# The Bullying thread - stories and opinions



## Monika H. (Nov 12, 2018)

Hallo, hallo.
Tonight my wife, an assistant teacher, came home four hours late because at the school where she works they held a special meeting regarding a female student who got bullied for two months by a couple of fellow students and today almost got thrown off a window by said students. They are planning to expel both of them and if the bullied girl's parents have the intention to call the authorities, to mount a legal case against the bullies.
My wife especially, having been a bullying victim in her teens, is pushing alongside some colleagues to have the two girls banned from the entire scholastic prefecture, or at least put them on a two-years ban.

This made me think. Although I have had the extreme luck to never get any real bullying in my scholastic experience, I routinely hear/read cases from news, blogs and school-related newsletters. 
It's sad to witness the fact that school authorities seldom intervene - in the case of today, they intervened because it almost ended in tragedy - and sweep those problems under the rug; or when they do intervene, it's either too late or the bullies' parents minimize or even justify their kid's abhorrent behavior.

- Kiwis, what are the opinions on this phenomenon?
- Have you witnessed cases of bullying or have been victims yourself?
- Have you been the bullies yourselves (no, laughing or a-logging to internet crazies it's not bullying) and have grew out of it?
- What could be useful preventive measures/solutions?

Let's talk about it.


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## 8777BB5 (Nov 12, 2018)

My belief on bullying is that I think Columbine taught the schools the wrong lessons when it comes to bullying. Powerlevel When I was in school I got punched by another kid and we both wound up getting In-School Suspension because of the school's zero tolerance policy (The Vice Principal's response to my parents outrage was it takes two fight). When you have zero tolerance policies you wind up with students not wanting to go to the teacher because they're worried they'll get punished too and as such you get stuff escalated to where you have a kid nearly thrown off a window because they're too scared to do anything. While it would be nice to go back to the days when you fought back/got your older brother to fight back I don't think that's going to happen.


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## RG 448 (Nov 12, 2018)

Parents have a duty to teach their kids to defend themselves, both verbally and physically if necesarry.  You’re always gonna run into anti-social people, so there’s always a need to be prepared.


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## TheImportantFart (Nov 12, 2018)

I got bullied throughout my school life and I'd be lying if I said it didn't seriously damage my self-confidence for several years.

I can't claim to be entirely innocent as I did engage in bullying myself. Hell, some might say I'm still doing it now by being on this website.

To be honest, it's a problem that's never going to go away and it doesn't stop in school either. It continues into offices and workplaces and other adult social situations.

Solutions? Honestly, bullying is such a diverse thing that there's no one-size fits all solution. The advice I was always given was to try and develop a thicker skin against psychological bullying. That obviously won't work in every situation, but I only begun to appreciate relatively recently what good advice that was.


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## Red Hood (Nov 12, 2018)

My own experiences with bullying come in two phases. In Elementary school it was more a function of being a nerd (everyone played video games, but it was like if you went further than MK or whatever the flavor of the month was you were "obsessed" and a nerd). One guy talked to me once and I found some common ground because we both played Shinobi. I talked to the same guy a couple of days later and asked if he'd played another game, he decided I was obsessed and spread that to the whole class.

Another thing was, I brought my lunch in a grocery bag to save money. So everyone decided I was poor (I wasn't- it was just a thing we did because grocery bags are reusable).

It got pretty vicious in middle school though. I was fat and got pretty mercilessly mocked for it. One guy would always slap my stomach while I was changing for gym class. The worst part of this was, my friends were usually present and never stood up for me- they even joined in on it sometimes. Gave me a pretty shitty self image that I'm still working on.

In high school I got a bit better- constructing a veneer of "cool" and joining a garage band helps with that a bit.

I was on the other side of it a few times- there were people lower on the totem pole than me. I feel pretty guilty about it now. I can only speculate I was trying to feel better about my own shortcomings.


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## User names must be unique (Nov 12, 2018)

I'm not sure the people I thought of as my bullies realised how stressed and upset their taunting made me until I punched one in the face, after that they all backed off, a few dirty looks and snide comments but I made my own right back and it eventually became good natured bants.

I didn't realise another kid I had bants with was seriously upset until he broke a badminton racket on my arm trying to hit me in the head, it was only then I realised I was a bully. I apologised and we were friends for the rest of high school.

If either the kids that bullied me or I continued what we were doing after realising the stress we caused our 'victims' we'd be totally irredeemable pieces of shit that should be expelled, but we weren't we were kids learning what boundaries are.  It's part of growing up I think all of us are better people because of it, had a teacher tried to set those boundaries for us I don't think we'd of truly learned anything (if we'd acknowledged those boundaries which I doubt).

In the cases of People who get physical or steal, they aren't bullies imo they're seriously fucked in the head because physical pain is unmistakable. They should be separated from regular kids and sent to psychotherapists. (The one kid in my school or was like that ended totally fucked physically and mentally after he nearly electrocuted himself to death stealing live electrical cables for scrap.)


