Getting bullied for playing games?

NPC009

Don't mind me, I'm just a NPC
Aug 23, 2010
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I know all about girls "other" Tactics, however, I think it is also how you handled them in that regard as well. Most importantly, I honestly never really cared what anyone thought about me, I cared what I thought of me, and did what I wanted. As my friend put it, I am the type of person that people are drawn to me, but I honestly do not like people that much so I tolerate them but I usually do not like them. If someone " dissed me" I thought it was funny, it didn't make me feel bad.. I actually had fun with "dissing competitions" and we would try to come up with the worst most disgusting repulsive horrible insults for each other imaginable, and we found this funny, not got upset about it. I also had friends who were very loyal, so if someone attempted to say something about me, for the most part people took up for me rather than turned against me. I was also confrontational, and if someone did that crap, I called them out on it to their face.
It takes a lot of energy to deal with that kind of crap, and sometimes, you just don't have it. That's when it gets really bad. Once you show a sign of weakness they latch on and won't let go. Some of them lived nearby, so we had to take the same road to get home. They'd follow me and call me every name in the book the whole way home. Maybe throw some rocks for good measure. Try to deal with that for up to an hour. The only real defence was to stop by the side of the road and wait for them to pass, taking the convenience out of their bullying set-up.

In the real world, you can't solve these situations with a clever remark or a well-aimed punch. You have to try to deal with it knowing whatever you do could be used against you and make things worse. Much worse.

In the best case they'd move on to someone else. It's not the victims who are the problem. It's the bullies. Playing the bullying game is their way of staying afloat and controling the attention aimed at them. For instance, one of my bullies was a large girl, very large. She was an emotional eater. I don't know what was going on in her life, but eating was one of her ways of dealing with it. In another setting she may have been the bullied, but here she took the initiative and took her frustrations out on someone else. Her friends didn't join in but did tolerate her behaviour. I guess they were glad they weren't targets themselves.

To be honest, I think the best defence is to constantly remind bullies that their targets are people too. One of them did actually start to treat me normally after we talked. Problem is, you can't force them.
 

prpshrt

New member
Jun 18, 2012
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Well I did get judged by a couple friends in college because I chose to stay in and game rather than go out with and drink at a shitty frat party where they drank piss water beer and got absolutely no where with the ladies (not that I would either but better staying in and gaming than all that crap). As far as middle school and high school goes, no judgement that I knew off. I did get bullied for coming across nerdy and not knowing squat/not giving a flying fuck about the english premier league (football).
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
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I've been part of both; Started off at a school where gaming, among other fads things, was accepted and 'cool', then moved to a school where arts and sports were all that mattered, and if you gamed and were smart you were a nerd and not worth talking to. Ironically, after a couple of years there, most of the people who originally picked on me for being a nerd, were asking me to join them playing CoD 'cause I'd be "Totes pro at it".

It really depends on who you end up with, how they were brought up, and what the overall culture of an area is like. In my primary school days, games were fun. The school itself encouraged playing games, with library classes giving you https that took you to games based on book series, which was used to encourage you to read the books. At lunch time, it was a race to the library to play games, for half of lunch, before the library closed and everyone went outside - a few to play sport, some to talk about games, some to make mud castles. The school also encouraged a great deal of communal feelings among its students, and by my end years there we had basically the whole school playing outside together once the gaming time was finished. The whole environment was accepting, and encouraged gaming in the first place [Everyone there also had most of the consoles earlier, as it was a catholic school and many asked for consoles as presents for their various religious 'milestones'. Forgotten what they're even called now, but I remember it being the only reason my sister wanted to be baptised - presents - and so my parents told her no, not unless she had a better reason].

My second school was a private school. The school's atmosphere didn't allow games at all. The library existed, but it was, purportedly, for study. There was a heavy international segment who played games at lunch, and a small nerd faction who I befriended who did similarly, however by and large the focus was on sports achievements and art achievements. Only after I'd left did the focus even actually shift to academic achievement in addition to this. The school did little to promote communal feelings. Every 3 years of the school [It was pre prep to year 12] had its own building, where all its classes were held. The only time to talk to other year levels was during lunch, and it was generally frowned upon or downright not allowed to go into other year level group's buildings. Classes were also entirely segregated. Only in sports did similar ages get to spend time together, and even then it was with the elders as leaders, and everyone else following under them. The school was very strict, and thus little conversation existed outside of lunch - the time where people would split into groups and go do what interested them the most. This lead to the community as a whole being rather segmented, with a heavy bias towards sports and arts. Because of this, those who played games and focused on academics were shunned. Very little recognition of excellent academic achievement made few try for it, and the attitude against wasting time playing games solidified the stance against 'nerds'.

Over time things changed. More academic achievement awards were bought in. Games were allowed during certain lunchtimes, and after school. A few, key, popular people discovered us playing games in the library after school, and deciding it looked more fun than studying, joined in and found they enjoyed it. This slowly allowed, and spread, the attitude that games weren't bad, and were actually quite fun. Of course, the more mainstream still picked up on mostly mainstream games, and certain demographics [Largely females] didn't exactly have a lot of games in the mainstream [Or at all] that catered to them, and so still maintained some dislike for 'nerds', however those who had once picked on the gamers, actually started being friendly and getting on with the rest of us. This was aided by increased year level communal feelings approaching the final year, thanks to the school doing the whole "If you all get good grades, it'll boost the class average, which VCAA will take into account and boost individual scores, or lower them if the class average is bad" push, as well as giving those in the final year a "Common room" to meet up and spend time in both at lunch, and during the day when they didn't have classes.



