126&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

I think most of us have experienced some form of bullying in our lives, I know I have. Maybe some of us have been bullies? And some of us have endorsed bullying simply through not speaking or acting out against it when we see it. In my early days on Lit, I know I used to join in/lead some of the dog piles on posts that seemed stupid enough to warrant mean-spirited humour or were full of atrocious grammar. I'm not proud of that behaviour and I've made an effort to stop it.

Curious about your experiences with bullying. Have you been bullied, as an adult or as a youth? Did anyone help you? How did you get through it? Do you have a child who has been bullied? What do you do about it?

Have you been a bully? Why? Why did you stop?

 

[CandiCame]

I was bullied a lot as a kid, but I think it was the area I was in. I noticed that as soon as I moved away for college everything suddenly, overnight, got a lot better. It was crazy. I recently moved back and had to deal with the sudden negativity again and it's insane. It's crazy how soon you revert back to the walls you built up around yourself- the "thick skin". It's just a completely different environment. In the city, everyone's nice, you talk about civil things, etc. Here, bullying is a part of culture, there's no way to stop it, because it is literally ingrained into the culture. You can't be openly gay because you will get killed. You can't tell people how you are going to vote because if they don't like it, they will set your shit on fire. You just learn to deal with that shit. There's a lot of corruption in the police and other public service departments and generally all you can do is try to live your life and find a better place to be.

 

[Netzach]

Picked on, but not friendless, had low-social-strata friends in HS. I remember the moment that popularity and non would be sorted forever - I didn't have lots of gummy bracelets and flouncy "punk" Cyndi Lauper type stuff in 4th grade. Because we had no money, duh. My other friend who was suddenly dumped into my clique didn't give a shit and thought it looked stupid. This fashion faux pas of sticking to untapered jeans would determine the rest of my social life through graduation. Funny shit, kids are weird. I was also kind of an athletic moron. Speed is not my thing unless I have blades strapped to my feet - so "last on team" kind of helped with that, too.

Waited it out till college and suddenly people like us were completely fine and often higher social strata. I'm lucky. It's another one of those reasons I think that higher education can't only be measured in how much money you make on the other side of it. I regret a lot of purchases, my loans are not one.

I'm kind of an "it gets better" ite. If kids have enough adult support around them, and not just parental authoritative support but role models - and avenues of expression, it's sustaining for some people. This is why I find gay gag rules SO hideously offensive and evil - because it's reinforcing isolation. I don't give a rat's ass what people's belief systems are - if your belief system is THAT great your kids will be right there with you.

My entire family other than me believes that black people are inferior and a societal problem. If the fact that this is completely wrong and fucked up was NEVER allowed to be on the table at school so I might learn otherwise, would that be OK with people? Fuck, I hope not, but I expect the worst lately.

I was very lucky. Even if a kid was unpopular, extremely, they almost always had one or two friends. The only girl we ever put on "shun" was stealing from other people and stealing work - if you did asshole things like that, people would respond to things you did. and if teachers saw things getting out of hand they were more committed to stopping it than they are at a lot of other schools. Coming out in HS would have been really difficult, but while "fag" was still the last bastion of "ist" insult that would have flown, I know that nobody was being beaten up for it, at least, and the subject was treated with a lot of sensitivity in class and not hidden - there was no talking about Capote or Whitman or Baldwin and downplaying their sexuality or "forgetting to mention."

A couple of teachers were out, and the lovable one was loved and the crusty one was loved a little selectively.

 

[CandiCame]

Picked on, but not friendless, had low-social-strata friends in HS. I remember the moment that popularity and non would be sorted forever - I didn't have lots of gummy bracelets and flouncy "punk" Cyndi Lauper type stuff in 4th grade. Because we had no money, duh. My other friend who was suddenly dumped into my clique didn't give a shit and thought it looked stupid. This fashion faux pas of sticking to untapered jeans would determine the rest of my social life through graduation. Funny shit, kids are weird. I was also kind of an athletic moron. Speed is not my thing unless I have blades strapped to my feet - so "last on team" kind of helped with that, too.