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## Black Waltz (Nov 12, 2018)

I was probably made fun of a lot in school and was too dense to realize it.


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## Al Gulud (Nov 12, 2018)

I thought we all love bullying. Bullying is great its why I am on this site.


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## Doc Cassidy (Nov 12, 2018)

I was never a bully or anything but there was this autistic kid I used to fuck with back in high school. Nothing major, just some shoving or telling him I'd kill his mom, stuff like that. Teenage shit.

He had this ugly mangy kitten that he used to carry around and talk to all the time. I was having a bad day because my girlfriend was being a bitch so I asked him if I could hold it. He was pretty reluctant but since I'm good with tards (I work with them irl) I managed to convince him by telling him we were going to play a game called "haircut".

In order to play haircut I had him dig a small hole and we put the cat in it then we buried the ugly thing up to its neck so that it's head was sticking out. Then I grabbed my dad's push mower and gave it a haircut. For any autists out there, that means I ran over its head with a lawnmower. When I threw the shredded remains of his cat's head and brains in his face he started screaming and hitting himself. I shouted at him "Mark, why did you kill your cat? That was your cat and you killed her!" and he started literally rolling on the ground. It was funny at first but eventually it got on my nerves so I started kicking him as hard as I could until he was too busy vomiting to scream and cry. It was pretty fun and made my day a little better.

Like I said, just typical teenager shit.


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## chunkygoth (Nov 12, 2018)

For the most part, I wasn't really bullied, so much as ignored by most of my peers for most of middle school. So unpopular but tolerated and definitely not the weakest link. I was weird and fat but I had weird, fat friends.

Then in my freshman year of high school, a group of OTHER unpopular girls started putting gum in my hair, throwing my bookbag in the trash, and talking about me where I could hear them, very petty stuff. It really made me dread school. I left that school and went to another where I was nervous and quiet the whole time, back to the "tolerated weird kid".  I made friends but only thought I had a few.

I lost a LOT of weight the summer before college and had a great time. Over the years, as I went back home, I found out from various high school acquaintances that people had in general been fond of me and that I had gotten considerable votes in "Best Personality" superlative. For years, I just assumed no one liked me except my close friends, when actually people I didn't know thought I was sweet. It took me a long time to realize that I didn't have to be a shrinking violet and that people actually enjoyed my company.  In retrospect, I should have stuck it out at the original school but my life has turned out fine despite it and I don't regret leaving.
EDIT:
Looking back, a lot of the problems with perceived lack of friends and loneliness were caused by myself. I didn't really speak to a stranger unless I was spoken to and made no effort to be friendly if I decided in advance that the person wasn't going to like me.  It was a form of being stuck-up. I got over it quickly in college. Had I realized it when I was fat, I might have had a better time.


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## Gordon Cole (Nov 12, 2018)

I don't wanna get too into specifics considering that this is a @Heinrich Himmler thread, but middle school got really rough at points for me, and my attitude at the time as well as an incompetent staff wasn't making it go away. 

Eventually I just learned to ignore it more as well as general mellowing with age, and the closest thing I have to bullies now are also some of the biggest morons I've ever met and stopped talking to me once they realized they only shot themselves in the feet by acting the way they did.

And while I'd be perfectly okay with never seeing anyone from middle/high school ever again, I did almost run into my biggest bully while getting lunch over the summer, no idea if he grew up too.


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## Basketball Jones (Nov 12, 2018)

Talking about this shit makes me feel like a such a faggot because it’s so middle school. But I’ll bite. 



Spoiler






Heinrich Himmler said:


> - Kiwis, what are the opinions on this phenomenon?



Bullying is a weird part of childhood development because the bully is usually from an unstable and unbalanced home life and all those emotions aren’t dealt with properly during the stages of individuation. The child is seeking to become their own person but also thrive in a social environment. Their actions can be looked at as projecting their own issues into someone weaker than them. They can be simply trying to climb the social hierarchy and establishing their place in the stronger pack. They could also just be little sociopaths because a lot of kids are.

It’s honestly hard to generalize because no two bullies are the same. I’ve heard of some students that have stabbed classmates and others that bullied people as a way to get attention. But because of this, I don’t think intervention and more rules should be established unless it’s an EXTREME situation that jeopardizes students safety. 

Yeah it sucks being on the receiving end, but people can learn and grow from the hurt. Parents need to teach kids to stand up for themselves and school boards need to stop being PC and bring down the hammer on repeat offenders that they keep letting off for asinine reasons like district quotas and muh oppressed minorities. 



> - Have you witnessed cases of bullying or have been victims yourself?