It does happen, and the places I went to school were a 10 minute drive from each other. Its amazing how much little details can foster certain attitudes in communities, however it is something that happens. This is all fairly isolated from American culture too, as I live in Australia and whilst we see major news from America, and get American TV shows, most kids at the very least don't really care. Its stuff happening in a far away world, and you've got school stuff to handle instead. Local things could be a worry, but back then less of that happened.
 

blackrave

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Mar 7, 2012
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Bullied? No.
It is hard to bully someone who is bigger, stronger and tougher than everyone else in the class.
Ostracized? Definitely.
But gaming wasn't the only reason why.
 

The Lunatic

Princess
Jun 3, 2010
2,291
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Can't say I really got bullied for it. Vast majority of my friends played games. Even during my more outgoing days of riding bikes, underage drinking and general mischief, there was always a "Let's play video games!" time where we'd all sit around and play games.


Interestingly, some people still strive to bully others though. I think the kinds of people whom everyone seems to refer to as "SJWs" are basically just the next iteration of bullies really. Moral high ground, mockery and derision. Bullies basically. It's pretty childish, but, it's the internet, you meet all sorts of people.

This brand of bullies doesn't appear to bully people just for playing video games, instead playing video games they don't like. For as we know, one's tastes are just superior to another's.
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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nightmare_gorilla said:
I'm 28, I definitely got bullied for being a "nerd" in school, in 8th grade I brought my gameboy out durring lunch and off hours and was activley mocked for it. the "mainstream" of gaming wasn't that long ago. Granted I was a huge nerd and got mocked for reading comics and watching anime and gaming collectively. I got in fist fights after being pushed around too much for being a "nerd" I mean don't get me wrong i'm glad fewer and fewer people have these stories but I am not about to forget my own experiences. I'm not about to let people be ashamed of being a gamer, if I can stick it out so can you.


Look, right now there's almost nothing cooler than spider-man, when I was in 10th grade I bought a spider-man shirt that i still own today, when i wore it to school people mocked me for not owning "adult" clothes, more than a few teachers asked if i needed to go home and change. that was back in 2000-2002 i want to say. Want to know what happened the last time i wore it? 3 people stopped to tell me how much they loved the spider-man movies. exact same shirt. 10 years of difference.

Times are changing and that's good. I don't want other people to go through that stuff I want them to be happy always. But don't rewrite history, this idea that "nerds never where bullied they just have a persecution complex." or that we should just "get over it already." is insulting. I had to change schools after it got so bad I couldn't bring myself to go to school anymore I hated it so much. I'm not denying anyone their story, and i'm not suggesting people need to suffer for their fandom to be true. the "not a real gamer" thing is just as infuriating to me, but no way am i going to listen when people claim no one suffers for it.
Yes! Someone my age who gets it.
You guys now-a-days have no idea how good you got it. You don't have to hide your hobbies like you and your friends are doing meth at school anymore.
 

WhiteWolfe

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Mar 15, 2011
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I was bullied for being a nerd and not playing sports. Tangentially related to video games but most people liked video games of one kind or another at school. Good grades was the bigger boost for the nerd thing (how is being unintelligent still a badge of pride? c'mon kids). Playing video games caused me to be nonathletic due to general lack of exercise but they didn't cause my disinterest.
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
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As everyone's said before, it depends on the time and place you were brought up in. I'm a Late Eighties and Mostly Nineties kid, and video games were always perceived as the new, fun thing to be involved in. The novelty of it all wore off by the time the console wars picked up. By that time, nobody cared about your choice of console, what mattered was the games you played. Even then, you weren't so much bullied for your poor taste as you'd receive surprised comments.

More often than not, the source of these comments was out of our control. If you had understanding parents, you'd end up with the games you rented out the most for your birthday or for Christmas. If you had clueless parents, you'd end up with whatever game had the most colorful box art or the cutest protagonist. I was lucky enough to get several of the must-haves for the SNES, some friends of mine weren't. We didn't exactly bully the one unlucky kid who'd ended up with Bubsy 2 as a birthday present because it looked "less violent", we bemoaned the cluelessness of that kid's parents and formed a common front to introduce him or her to what games were really worth playing.
 

ninja666

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May 17, 2014
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In my case "bullied" is a little too harsh of a term. I definitely was ostracized, though, often being classified as the "weird" kid. When I got into high school, however, people were mostly ok with it and didn't pester me about it.
 

Ishal

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Oct 30, 2012
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Games were never really the thing I was bullied for, but they were a thing among many others.

Mostly it was due to my interest in games at the expense of other things, like sports. I played soccer in middle school then stopped at high school. I knew where my interests were, and they weren't in the team sports that were valued. That being basketball, baseball, and of course football.

I didn't watch the sports, either. So that was where a lot of the pressure came from. Even my gamer friends enjoyed sports, so when it came time to talk about them, they were able to get along fine. Not so for me. It made things difficult. I don't think it would have been so bad if I was like them, with games just being a secondary hobby along with the other aforementioned sports. As it was, it was just a hobby that people didn't understand, or didn't want to understand. That really hasn't changed much, at least where I am.