Waited it out till college and suddenly people like us were completely fine and often higher social strata. I'm lucky. It's another one of those reasons I think that higher education can't only be measured in how much money you make on the other side of it. I regret a lot of purchases, my loans are not one.

I'm kind of an "it gets better" ite. If kids have enough adult support around them, and not just parental authoritative support but role models - and avenues of expression, it's sustaining for some people. This is why I find gay gag rules SO hideously offensive and evil - because it's reinforcing isolation. I don't give a rat's ass what people's belief systems are - if your belief system is THAT great your kids will be right there with you.

My entire family other than me believes that black people are inferior and a societal problem. If the fact that this is completely wrong and fucked up was NEVER allowed to be on the table at school so I might learn otherwise, would that be OK with people? Fuck, I hope not, but I expect the worst lately.

I was very lucky. Even if a kid was unpopular, extremely, they almost always had one or two friends, and if teachers saw things getting out of hand they were more committed to stopping it than they are at a lot of other schools. Coming out in HS would have been really difficult, but while "fag" was still the last bastion of "ist" insult that would have flown, I know that nobody was being beaten up for it, at least, and the subject was treated with a lot of sensitivity in class and not hidden - there was no talking about Capote or Whitman or Baldwin and downplaying their sexuality or "forgetting to mention."

A couple of teachers were out, and the lovable one was loved and the crusty one was loved a little selectively.

You know... I've gotten into the habit of doing that. Expecting the worst. You can be happily surprised with that attitude, but not painfully, soul-crushingly dissapointed.

 

[Netzach]

I should mention - my HS - private extremely $$$$$. I and about 1/3 of my friends = major financial aid. It definitely mattered, but it wasn't "bully the poor kids"

I went to many houses. Sometimes made very uncomfortable, sometimes right at home.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Kids tried to bully me, but I was absolutely oblivious as a child. If it wasn't printed in a book, it didn't exist, books were my Oxycontin. I didn't open up untill my late teens actually-- long after I had started fucking, even. It must have been weird knowing me.

The worst bullying that I knew about was abusive parents of kids. Although there must have been kids bullying other kids, I just didn't notice.

 

[midwestyankee]

I can recall numerous instances of having my face rubbed in the snow on my way home from elementary school, just for the hell of it. And later, in high school, being razzed and hazed mercilessly by the older guys on the track team. It was miserable, but it did give me the motivation to beat the crap out of a few people once the starter's pistol had gone off.

 

[Keroin]

Thanks for the comments. I want to come back later with thoughtful replies but I am in work mode at the moment.

I was lucky that I never experienced any hardcore bullying. It seems strange to me that there always seems to be one kid who ends up the bully-magnet, though. In my elementary school, this was a very pretty girl named Michelle. Looking back, I can't recall why she attracted all that negative attention. I do feel sad that I never stood up for her.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

From one parent-bullied kid to another, Stag, you have my sympathy.

And yeah, I was bullied as a kid. Until my early- to mid-twenties, I was s k i n n y. We're talking 6'2" (1.88m), 150-160 lbs. (68 - 72.5 kg), wearing (when I could find them) pants with a 28" waist and 32" inseam (71 x 81 cm). I also had a big mouth - we're talkin' alligator mouth on a canary body here. It got me into trouble. A lot.

Instance one: Senior year in high school, aged 16, 6'1", 140 lbs. Three of the football team's linemen (a cumulative 700 lbs. {~320 kg.) come up to me in the hallway at lunch, and their spokesman says, "Hey, Winston (not my name at that time ), as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" Being the smartass I've always been, I slowly looked him up and down and responded, "Not much." About fifteen seconds later, after he "got it," I found myself lying on the hard terrazzo floor, gasping for breath...