Yes. In middle school. It was mostly verbal, and one kid started it up in 4th grade on the bus. It went on through 8th grade. And it was relentless. Everyday he would pick apart everything about my appearance, call me a boy, say I wasn’t pretty and no one would ever date me, and general name calling at recess. Other boys in the grade gave me shit too and middle school was hell because it was every day, every class, on the bus, on AIM, it never ended. 

Strangely though, there were times when the boy that started it all would stick up for me and be kind. It almost felt like a weird game we both played. One of my friends dared me to ask him to dance at some middle school party and he agreed, albeit hesitantly. As shitty as he was, towards the end I felt like I understood why he was angry. I think he had his life mapped out for him by his parents, and that aggression came out at me. Why? I have no clue. But I was never afraid of him hurting me physically, and most of the time some of the shit he said made me laugh, despite it being at my expense. I’m a sucker for witty trashtalk and wordplay, what can I say? Lol

He actually wished me a happy birthday on Facebook recently. So, obviously there’s no bad blood after all these years. 



> - Have you been the bullies yourselves (no, laughing or a-logging to internet crazies it's not bullying) and have grew out of it?



So there was this baptist chick in community college that was so uneducated about sex and her lady bits that I convinced her women were born with teeth in their vaginas. I told her some parents got them removed at birth, but sometimes they were kept in without any health risk. I think I equated them to the appendix in terms of having no evolutionary use any longer. She believed me and called her doctor to schedule an appointment...but cancelled when someone spilled the beans. >:/

Ironically, the movie Teeth came out like a month later. 

There’s a personal lolcow of mine that I troll whenever he streams. He used to work with me and my bf and he was the most insufferable autistic piece of smelly shit I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. I got him fired by getting him to break the NDA on his stream. His boss was elated (just to show how unliked this guy was). 



> - What could be useful preventive measures/solutions?



For extreme cases I would say expulsion or suspension, and police if the situation calls for it. 

For general schoolyard bullying and name-calling...like, I dunno...the victim has to stand up for themselves and take action. Kids have to learn shit the hard way sometimes. And usually I’ve found the kids that took some hard knocks as children come out tougher as adults. 

I, personally, don’t hold anything against my bullies. And honestly, I don’t regret having experienced it. It sucked then, but I learned to fight back and not let the words hurt me. 

But that’s just my opinion.


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## Clop (Nov 12, 2018)

I have perpetually blackened, "tired" looking eyes, and it goes along great with me being pretty impulsively noisy when I get annoyed with trivial crap like malfunctioning software or hitting my face in the fan. Teachers and parents thought I took drugs and other kids thought I was creepy, which prompted my homeroom teacher to ask my parents, and I quote: "Does your child listen to death metal?" (to which my father replied "No. I do." - I listened mainly to pop songs and woke up Saturdays to yell at my dad to turn down the goddamned noise)

Even in my adulthood days it's still a constant issue of people being genuinely convinced that I am going to shoot up the place or injure someone, which makes me kinda grumpy, which makes people even more suspicious that I must be a psycho. Actual potheads and junkies tend to react to me more positively, although it's kinda tiresome when junkies ask if I have anything.

Does that count as bullying? I dunno. It is pretty funny though.


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## Zaragoza (Nov 12, 2018)

I got bullied a lot in middle school more than I did in high school and looking back it helped me grow thicker skin in terms of just letting it slide right there and then, but it still pisses me off mentally thinking about it, I won't go into great lengths of retaliating back but rather just letting it slowly go away as time goes on. 

Anyways, I think in this day and age, if you're being treated like shit, tell your teachers about it or bring up to a higher authority in school or in your workplace's HR depending on where you're at, but if you're just gonna be a pussy and not deal with it, then it's on you for getting bullied and not asking for help.



Dink Smallwood said:


> I was probably made fun of a lot in school and was too dense to realize it.


Yeah, and it would take hours for me to realize they were insulting me, lol. And I'm like "damn, those fucking bastards!".


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## SubtleInvitation (Nov 12, 2018)

I was bullied pretty much everyday for 11 years, verbally and physically, as "the school's ugliest girl", as they called me. 

My father wanted me to learn a martial art to be able to defend myself, but my mother was against that (she was also against me attending therapy, since she also claimed that I was somehow disturbed because I didn't like going to church and therefore it was the devil who caused my problems...), and the school itself never did anything, since it was a private school and the richest could pay enough for the school to pretend things never happened (and while I had the privilege of studying in an expensive school, it was all thanks to my father working extra hours and we barely making ends meet because my education was the most important thing for him, we were lower-middle-class otherwise).

During my last year there it got so bad, I seriously considered bringing my father's gun to school. I didn't because 1) I didn't want to risk hurting anyone who wasn't a bully; 2) I didn't want to disappoint my father; and 3) it was a revolver, and six bullets weren't enough. 

But I constantly fantasized about killing every one of them. Whenever one of them was the last to leave class I considered crushing his skull with a desk, a chair, anything. But I liked the cleaning ladies, and it would be very rude to make them clean brains from the floor. 

