Bullying: Stop the complaining.

[Catrixa]

...I didn't read the whole thread, because it is quite long, so I'm sorry if this has been posted by someone far more eloquent than me already (or at least succinct... I ramble and I know it).

When I was a kid, if I was bullied, I knew it ended when I got home. If I was made fun of or tormented by my friends, I could just go home and play computer games and forget everyone who was a jerk. I could escape to any of my happy places and no one could bother me there. Today's kids are now helpfully followed to their happy places by everyone who hates them. With the glorious internet, now everyone can be constantly reminded of just how worthless they are with everything they do. Want to play some games? Well, unless they're single player and have no DRM or aren't on a console attached to the internet (unlikely unless you mess with cable or don't already have internet), you're pretty much screwed. Is your happy place connecting with friends on Facebook? You can see where this is going.

Punching people gets you expelled, and you can't punch people over the internet anyway (yet). With constant connectivity comes constant harassment. We either push to stop the harassment, or live with young people killing themselves. I'm pretty sure we won't stop the complaining or the internet.

 

[Substitute Troll]

Give me an example of where you can't just "deal with it."

snip

Your post is an example of where bullying is completely unacceptable, but you still had a way out of it. You could have called the cops? There are always ways out, you just have to be creative. I agree that telling a teacher is a pretty bad idea, mainly because they're incompetent. If you're being beat up to the point where they draw blood, you absolutely have the right to get those mother fuckers away from you in some way.

 

[Seydaman]

Do not tell someone to just deal with it.

It's insensitive and frankly, makes you look like an asshole. Coping mechanisms to deal with trauma are not taught in public schools, I only learned them when I was hospitalized. So most people simply can't deal with it, and are afraid to tell anyone.

 

[rob_simple]

Anyone who thinks that talking to someone about it or trying to get the bullies in trouble has never been bullied, themselves.

The problem with trying to get any sort of authority figure involved is that a lot of these kids just don't give a fuck. They've learned early on that life's not got a lot to offer them, but making others miserable is one thing they can do better than anyone else.

When I was in school I was terrified of getting in a fight because I didn't want to get suspended and let my parents down. I put up with years of shit and there were several days I gave real, genuine consideration to taking a knife into school and stabbing the first person who spat on me for having long hair or called me a '****' just for existing.

To make matters worse, I started taking out my frustration on other more vulnerable people at my school that I knew I could give shit to because they'd never give it back. It's still something I'm ashamed of. The difference between me and the proper bullies, though, was that as soon as I got pulled up by the deputy head I packed it in. These other kids, though, what do they care if they get suspended, they don't care if they get sent to juvenile hall because honestly what difference does it make to their shitty lives?

I've grown up and moved away from the town I grew up in, but whenever I go back for Christmas I see these guys and they've never grown out of that mentality: they've just swapped schoolyard bullying for getting drunk in pubs and starting fights; getting suspended from school for spending a few days in a cell.

There are some people who will always be nothing but trouble (it's not necessarily their fault; just how the dice is rolled) and the only way you can deal with them when they hit you is to hit back twice as hard.

 

[Atmos Duality]

- Violence solves nothing.

Speaking from experience, it was the only action that got results with certain "touched" individuals.
Even if my so-called "guardians" at school did not approve.

Violence isn't an ideal solution, but for some of us, it was the only realistic solution available.

Fuck anyone who blames the victim.

Like the school system that punishes actions of self-defense?
Indeed, fuck those idiots and their "guilty for being dragged into shit" mentality.

And fuck the idiots who insist that it's every bit the victim's fault as it is the perpetrators.
It's the same backwards logic some employ to "justify" rape and domestic abuse.

 

[Luna]

lol at you for trying to deny that there are bullies in the world, and/or that standing up to them can be the right thing to do sometimes.


At least in a workplace perspective, telling on them is the best thing to do, sure. But on a non professional level, you can't tell on somebody for being mean to you, (unless they harass you to the point where you can get an actual restraining order).

See the bit I emphasized? I actually don't disagree.

I'm not gonna say that you should NEVER stand up for yourself or that it never works. Because sometimes it does. If there's only one bully or a small number, and they're just doing it for fun (or they're grade school bullies), then it'll work. There was one jerk in grade school that stopped picking on me after I dodged a punch that made him split his knuckles on the fence, and I told him to get lost since his aim was pathetic. SO yeah, I'm not saying it never works

But when you have a bully (and his friends) who only gets MORE nasty when you try to stand up for yourself, or when the ENTIRE SCHOOL thinks you're "a little pussyfag who jerks off in class and deserves to get mocked all day every day" due to stupid false rumors being spread all over the place, how the hell do you "Stand up for yourself" short of showing up with a sledgehammer and breaking someone's arm with it or doing some other giant display of "FUCK WITH ME AND DIE"? Which some of us are incapable of doing unless we snap and go psycho, and go against everything that makes us who we are?