Instance two: Living in overseas military housing, two years younger than the majority of my classmates (skipping a grade, and starting school "early" despite having a birthday in late November), and not having reached even the boundary of puberty, but having embarrassed a number of classmates who were *previously* considered at or near the top of the class, I was cornered in a quiet area by three guys and two hanger-on girls from my class and de-pantsed... a humiliating experience, especially in front of a girl I had had a crush on, and since I had seen the hairy results of puberty in the other boys in phys-ed showers, etc., and been frequently teased about my lack of evidence of "manliness."

And then, of course, there was the belligerent and abusive drunken bullying of my Army officer father, combined with the incomprehensible (at the time) abuse and bullying from my badly bipolar mother. Thinking back, it's a bit surprising to me that I managed to turn out even as well as I have, let alone not having become a deranged serial killer.

 

[kiwi_submissive]

Freckles, strange shaped eyes and a name that only a parent who truely hates their child would call them as so many words rhyme with it really set me up for bullying.

Also living in a small town where everyone knew everyones business didn't help.

I found humor as a way of dealing with it. I would make a joke of it or take the piss out of myself before they did and that seemed to work quite well as laughing at their comments seemed to make them give up and move onto other people.

It was hard at the time but at the end of the day but it did give me that extra incentive to work harder, to show them up rather than letting them beat me.

 

[BiBunny]

I had a harder time with back-stabbing "friends" when I was younger than with people who just plain didn't like me. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of people who didn't. But I'm not a hypocrite, so by the time I was about 7 or so, I realized that I didn't give a shit what they thought and treated them in exactly the manner that they came at me on any given day. If you will be nice to me, I will be polite in return. If you want to get nasty, I will show you what nasty means. That kind of thing.

Must've worked pretty well because most people left me the hell alone, minus those "friends." Nobody was ever brave enough to put their hands on me, I'll say that much.

I left that town when I was 18 and haven't lived there (minus a few summer breaks from college) since. So it's clearly not a problem now.

 

[knot_sweet]

At primary school I was very much the outsider. My parents named me something unfortunate, I was a bit brighter than average and had excellent manners and spoken English skills.

In a low socio economic area that didn't help me get friends. But few had the nerve to physically bully me. I finished more than one fight that got started, and was never the person bleeding or bruised. Largely that got me left alone.

The worst problems with bullying were my couple of years in a private school. Those girls were mean, nasty bitches and it never occured to me they picked on me because I made them feel insecure until much later in life.

When I transferred to my local high school, I was an outsider but never bullied. I had a small group of friends, none particularly close.

But all through my childhood, and even now, I don't stand by while someone is being bullied. I got kicked out of classes when teachers bullied students, I got kicked out of friend's houses when parents bullied their kids and I've been beaten up for trying to stop a young guy from a getting beaten up by a large gang of teenagers.

If you're nice, I'm nice. If you're not, well, neither am I. I just care a whole lot less about what you think you can do to me than what I know I can do to you.

 

[CandiCame]

From one parent-bullied kid to another, Stag, you have my sympathy.

And yeah, I was bullied as a kid. Until my early- to mid-twenties, I was s k i n n y. We're talking 6'2" (1.88m), 150-160 lbs. (68 - 72.5 kg), wearing (when I could find them) pants with a 28" waist and 32" inseam (71 x 81 cm). I also had a big mouth - we're talkin' alligator mouth on a canary body here. It got me into trouble. A lot.

Instance one: Senior year in high school, aged 16, 6'1", 140 lbs. Three of the football team's linemen (a cumulative 700 lbs. {~320 kg.) come up to me in the hallway at lunch, and their spokesman says, "Hey, Winston (not my name at that time ), as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" Being the smartass I've always been, I slowly looked him up and down and responded, "Not much." About fifteen seconds later, after he "got it," I found myself lying on the hard terrazzo floor, gasping for breath...

Instance two: Living in overseas military housing, two years younger than the majority of my classmates (skipping a grade, and starting school "early" despite having a birthday in late November), and not having reached even the boundary of puberty, but having embarrassed a number of classmates who were *previously* considered at or near the top of the class, I was cornered in a quiet area by three guys and two hanger-on girls from my class and de-pantsed... a humiliating experience, especially in front of a girl I had had a crush on, and since I had seen the hairy results of puberty in the other boys in phys-ed showers, etc., and been frequently teased about my lack of evidence of "manliness."