But then I went to college, and there people treated me nicely, nobody said I was ugly, unlovable or anything, quite the opposite, but it certainly damaged my self-esteem for a long time.

I honestly don't know how things could improve, except by letting the ones bullied know that it will get better eventually, and one day you'll have pleasure in seeing how fat and bald your bullies are now on Linkedin (I know I do).


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## QB 290 (Nov 12, 2018)

It's worth mentioning that most people who bully never see themselves as bullies, just having a laugh. Bullying is very subjective in this manner and people who mean to just poke fun a bit can be branded as horrible monsters while an actual evil kid can just be called a little troublemaker. Bullying is something that can't be removed from society, if we eliminate bullying as we define it then another definition of bullying will crop up in it's place. It's as much a part of human nature as making friends and relationships is.
I've been bullied in the past, as has everyone else who ever lived with contact to at least 1 other person. But you get over it, you ignore it or remove it. Once you find a way to live with it then you can start to get rid of it and there's no greater satisfaction in life then making your bullies life a living hell after you stop the bullying in your own special way. It's like collecting pokemon except making a worthless fat turd cry herself to sleep at night.
I guess being on the farms constitutes as bullying but then again, we're all aware of what we're doing and choose to keep doing it. Doesn't make us good people to admit it and generally, nothing will. If being on the farms and laughing at idiots online makes us bullies and evil then whatever, I'm a bully.


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## PorcupineTree (Nov 12, 2018)

Girl on my swim team got thrown into a dumpster by older players once and she 100% deserved it for being a brat. I talked about the locker room rape thing in the school stories thread the other day too- obviously that is too far and shouldn’t have happened. 

I bullied a few people when I was younger because I thought they were annoying, and then I grew out of it when I was a teenager. I don’t feel too bad about it because I made amends for the most part and I think that kind of mild conflict (teasing as a way of hinting at proper behavior to others) is part of a healthy development. I wasn’t the kind of bully that deliberately derived pleasure from it though. I was just annoyed. If you’re causing serious harm to someone, you have a problem and should probably see a therapist. I think the bullying issue would be alleviated if schools had the funding to do this. 

I got “bullied” in the sense that I didn’t have much interest in other people and it annoyed my peers, but that didn’t really cause any emotional damage because I was indifferent.


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## Zaragoza (Nov 12, 2018)

SubtleInvitation said:


> During my last year there it got so bad, I seriously considered bringing my father's gun to school. I didn't because 1) I didn't want to risk hurting anyone who wasn't a bully; 2) I didn't want to disappoint my father; and 3) it was a revolver, and six bullets weren't enough.
> 
> But I constantly fantasized about killing every one of them. Whenever one of them was the last to leave class I considered crushing his skull with a desk, a chair, anything. But I liked the cleaning ladies, and it would be very rude to make them clean brains from the floor.



I feel you that the fantasy part of hurting and killing them is what helps me alleviate the stress they caused and the shooting part, yeah I agree with you on that part of not wanting to hurt other people that didn't do anything to deserve it. The movie Elephant does a great job focusing on a girl whose getting bullied regularly and all throughout the movie, we never see her encounter or interact with the other main characters making her mostly a background character, at the end of the movie when the school shooting occurs, she's the first to get killed which leaves her problems and suffering never to be known about because of the arrogance of the main characters.


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## heathercho (Nov 12, 2018)

Heinrich Himmler said:


> Tonight my wife,


lol... faggots don't have wives.


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## vanilla_pepsi_head (Nov 12, 2018)

I'll get the powerleveling out of the way first: I was the kid everyone shit on constantly and got viciously harassed to the point it permanently fucked me up physically and mentally. Once high school came around and the vicious stuff gave way to shunning and shitty comments, I could cope with that just fine. Any time I tried to put a stop to it via fighting or even insulting them I'd get suspended, which would result in a further ass kicking from my dad. When I tried to explain I was only fighting/swearing because I was being targeted constantly, the teachers would reply that I was the one in the wrong because Jesus let people beat, humiliate and crucify him without fighting back and we should all be like Jesus. The teachers got in on the bullying too at times. It was a fucked up situation.

That said I do think to an extent that kids giving each other shit helps to prepare for real life conflict and how to act like a proper human being. Someone who gets picked on for, say, being a smelly autist might learn to take showers and not dominate a conversation with shit no one cares about. Fucktarded zero tolerance policies, hugboxes and enforced pacifism help no one. I think authorities should step in with cases of prolonged, targeted harassment, but in general, kids should be given some space to solve problems themselves. Social hierarchies and dealing with bullshit is part of life, if kids don't learn to deal with it you end up with a bunch of snowflakes who can't handle the first instance of unfair bullshit they come across at work or in college. I guess I think there should be more emphasis on conflict resolution and knowing about the various legal ways to deal with harassment while still being realistic about what actually happens. If policies are tough but fair kids will learn pretty quickly how to determine if fighting back in each specific instance is worth it or not.