I'm not saying that we can (or should) restrict kids from teasing or doing some light roughhousing and stuff. THAT you can't kill off, it's too prevalent and basically natural. And it's not that bad anyway. THAT, kids can grow from and get over. But full on social warfare and isolation, or getting beat up constantly? That shit doesn't fly in the adult world, why allow kids to do it? It messes up a kid's psyche and can scar them for the rest of their lives.

I don't disagree with anything you said.

 

[talker]

Give me an example of where you can't just "deal with it."

when you're being ganged up on, there's nobody around to help, and they've got you cornered. the best you can make of it then is trying to run between them and find someone who WILL do something. I always preferred fighting though, so in those cases going for the leader sometimes works, but not every time. the trick is going to a teacher who is good at giving punishments and will probably call the offender's parents if it goes on to long. I had a problem so big once, that the leader of the bullies was an item in the teacher's meetings all by himself. that's when you know it's gonna get better

 

[AngloDoom]

Bullying, most of the time, has a reason. The validity of the reason may be questionable, but there's almost always a reason. If little Timmy gets bullied because of his clown costume, it's because that particular group of people doesn't resonate well with clown costumes. Bullying, atleast I think, has a function. It teaches us about social interaction.

While I agree this is true in a broad sense, some people are bullied for ethnicity or sexuality - there's not really much they can do about that. Hell, when I was bullied it stemmed from two things - the fact that I wore glasses and the fact that I used to live in Germany. There really wasn't much I could do about that for a while.

I got rid of the glasses when I turned sixteen and was old enough to get contact lenses and, by then, everyone had forgotten I lived in Germany so the bullying dwindled and eventually died. At the same time, a friend of mine was rumoured to be gay and was bullied relentlessly until he left school. The reason he was presumed to be gay? Because he dropped his towel in the changing-rooms after a swimming lesson and accidentally revealed that he had a large penis, so everyone said he was getting aroused in the changing rooms and was perving on everyone.

I mean, what the fuck can you do about that? The guy was bullied because he had a large penis. It's mental.

 

[Luna]

The OP is right. lol at the strawman arguments in response to OP, 'no one deserves to be bullied'. Nice try.

Care to elaborate on how the OP is right? Is it the victim blaming? Or the inferred cowardice of putting pressure on the victim rather then confronting the bully? I mentioned this earlier already, but if your strong enough to stand up for yourself, what's stopping you from standing up for others?

lmao. the first thing I do in my initial post is criticize the strawmen arguments in response to OP. and then the person that challenges me uses a strawman argument. 'hur dur, he thinks it must be the victim's fault because he thinks standing up to bullies can sometimes be the right thing to do'

Apart from having no backbone of course.

what's stopping me from standing up from others is that sometimes they're in... oh i don't know... a different location to myself.

The irony of the OPs position is that his "logic" equates to bullying anyway. He assumes that the act of bullying stems from a fault in the victim and is merely exploited by the bully. That the victim has an inherent flaw and it's their responsibility to sort out. He forgets that bullying can in fact induce this flaw. A bully can whittle down a persons will until they become incapable of standing up for themselves, which in turn, emboldens the bullies actions.

The irony of your position is that you criticize OP for bullying and challenge him, making you the bully.


^I seriously think calling you a bully is ridiculous, but is equally ridiculous as your assertion that he is a bully. Anyway...

What's more he forgets that bullies are RARELY individual threats, but instead a group of peers who derive pleasure from tormenting an individual. These are bullies that initiate and incessantly pursue aggressive/oppressive actions towards the victim. But we also have another sort, the ones who sit on the sides and let it happen, feeling some smug satisfaction or sense of superiority over the victim.

You, and the OP, are the latter.

Boy, you don't know a thing about me. So don't pretend you do. I've probably done things that you wouldn't have the courage to.

This logic makes him (quite blatantly) unsympathetic to victims of bullying and ultimately belittles the struggles of said victims. Given the right situation, I wouldn't be surprised if he would harass someone or physically intimidate them himself, whether that person is deserving of it or not. You see, he has already convinced himself that the bully is not the problem, but the person with no courage to rebel against the bully is. So he would think all he's doing is giving the poor sod a taste of real life, rather then being completely objective about it and seeing that he's just being a fucking dick.

don't call the OP a fucking dick, please. I don't appreciate this bullying behavior.

What you said is basically a strawman argument anyway so I'll quickly say that you're a manipulative over assuming individual who believes what he wants to believe.