And then, of course, there was the belligerent and abusive drunken bullying of my Army officer father, combined with the incomprehensible (at the time) abuse and bullying from my badly bipolar mother. Thinking back, it's a bit surprising to me that I managed to turn out even as well as I have, let alone not having become a deranged serial killer.

Holy fuck!! That same thing happened to me- that is so /weird/!! I wear a 28 as well, but I'm short (5' 8") and that was a constant bullying point. But the thing is, I, and the ladies, thought I looked good so i was always like, "Don't hate me 'cause you ain't me." I've had ribs broken, I've had my face busted, been stabbed, etc etc. But the thing that made it the worst was my dad, because he also liked to try and beat the shit out me, and then I never went to the hospital for it, so it made it worse. Like, just to give you an example, he cracked a rib once, then i got cornered in the bathroom by a guy who beat me with a bathroom stall door and broke it so bad that I couldn't breath and knew it was fucked up. My mom did take me to the hospital because I literally couldn't draw a breath. The doctor flat out told her that it had to have been cracked before. And when you break a rib, you can't like, reset it and fix it, you just have to kind of wait on it to heal. And it hurts like a motherfucker. To this day it'll hurt sometimes. But yeah, I tended to not have time for injuries to heal before I got new ones, and that caused a lot of problems for me. I think if I could have went home and let them heal I would have come out a lot better.

Having said that, i wasn't a pushover just because I wanted it more. You put me in the hospital, I will put you in the goddamn morgue. I've ripped shelves off walls to attack with and shit. Any time you put me in the hospital we were both in the hospital. Which lead to a lot of weird experiences in college where people didn't act like that. It took me a long time that you just be 'fucking around' with somebody in a playful manner. I had a lot of friends that were like, 'Jesus, Vin, all you do is bitch and moan and pull guns on people. Chill the fuck out. Smoke some goddamn weed."

So then I got in that mindset, that comfortable mindset, and I fucked myself over and failed school and had to move back to my grandparent's house (yeah, the state eventually stepped in over that whole 'beating the shit out of your kids thing' and we lived with my grandparents for much of my childhood) and the culture reverted back to one of anger and violence and I was amazed at how quickly I reverted back to my teenage mindset. And that makes me very sad.

 

[ecstaticsub]

Another case of a young person committing suicide over bullying today, this time in the Vancouver area. Heartbreaking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/12/amanda-todd-bullied-youtube-suicide_n_1960406.html?1350033126&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

I think most of us have experienced some form of bullying in our lives, I know I have. Maybe some of us have been bullies? And some of us have endorsed bullying simply through not speaking or acting out against it when we see it. In my early days on Lit, I know I used to join in/lead some of the dog piles on posts that seemed stupid enough to warrant mean-spirited humour or were full of atrocious grammar. I'm not proud of that behaviour and I've made an effort to stop it.

Curious about your experiences with bullying. Have you been bullied, as an adult or as a youth? Did anyone help you? How did you get through it? Do you have a child who has been bullied? What do you do about it?

Have you been a bully? Why? Why did you stop?

I wanted to bold this part that you've written because it is something that has disturbed me. Just because someone is on Literotica doesn't mean they write erotica, some just like to read it. I consider myself a smart woman. I excel in my field. But my grammar is not the best. I make typos. I misspell words.

I don't understand the mentality where a person feels they have to jump on a newbie with poor communications skills and concentrate on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say.

I would comment much more often in this forum if I weren't so afraid of my grammar and spelling being analyzed.

 

[CandiCame]

I wanted to bold this part that you've written because it is something that has disturbed me. Just because someone is on Literotica doesn't mean they write erotica, some just like to read it. I consider myself a smart woman. I excel in my field. But my grammar is not the best. I make typos. I misspell words.