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## Bad Times (Nov 12, 2018)

The zero tolerence policy only works with disciplined people and children aren't that. It's fucking retarded that victims get punished for being victims.

That being said

You spot a furry

Sink the boat.


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## oldTireWater (Nov 12, 2018)

I was bullied to shit, and it made me miserable. I piled on on bullied other losers to fit in when the opportunity presented itself, and it was kind of fun.

As shitty as being bullied made my school years, it served its purpose. I leaned that being an anti-social outcast limits ones social opportunities. I'm glad I learned this lesson in my teens instead of later.

We are social animals. Bullying is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that individuals can function within a society. There is a good reason why human beings tend to do it.


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## edgy username (Nov 12, 2018)

I'm no stranger to bullying because I've dealt with it very often throughout my school years, and needless to say it didn't do too well for my self-esteem and mental health. I guess since I was deemed "shy" and I was sensitive, it made me an easy target. Sometimes I'd indulge in bullying other people to feel better about myself, and I'm willing to admit that. 

I don't understand all of the "zero-tolerance" policies nowadays, because they honestly don't really do shit for anyone; plastering anti-bullying posters on every surface isn't going to instantly stop people from bullying.


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## CWCchange (Nov 12, 2018)

I was bullied a shit-ton all through K-12, especially starting around the third grade. In retrospect, I was too retarded to deal with it myself, and if met my younger self, would tell that fucker he deserves it.


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## Kiwi Jeff (Nov 12, 2018)

I was never bullied growing up, but I did see a lot of mild bullying in my school. There was this one kid that older kids made fun of, but that was about it. Apparently, before I went there though, the bullying used to be so bad that someone got thrown into a wall. I can't remember what they had to do about the hole in the wall, but by the time I showed up, you would never know it was there.


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## Zaragoza (Nov 12, 2018)

BigRuler said:


> i disagree. i generally dont think 'cyber bullying' is even comparable to the real thing, except in cases where it happens as an extension of IRL bullying.
> 
> one of THE main factors that make bullying so brutal is how inescapable it seems - you can't just not go to school after all.
> on the internet this goes out the window - you can block, ignore, delete, switch accounts, or just stop constantly uploading the cow content that gets you mocked in the first place.


Well, it wasn't that long ago that a lolcow that we all followed heavily committed suicide by putting herself on fire and in response all of us started posting music videos that involved lyrics of "fire",  take it as you will.


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## Stock Image Photographer (Nov 12, 2018)

I think middle school was rough for everyone, myself included. In high school that went away; I just didn't talk to anyone and they didn't talk to me. I think that was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I'm glad to know that having some violent thoughts about your tormentors isn't as abnormal as I thought it was, though.


8777BB5 said:


> My belief on bullying is that I think Columbine taught the schools the wrong lessons when it comes to bullying. Powerlevel When I was in school I got punched by another kid and we both wound up getting In-School Suspension because of the school's zero tolerance policy (The Vice Principal's response to my parents outrage was it takes two fight). When you have zero tolerance policies you wind up with students not wanting to go to the teacher because they're worried they'll get punished too and as such you get stuff escalated to where you have a kid nearly thrown off a window because they're too scared to do anything. While it would be nice to go back to the days when you fought back/got your older brother to fight back I don't think that's going to happen.


This so much. If you don't let kids defend themselves they'll grow to think they're not worth defending, which will lower their self-esteem even more.


Clop said:


> Even in my adulthood days it's still a constant issue of people being genuinely convinced that I am going to shoot up the place or injure someone, which makes me kinda grumpy, which makes people even more suspicious that I must be a psycho. Actual potheads and junkies tend to react to me more positively, although it's kinda tiresome when junkies ask if I have anything.


>tfw people told you that you would grow up to be a serial killer when you were a kid


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## Joan Nyan (Nov 13, 2018)

I was never involved with or witnessed bullying. The schools always had anti-bullying campaigns, and they would take time out to show us anti-bullying movies and stuff, but I never had any real frame of reference for what they were talking about. I don't know if I was just oblivious, or the kids in my schools were inordinately well-behaved, or if the school district was surprisingly competent.


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## SweetDee (Nov 14, 2018)

Of course I was bullied sometimes.  I think everyone has been in one way or another.  It was miserable when I was a little kid, like ten or whatever.  Then you get a little older and finally get sick enough of it, and you end up popping someone in the mouth.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.  Even if you lose the fight, you won't be as much of a target because now people know that you're now willing to physically hurt them.  That whole ignoring them shit doesn't work.


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## Emperor Julian (Nov 14, 2018)

From being on both ends my opinion is that you should come down hard on bullies.  Conditioning the little cunts to presume their bullshit is free of consequance is a terrible idea and tells everyone else that authority figures are a total joke.