As I said earlier. If you actively promote opposing bullies, then why the fuck don't you act as you preach? Are bullies only a bully if they are bullying you? No. Then why not stand up to bullies on principle?

Oh yeah, the aforementioned absence of a backbone might be why.

who says I don't? You might as well go stand in a field and scare off crows because this man of straw is overwhelming.

People should not be left to stand on their own. Yes it should be a trait we strive for, but we exist as a social creature for a reason. The strong should cover the weak. People who can take a hit should take the hits of people who can't. People with power to intervene should do so for people with no power of their own. That's all I'm trying to say.

Forgive me for skim reading your post. It was rather an essay of sorts. I'll just address the last paragraph as I feel it covers the crux of what you're saying.


Maybe people would sometimes benefit to be left to stand on their own. I don't think this issue is a yes or no answer, rather a spectrum, with a dog eat dog world on one side, and a totalitarian world where remarks that could be taken negatively are over reacted to and prevent people from solving a problem independently. Sometimes intervention is a good thing. The strong should cover the weak to an extent. If people can't take the hits, and they have no power to address the problem, then sometimes it's because the problem is vastly difficult. Other times they need to learn to be assertive and stop being weak.


If someone is giving someone else a hard time for no good reason and they look visibly strained then I might say something. But if they continue to be quiet and constantly look for help in the smallest of situations then I can't help but feel a little disgusted.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I think OP had it like me.
The bullies in my school were pussies. I never felt threatened by them.
Sure they would get annoying sometimes but then you put a boot in their ass, or crazy glue them to something, and they leave you alone.
Some kids don't have it that easy and some kids have emotional problems to begin with; the latter being something that would probably attract bullies.

I'm glad people are making a big deal of it now but yea there is no one solution to all bullies. Some kids just need to stand up for themselves but some kids need a little help.

Also we have to stop telling people to stop the complaining before we've heard their full story.

 

[tsb247]

I remember dealing with bullies back in gradeschool and to a small extent back in highschool. I gradeschool, we usually settled things on the playground. I shed a little blood from one bully's nose, and *bam* he shut up for the rest of my life. Needless to say, I spent a fair amount of time in the principal's office in my youth. On the plus side, many of the kids I got into fights with later became my friends. Odd, right?

However, that only works for children - some of the time. In the end, violence is usually the most risky option because the consequences get more dire with age. In highschool, I resorted to witty retorts that were on-par with Norm McDonald one-liners that made everyone else in the room laugh while the bully just stood there, dumbfounded. It was safer than getting in heaps of trouble for fighting.

At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the victim to stand up for themselves. However, there is nothing shameful in seeking help from others if the situation is beyond their control.

 

[Tiger King]

a lot of very sad experiences on here
lot of people focusing on bullying at schools though i can say bullying in the work place is just as bad.

i personally think one of the worst aspects of bullying is when a lot of people can see what is happening but nobody steps forward to help, or worse these people get influenced and turn on the victim.

 

[Hawk eye1466]

Well I think of it like this if someone's making jokes its fine when they start to hurt feel free to have a few comebacks but if it starts to get nasty and they are the ones that throw the first punch or do anything threatening physically like pushing you, I feel like your well within your rights to knock them on their ass so they know where the line is. But that doesn't mean you can just start beating people that annoy you or your friends but it's mostly personal judgement you should know when to stand up for yourself or someone else and also know when a teacher or authority is needed because it's gotten real serious real fast.

It's a pain to explain without sounding like I'm advocating people solving problems with a golfclub.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Violence is not a universal bully deterrent. Beating up your tormentor does not automatically mean he hands you the All-Valley Karate Championship trophy and tells you you're alright. An act of violence may very well solve your problem, or it may escalate it, or it may land you in trouble with the authorities. That's quite the dice to roll.

Add in the fact that a victim of bullying may be slight of frame, or prone to anxiety, or physically inept, and an attempt to make things physical will most likely result in a swift and violent beating. One bully at my school when I was growing up was a golden gloves boxer. Someone stood up to him, and got his jaw broken in 5 places. Oddly, the bully was not intimidated, and continued menacing people until he was jailed as an adult.

Believe it or not, life is full of problems you will not be able to solve with your fists. It's good that people complain about bullying. The more attention gets paid to it, and the more public outrage and hand wringing it generates, the more being a "bully" becomes socially unacceptable. You'll never get rid of it completely, this isn't smallpox we're talking about, it's human psychology. But you can certainly not ENDORSE it by telling people to "man up" and "stop whining".