I don't understand the mentality where a person feels they have to jump on a newbie with poor communications skills and concentrate on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say.

I would comment much more often in this forum if I weren't so afraid of my grammar and spelling being analyzed.

Hell, I write and I couldn't spell my name until 3rd grade (I signed it "Vin" or sometimes just "V"- very few people have "V" names). Spelling is a bunch of bullshit. And it doesn't seem to have affected my readership any.

 

[DVS]

It's sad, but bullying isn't new. I was bullied, but it wasn't called that, back then. It was just thought of as a coming of age thing and almost accepted by those in charge. As long as you weren't bleeding, you were OK. Sometimes, you were even told not to be so sensitive by teachers and coaches. The bullies were never told to stop.

I was a little kid for most of my high school years. I had an OK elementary school life, as most all of us were the same size. Bullies like to pick on those smaller or weaker than they are. In junior high and most of high school, I still hadn't really started to grow. I was about 5' tall and at the most I weighed 98 lbs. I was a good target for those upper class assholes who thought they were cool and I wasn't.

I remember two in particular. Yes, it's been over 45 years, and I can still remember specific incidents. Because of my size, I wasn't that good in sports, although you were seen as a "pansy" if you didn't go out for the organized sports. I tried football and basketball, but after a couple of years of being bullied by the older players for not playing well, I got smart and gave it up. I did excel in the non-team sports, though, such as tennis and golf. I still regret not going out for track, though. My dad was a track star in his college days.

I was even bullied by coaches. Of course, like I said, back then it was only to toughen you up. I remember my freshman year in football, when I wasn't running fast enough and the coach stood right in front of me, while all of the other players stood by and yelled at me, "If you don't start running faster, I'll stick my foot up your rosy red rectum so far, you won't be able to find it." Of course, being as small as I was, it was difficult to move very fast, with all of those pads on. Also because of my size, half of the stuff didn't even fit me. But, I guess it did make me tough. It also made me timid in my social life. And I had a serious hate for many of my classes not to mention trying to stay out of the way of the older kids in the halls, in-between classes.

To get back to the two I remember as being the worst culprits at bullying me, one is now a rich lawyer in my home town, and the other is, or was a big city police officer. He's probably retired, by now. Both of them went into professions of power. I know bullies are basically showing their own weakness when they bully someone, so it seems these two never really grew up, still needing that power over others.

The lawyer was son of the speaker of the Missouri house of reps, at the time. I also tried my hand at little league baseball, but because I wasn't that big, I didn't do well. The speaker of the house was my coach. Of course, his son was the pitcher. That's always how it works. The son's antics continued in these summer months, when I didn't catch a ball or otherwise messed something up.

Because I wasn't very good, I didn't get to play much. But, I think it was a requirement to allow every kid to play some, so I did have my chances. But, those chances really only allowed the son to play the heavy some more. He was only a year older than me, but he was a foot taller. Of course, his dad didn't see a thing. The son was pretty good at picking his times.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I had shot up in height. I grew so quickly that it was difficult to keep me in jeans so they didn't look like high water pants. Being a senior, it was then my turn to pick on the younger kids, but I just didn't feel like it. I knew how it felt to be picked on. I saw some in my class were picking on some kids, and I wish I had been strong enough to stop it, but I guess my own bullying incidents had made me too timid to speak up. I did try to be nice to those kids, when others weren't. It's sad that there wasn't anybody we could go to. This wasn't seen as a problem back then. It was just a fact of life.

Oh, by the way...the speaker of the house ended up going to jail. I forget what it was for, but he did something that got him into big trouble. I'm sure it's on record somewhere. And my home town has a street named after him? Well, I think most of it is a gravel road.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

I wanted to bold this part that you've written because it is something that has disturbed me. Just because someone is on Literotica doesn't mean they write erotica, some just like to read it. I consider myself a smart woman. I excel in my field. But my grammar is not the best. I make typos. I misspell words.

I don't understand the mentality where a person feels they have to jump on a newbie with poor communications skills and concentrate on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say.