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## ATaxingWoman (Nov 15, 2018)

I don't know how prevalent this problem is in the rest of the world (aside from France, where teachers not taking bullying seriously seems to be much more prevalent of an issue), but here in Sweden, there is this mentality that bullies also are victims. The idea is basically that they harass others because they are insecure/have their own problems/whatever and that we need to feel just as sorry, if not more, for bullies as we do for the bullied.

To me, this idea has always been a load of poppycock and a complete insult to the ones affected by the harassment. Why should victims of bullying be obligated to give a shit about the issues of their tormentors when they haven't asked to become their personal punching bags? Many children have problems, far from all of them make the active choice of becoming a bully.

The idea that bullies always have problems at home is also bullshit. No, the truth is that some people simply enjoy tormenting others and exercising their power over others. One  study conducted in the early 2000s found that bullies are often part of the popular clique, have high self-esteem and are psychologically strong.

In practice, the "bullies are victims too!" mentality often, if not always, needs to the bully being cared more for while the victim suffers. There have actually been cases where young victims of sexual harassment or rape were left in the gutter because the school decided to prioritize the well-being of the bullies.


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## Terrorist (Nov 15, 2018)

I think, to some extent, everybody bullies and is bullied at some point in their childhood. It's healthy, to some degree. The problem is the extreme cases like @Heinrich Himmler brought up, where the main issue seems more to be psychosis than the social dynamic of bullying itself.

I'm curious: what sort of school does your wife teach at? What are the ages, demographics, etc. involved? The incident sounds like something that would happen at an "urban"/"diverse" school, if you get my drift.


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## vanilla_pepsi_head (Nov 15, 2018)

ATaxingWoman said:


> I don't know how prevalent this problem is in the rest of the world (aside from France, where teachers not taking bullying seriously seems to be much more prevalent of an issue), but here in Sweden, there is this mentality that bullies also are victims. The idea is basically that they harass others because they are insecure/have their own problems/whatever and that we need to feel just as sorry, if not more, for bullies as we do for the bullied.
> 
> To me, this idea has always been a load of poppycock and a complete insult to the ones affected by the harassment. Why should victims of bullying be obligated to give a shit about the issues of their tormentors when they haven't asked to become their personal punching bags? Many children have problems, far from all of them make the active choice of becoming a bully.
> 
> ...



Agreed, the ringleaders who were the worst about bullying me were all spoiled, high on the social hierarchy, usually rich, and at least pretty good at most things. Now, there were kids who also got picked on who would pile on me for a cheap attempt at winning some points with the popular kids, which I guess they could be talking about. But they were never as vicious, just kinda pathetic, and usually gave up once they realized that once they got done having a laugh with the popular kids over making my life miserable that they were going to get shit on next. Those were usually the kids that were poor, fat, rather stupid or from abusive families. Even if there is some truth to it, it still doesn't excuse the inaction on the part of the authorities. By all means try to get help for the kids who need it, but ignoring or rewarding shitty behavior isn't going to do them any good.


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## The Cunting Death (Nov 15, 2018)

My case was interesting. I was the kid who would occasionally crack a joke in class, had enough decent pals (one of which is still my best friend), and was only occasionally bullied. The thing is though, I usually bullied them back, by telling them how much their life sucked, that their dad molested them (I'm not kidding this actually got one of the bullies to back off), to go kill themselves, etc. In fact, the kids who were bullied the most I talked to the most, because I felt really bad for them.


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## KelpieSelkie (Nov 15, 2018)

I both was bullied and was the bully. From middle school onward, I think most people thought I was either weird or scary because I barely spoke, and I was taller than most girls my age. 

The only notable time I was bullied was when a group of girls I was friends with decided to turn on me and excluded me from the group, making fun of me when they saw me. I retaliated by acting purposefully creepy and telling them I was going to burn their houses down. I had to go to the counselor's office for that one. 

From that point onward it was me being a bully, which I'd rather not speak about because it still makes me feel guilty. I think I became a bully because I was dealing with pretty bad anger and anxiety issues and it made me feel more in control.


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## Monika H. (Nov 15, 2018)

Terrorist said:


> I'm curious: what sort of school does your wife teach at? What are the ages, demographics, etc. involved? The incident sounds like something that would happen at an "urban"/"diverse" school, if you get my drift.


The school is a semi-private one, and all the people involved in the case are white and of middle-high class. One of them was even a top-grader, so in this case is right @ATaxingWoman.
Although the school is still deliberating about what to do, but the the two bullies are definitely going to be expelled, and the victim's family intends to press legal charges on them. Maybe they'll avoid the ban from all the schools of the zone though.