 

[Rariow]

So, I wasn't a strong or fast kid in school. Still aren't, really. There was this one kid who would just not stop making fun of me. Guess what, he was popular. So I had to live 6 fucking years of my goddamn life being called "Pedo" (Spanish for fart) because my name is "Pedro". It was NOT a happy time. The only person I could talk to without being mocked was my best friend Diego. I did at various times try to "deal with it". I tried to punch him. He was faster and he would easily dodge. I tried to goad him into fights. He was stronger. And don't go and say "Go train and make yourself stronger and/or faster". I was 6 to 12. How likely was I to go and workout?

So, I spent 6 years of my life deeply miserable because the only person who wouldn't mock me in school was my best (and only) friend. I also learned to fear anyone my age, which is something I still have to really get over, even if I can now actually trust people my age. This guy frickin' ruined great part of my childhood. Sure, it's gotten better and I'm now a regular guy with a bunch of really great friends. But years 6 to 12 of my life are 6 years of my life I spent miserable because people decided that I should "deal with it".

I understand how this is hard to see for someone who could actually stand up to these guys. But I've never enjoyed sport, never been particularly fit (Though I've never been fat either), and I've never been someone who could deal with someone unreasonable and assholish.

During my life, there's been a number of people who've done a number of really bad things to me. I've forgiven all of them for it. All of them but that kid.

 

[Zen Bard]

In all seriousness, MakerofMysteries, thank you for a well-thought, well-reasoned and well articulated post. It was refreshing to read.

And I totally agree with this part:

So; what can YOU do? Not much really, except one thing; bullies bully because they think it's fun. It gives them a sense of power. Why?

Because they can see that you are suffering from their torments, that they're getting to you. Schadenfreude, skadeglädje; happiness derived from others' misery. Your pain gives them joy and a sense of power. So what to do?

Try not show that it affects you. Make it boring to bully you; "That is no fun, it doesn't get to them, let's pick on this kid who goes into a rage, or the one who cries, or the one who curls in a corner, numb from apathy. simply does not give a fuck." They can only hurt you if you care about what they say. Unless they hit you, of course, but then you can always file legal charges.

I remember this one time in ninth grade (not Band Camp) once telling a kid who bullied me daily "Look, can we get this over with? I'm late for class."

Naturally, the kid rammed me into a locker and punched me twice in the stomach. But I got up, thanked him and ran...shaking...to class.

I wasn't in any way, shape or form intentionally trying to be a badass. I simply had so much on my mind, I didn't have time to be scared at that particular moment.

But I noticed he backed off after that. Oh he still teased me...but I no longer seemed to be his primary source of amusement ("abusement"?). Took me years to realize it was because I just wasn't as fun to pick on anymore.

Bullies bully because they're insecure and make themselves feel better by picking on others. When I realized that, I was amazed at how much less scary to me those fuckers became.

 

[Eggsnham]

I'm no stranger to being bullied, but I have to agree with OP, standing up to adversity is much more effective with dealing with the world's many assholes than simply telling somebody else about what's going on in the hopes that they'll fix your problem for you.

Instead of facing the problem, most kids are instead encouraged to be passive aggressive about it, which typically solves nothing and in some cases may even make the problem worse.

You don't even need to fight the person if you go about the situation the right way.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, etc. etc.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Bullies bully because they're insecure and make themselves feel better by picking on others. When I realized that, I was amazed at how much less scary to me those fuckers became.

People bully for a variety of reasons. Some because of insecurity. Some because of a bad home life/learned abuse. Some because they dislike you and want you to suffer. Some because they think your upset is amusing. Some because everyone else is bullying you too so why not? And on and on.

There is no universal reason why people do anything, let alone something as contentious as bullying. This in turn contributes to there being no one way to deal with them, because not everyone will respond to the same "solution". A punch in the nose might make Bully A back off, and Bully B stab you in an alley.

 

[A Satanic Panda]

The point is that bullying will happen, so people have to learn how to deal with it.

NO NO NO FUCKING NO

You're making the statement that all the good people of the world have to bend to the will of those who would do them harm, No thank you sir.

We do not stand for this behavior anymore.

Ok. So tell me, what can you or anyone else do to erase our psychological traits of asserting dominance?

It's a part of life everyone has to deal with, unfair to some as it is.

 

[generals3]

NO NO NO FUCKING NO

You're making the statement that all the good people of the world have to bend to the will of those who would do them harm, No thank you sir.

We do not stand for this behavior anymore.

You know, this attitude aggravates me. He wasn't claiming people should just bend to the will of those who do them harm. He was just saying that there will always be people out there who will do harm and as such it is more productive to teach people how to deal with that instead of just victimizing victims even more, to the point they are being equated to some helpless little creatures that would make baby darwin cry.