I would comment much more often in this forum if I weren't so afraid of my grammar and spelling being analyzed.

Your grammar and spelling are above average for adult (21+)US citizens. You have nothing to be worried about.

We have another poster here who does not type well or spell well, but is still able to put words together in a fashion that is readily understandable - no one picks on that person's posts... not even I, one of those considered one of the board's premier "Grammar Nazis." The difference is: That poster *thinks* about what is desired to be communicated, and maintains a coherent train of thought in posts. Those I jump on, for the most part, not only spell poorly, use little-to-no, or way too damn much, punctuation (and that often incorrectly), and their trains of thought are generally derailed before completing the first six words of their posts. That's the difference.

I'm sorry if I seem to be heartless or a hardass, but if you're coming to a bulletin board/forum to communicate with other people, it is incumbent upon you to communicate reasonably effectively, especially if it's a serious topic of concern to you, about which you want effective and knowledgeable responses. That means using a spell-checker if you know your spelling is atrocious. That means re-reading your post before submitting it, to ensure each sentence makes sense in and of itself, and each grouping of sentences (paragraphs) make sense together. If not, you're wasting not only your time but the time of people who would otherwise be more than willing to share of their knowledge and experience to help you through whatever issue or topic you're concerned about.

For me, it's not a matter of "concentrat[ing] on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say;" it's a matter of not being able to be confident that I can FIGURE OUT what they're trying to say, in most cases. And in many of those cases, I will point out to them that their post is largely (or entirely) incomprehensible and suggest that they try re-writing it in a form and fashion that will make it understandable to us, so we *can* address their issue. (In the case of people who appear to be trolls, however, poor grammar/punctuation/spelling, etc., are just more weapons with which to beat them about the head and shoulders. )

But again... as for yourself, you need have no fears of being attacked by the grammarians or spelling teachers. You never have.

 

[Keroin]

I wanted to bold this part that you've written because it is something that has disturbed me. Just because someone is on Literotica doesn't mean they write erotica, some just like to read it. I consider myself a smart woman. I excel in my field. But my grammar is not the best. I make typos. I misspell words.

I don't understand the mentality where a person feels they have to jump on a newbie with poor communications skills and concentrate on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say.

I would comment much more often in this forum if I weren't so afraid of my grammar and spelling being analyzed.

And I'm taking a break from my work to reply to you!

Waaaaay back when, in another thread, I talked about the difference between e-life and real life. Ironically, I argued that people should behave as respectfully online as they do in real life but that my experience had proven just the opposite. And then I went on to do just the type of thing I complained about. Behaviour, I should add, that I would never consider in real life.

There's something, (probably the anonymity), about the Internet that seems to make bad behaviour and bullying seem not so unethical in the moment. When I realized I was behaving like an ass, a cruel ass, I stopped. Debate and argument are one thing, and I will express myself fully in that context, but sheer "meanness" is another matter entirely, no matter what the intention.

If you've ever felt intimidated by me and my Grammar Nazi-ism, ES, I am deeply sorry. I'm sure I slip now and then, but I really am interested in what you and others have to say, regardless of spelling or grammar, or whether or not I agree or disagree on any particular topic. I do hope you'll join in more and not let weenies like me put you off.

 

[Netzach]

I wanted to bold this part that you've written because it is something that has disturbed me. Just because someone is on Literotica doesn't mean they write erotica, some just like to read it. I consider myself a smart woman. I excel in my field. But my grammar is not the best. I make typos. I misspell words.

I don't understand the mentality where a person feels they have to jump on a newbie with poor communications skills and concentrate on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say.

I would comment much more often in this forum if I weren't so afraid of my grammar and spelling being analyzed.

Thank you. M's IQ is officially higher than mine, and M's idea of internet comm. involves U for you. Some people are information seekers, they're not interested in minutiae and just have a fast question.