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## MW 002 (Nov 16, 2018)

Honestly? I’ve thought this over for years and keep coming to the same conclusion: there isn’t much you really can do about bullying unless you want to allow schools to take on a pseudo-authoritarian measure in which students get only three warnings per year to knock it off with the bullying, or face being expelled AND blacklisted. The problem with that is, especially in smaller communities, a system like that would probably fuck with a bunch of people’s lives before they even had a chance to go out an experience the world. Unless the bully were to go to some alternative school or get a GED, their opportunities for any further education would be incredibly limited. It would definitely deter some kids, but I think it’s too authoritarian. 

However, I think if bullying does get too severe then parents should probably start looking into either transferring their kid to a new school or possibly home school.  

I hate to say it but kids are dicks, and it’s part of the reason most of us hated going to school.


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## Malagor the dank omen (Nov 16, 2018)

ATaxingWoman said:


> I don't know how prevalent this problem is in the rest of the world (aside from France, where teachers not taking bullying seriously seems to be much more prevalent of an issue), but here in Sweden, there is this mentality that bullies also are victims. The idea is basically that they harass others because they are insecure/have their own problems/whatever and that we need to feel just as sorry, if not more, for bullies as we do for the bullied.
> 
> To me, this idea has always been a load of poppycock and a complete insult to the ones affected by the harassment. Why should victims of bullying be obligated to give a shit about the issues of their tormentors when they haven't asked to become their personal punching bags? Many children have problems, far from all of them make the active choice of becoming a bully.



What a bunch of crap, seriously. I get that some bullies are also bullied by others, but in many cases i've seen and experiences they just want to abuse you out of some sort of feeling of power or to feel included in the group of popular kids, since you're the novelty that gets punched, they also join in to be accepted.

And now, powerlevel history. It all started when i went to highschool. I moved to a new highschool, a private one for poshy kids that had quite high standards: we had to wear uniforms, go every friday to a church service, girls and boys did PE in separate classes... You would think that they were quite strict, and they were with curbing certain behaviours (swearing, girls getting too close to boys, etc...), but the other kids were kinda the worst. Most parents thought of that scritc school as some sort of behavioural changer that would turn their problematic children into proper and respectful people. Being a meek and nerdy kid in that kind of enviroment didn't do much good to me, since i was regularly bullied for nearly 6 years. The older popular kids started the trend and eventually it moved into my class, and new additions joined in since everybody did it. The girls were the most cruel, because they knew if i lashed back at them, i would be in big trouble, which game them a lot of leeway when it came to bully me.

You would think the teachers would do something about it since it was a strict school and i was a model student (never got into trouble, always active in class, always had homework done, good grades, never misbehaved...), but they stayed away from it. Mostly because (the principal told me this) they knew that if they stepped in, they would make things worse for me for being a snitch. They couldn't always be there for me, and those moments would be worse than now. When he told me this, i kinda understood his actions.

It all culminated one day in my senior year, when one of the new guys that year stole one of my notebooks and shredded the pages. That was the final straw and i threw myself at him enraged. We got into a huge fight that stopped when the principal's assistant (who was a big guy with a deep voice) stepped into the classroom. In that very moment, i thought my life was over since i would get expelled, my parents would definetly be mad and probably beat me and a myriad of other bad things. Next day both of us got called to the principal's office, and the other guy went first. After him i stepped in bracing for the worst, but the principal calmly told me (i still remember his words): I know what you have been through and it hasn't been easy. I could tell you that violence is not the solution for this problem, but in this case i'm happy that you decided to step up and deal with this problem yourself. Since this is the first time it happens, i will let you go with a warning. Next time, if you get in a fight or break a window or you do something like this i will have to expel you, but let it be known that i do it reluctantly, because you have to show those people that you aren't defenseless.

Those words really marked me then, and after that the bullies took a few steps back and gave me a small respite. Next year i was one of the 3 people (out of 17) that graduated high school that year. When i look back into it, i think all that bullying wasn't 100% bad, even tho i still have some issues that stem from that, i got stronger and tougher for it.


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## Gingervitis (Nov 16, 2018)

I mean, I caused someone to get anger management issues, but I have a more interesting story from middle school that I remember telling in the Personal Lolcows thread.

So there was this guy, W, the lolcow. I heard this story secondhand, but at one point he told a mutual friend that he was getting “bullied” by this girl, M. Mind you, he was a compulsive liar (he claimed he was locked in his room for three days and had no way of getting out, despite living in a 1 floor house), but the girl was a big enough menace that she was banned from the 8th grade Philly trip before 8th grade even began, so it could’ve gone either way. The important part is that he percieves he’s being bullied.

So one day, she’s minding her own business in class, and W decides to confront the issue head on using the most sophisticated ant-bully measures that show off his social maturity and dignity.

Nah, just kidding. He pulls out a knife and threatens to shank her, all done in a classroom with class going on. Needless to say, this and other incidents led to him being put in a sped class and having an aide follow him around. Bear in mind, we don’t live in a ghetto area. We were in a well off area in New Jersey, so this makes even less sense in context.