I'll grant, there have been a few moments of snark with unknowns, but I generally reserve my prickliness when I think someone's dogpiling an underdog of some kind, even if I like that person. Especially if, actually.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I wanted to bold this part that you've written because it is something that has disturbed me. Just because someone is on Literotica doesn't mean they write erotica, some just like to read it. I consider myself a smart woman. I excel in my field. But my grammar is not the best. I make typos. I misspell words.

I don't understand the mentality where a person feels they have to jump on a newbie with poor communications skills and concentrate on how they say what they say instead of what they are trying to say.

I would comment much more often in this forum if I weren't so afraid of my grammar and spelling being analyzed.

Mostly because this forum is a haven of literacy in the realm of shitty internetz discussion skills. I am very sorry for that, I know it's elitist. But not so sorry, anytime I go everywhere else where there is no elite. learning is a minority these days.

Even so, I think we mostly go after people who display BOTH poor reasoning AND poor literacy. Look at Wenchie, our own dyslexic posterchild, who has something worthwhile to say. Or yourself, 'cause you do too.

On the other hand we have certainly dogpiled on people who use impeccable grammar to say a shitload of nothing.

 

[Allyourbase]

Ah... this thread takes me back

Actually it really does.. heh.

I guess I was one of those kids mentioned above, nothing really visibly wrong, but strange, so bullied anyway, by boys, girls and some teachers didn't like me either. My parents tried what they could, but it didn't help, because were a bit weird themselves as well .

I buried myself in books. Comics. And my kids' encyclopedia

Which kinda made it worse, because then I was a smart-ass. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

High school was hell as well (here, that is 6 years). I don't think things really got better until the end, when I was 17 or 18.

I have a hard time when people unintentionally treat being bullied as 'ultimately a good thing'. Sure, it 'made me stronger', but it also fucked me up.

It made me chronically melancholic, afraid enough to skip a lot of people's birthday parties and generally a difficult, on edge kind of person with a ton of knowledge (books! ). It made me burn out in University from a feverish kind of perfectionism, and then graduate cum laude. It made so anxious my body ached, while I was doing a job most 26yo's can dream of. A high achiever, but with a price.

The thing that surprises me the most is that I sort of recreated the past in my current job.

As the youngest person in our company in charge of a team, I was battling for a product restyling that our team really wanted and needed, but company management and the board distrusted us. It took us two years. Any normal person would've given up, but I almost got myself fired over it.

It felt like being bullied all over again. I did succeed, though.

I am 33 now. Most of it is gone, not all. It took a lot of work, it feels fuckin terrific, and the person I apparently am under all of that makes me pretty happy. But damn. I am tired.




Oh and I'm Dutch, and a bit sloppy, so I dunno, spelling, grammar and idiom might be a bit off.

 

[Lawnman1707]

bullying

The problem with the bullying hysteria is todays helicopter parents. What we call being a bully is the way children figure out socialization. Kids are not mature enough to use grown up reasoning to deal with each other. The other thing is everyone remembers when they were picked on in school. No one remembers the people they picked on when they were young, and we all did it. Also we handled the problem ourselves. My main bully, when I was a kid , I handled by busting his head with a thrown rock. I didn't tell, my parents didn"t get involved. Handling problems yourself is a big part of growing up. You can't cause someone to kill themselves by teasing them. That kid had probably had a lot of other problems and instead of the parents taking any of the blame they blame bullies.

 

[Ropebunny]

The problem with the bullying hysteria is todays helicopter parents. What we call being a bully is the way children figure out socialization. Kids are not mature enough to use grown up reasoning to deal with each other. The other thing is everyone remembers when they were picked on in school. No one remembers the people they picked on when they were young, and we all did it. Also we handled the problem ourselves. My main bully, when I was a kid , I handled by busting his head with a thrown rock. I didn't tell, my parents didn"t get involved. Handling problems yourself is a big part of growing up. You can't cause someone to kill themselves by teasing them. That kid had probably had a lot of other problems and instead of the parents taking any of the blame they blame bullies.

I disagree with all of that. I'd pick out each individual piece of your post to prove it's all crap but I really can't be bothered with that right now.

What I will say is that it seems to me like those that most resist the idea that bullying exists and can have life long consequences tend to be biggest bullies, hence the denial.

If I don't think it exists/matters then I don't have to change the way I treat others, right?

 

[Stella_Omega]

I love it when people expose themselves as assholes. Thank you, Lawnman.

 

[Sir_Winston54]

The problem with the bullying hysteria is todays helicopter parents.

*Partly* true. Today's helicopter parents *contribute* to the "bullying hysteria." However, the issue is out there, and it is a recognized and quantifiable factor in child suicide - and child-on-child homicide, as well.

What we call being a bully is the way children figure out socialization.

Correction: What we *used to* call bullying, a generation and more back, was the way children figure out socialization. Today's generation has, in too many cases, carried that type of interaction to an extreme we couldn't have dreamed of, neither one generation ago (22 years), or two or two and half generations ago (44-55 years ago - my childhood), through electronic and "social" media and broader reach.

Kids are not mature enough to use grown up reasoning to deal with each other.

True. They are, however, now able to use electronic media and social media to perpetrate attacks on a much wider scale than at any time in previous history, and those attacks are, for whatever reason, much more easily accepted/believed by the children who are exposed to them, which increases their power to hurt by several orders of magnitude.

The other thing is everyone remembers when they were picked on in school. No one remembers the people they picked on when they were young, and we all did it.

No, Lawnman, we didn't *all* do it. *Many* people bullied others, even many who were bullied themselves bullying "weaker" targets... but not *all* of us. Some *had* no "weaker target;" others were sufficiently affected by bullying that they didn't do it because they knew the effect it could have. As Ropebunny says, "those that most resist the idea that bullying exists and can have life long consequences tend to be biggest bullies, hence the denial." You might want to take a good look at yourself in the mirror.

Also we handled the problem ourselves. My main bully, when I was a kid, I handled by busting his head with a thrown rock.

Huzzah. You bullied a bully - presumably anonymously. The only actual fight I ever had before I joined the Navy (on my 18th birthday) was at age 16, when I walked up and punched a larger 17-year-old guy directly in the nose because he was punching a smaller, younger Asian student and tearing his target's shirt almost off. I broke his nose. He then kicked my ass... but he stopped picking on the Asian kid. Oh... did I mention that the Asian kid was a 14-year-old girl who had embarrassed him on the school bus by loudly telling him to take his hand off her breast?

I didn't tell, my parents didn"t get involved. Handling problems yourself is a big part of growing up.

Yes, it is. But some problems, kids aren't equipped to handle themselves. At that point, they need to know - and understand - that there are adults they can go to who will help them learn how to deal with the situation.

You can't cause someone to kill themselves by teasing them. That kid had probably had a lot of other problems and instead of the parents taking any of the blame they blame bullies.

You *can* cause someone to kill themselves by teasing them. You can cause someone to kill themselves by hurting them. You can cause someone to kill themselves by excluding them socially.

"That kid" (her name was Amanda Todd, btw) *may* have had other problems; we'll probably never know. However, the bullying she experienced might well have caused even a particularly well-adjusted teenager to commit suicide. And I don't read the article as "the parents [not] taking any of the blame [and] ... blam[ing] bullies;" what her mother said was, "I think the video should be shared and used as an anti-bullying tool. That is what my daughter would have wanted." She didn't want to blame bullies - she wanted people to know how serious the issue is, and for her daughter's legacy to be, perhaps, one tool to help fight it.

I disagree with all of that. I'd pick out each individual piece of your post to prove it's all crap but I really can't be bothered with that right now.

What I will say is that it seems to me like those that most resist the idea that bullying exists and can have life long consequences tend to be biggest bullies, hence the denial.

If I don't think it exists/matters then I don't have to change the way I treat others, right?

I think maybe you don't need to pick out pieces and prove it's all crap.

I love it when people expose themselves as assholes. Thank you, Lawnman.

QFFT.