Don’t feel super bad for the girl though. She got her revenge in senior year when she found out his favorite word started with an N. And yes, she was black.


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## Overcast (Nov 16, 2018)

I got bullied quite a few times in my life. People knew how to push my buttons and I reacted to them in the same way a lolcow would react to people on the Farms. I was a pretty angry kid.

One time in Middle School I finally had it, grabbed one of the kids teasing me and punched him in the stomach a few times. Then he punched me in the face and said "Don't ever do that again!" like he was the victim.

I can understand some teasing or basically teaching somebody a lesson when they act like a jackass, and it's good to develop thicker skin for later in life, but some people are just outright cruel and relentless in their bullying. Especially if the victim did nothing wrong. Pretty big reason why I think that so many kids and even adults are so shy, because they learn to fear repercussions for just being in the same general vicinity as someone.


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## Slap47 (Nov 17, 2018)

Its odd how American schools have zero-tolerance policies.

Fighting literally stops all bullying.


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## Malagor the dank omen (Nov 17, 2018)

scorptatious said:


> I can understand some teasing or basically teaching somebody a lesson when they act like a jackass, and it's good to develop thicker skin for later in life, but some people are just outright cruel and relentless in their bullying. Especially if the victim did nothing wrong. Pretty big reason why I think that so many kids and even adults are so shy, because they learn to fear repercussions for just being in the same general vicinity as someone.



I can attest for this. After those years of bullying, i definetly got a thicker skin, which has helped me quite a bit in college. Bad thing is that i'm constantly nervous and afraid around strangers, and i'm unable to start a conversation with them without being extremely akward. Specially, made me afraid of speaking to women IRL.

But it's no matter. I know how to be alone and i think i'm better this way.


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## Guts Gets Some (Nov 17, 2018)

Have I mentioned I seem to be the weirdest combination of contradictory traits known to mankind?

I am both friendly and aloof, frantic yet logical, and in the case of this topic, eerily innocent and vulnerable yet also apparently very threatening too. The latter of which I really don't get at all.

Because of this, I was both a target to some kinds of teasing (I struggle to use the word bullying), yet immediately thereafter I would either befriend them or scare them away. I swear in middle school, meek, weak little me was told countless times by guys 3x my height "Please don't shoot up the school."

I feel I need to utilize this power. But that's the extent of what my 'bullying' was; some of my only friends in high school were ironically my bullies before. Go figure.


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## AnOminous (Nov 17, 2018)

If you were ever bullied, you are a pussy, and you should commit suicide.


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## The Great Chandler (Nov 17, 2018)

I never was truly bullied except this one Dylan kid at elementary, but I think he was more of a playful jerk than an actual one. I was really autistic though so I thought he truly was a bully.


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## glittercum (Feb 3, 2019)

Oh boy. I was sort of bullied mostly during middle school (mostly because I was very childish and very shy). It wasn't terrible but it wasn't nice either and it left me with very low self esteem. In 8th grade  I decideddec take care of my appearance more and be more seeet and social to my classmates and eeverything got so much better. Then , I became a bully myself. Even tho things got much better , my self esteem was still very low and the only way to feel better about myself was by bullying kids who were somehow worse than me. I still do that sometimes , but I'm currently trying to become a better person.


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## Stoneheart (Feb 3, 2019)

I had to change schools in 8th grade, we moved to the next suburb. 
2 guys started picking on me in the first week and i didnt know what to do, i was the new kid and didnt had friends there.
they beat me constantly on the back for a week and i got bruises all over my arms and back.
my friends at the football club saw them and we came up with a plan. we showed up on the skatepark those two guys were hanging out all the time the next weekend and beat them mercilessly. they were super nice to me after that. 
after some time we became friends and we were sorry for what we had done to each other.


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## Martys_not_smarty (Feb 5, 2019)

It's kind of hard to explain how the system of bullying worked at my junior high but the easiest way to put it is that the bullies were part of what a anti-gang speaker called the "gonnabe's", where I lived you had three fairly large sized gangs and you could take a all the kids of certain _persuasion_ and ask if they had any older siblings or friends of older siblings that ran and more than half would say yes, shit it was so bad at my junior high the oldest brother of my neighbors was killed in the schools parking lot during a football game and this was with police dispatch a quarter of the mile away (yeah that bad but the cops would do fuckall cause they're minors).  Anyway that aside there was little one could do or the staff would do because to them suspension was a badge of honor and a vacation and if you fought back well you'd probably have someone shoot out one of the windows at your house.
     Luckily I was only around that for a year and a half and the school's gone now it's been turned into some sort of charter tutoring facility.


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## Alec Benson Leary (Feb 7, 2019)

Heinrich Himmler said:


> It's sad to witness the fact that school authorities seldom intervene - in the case of today, they intervened because it almost ended in tragedy - and sweep those problems under the rug; or when they do intervene, it's either too late or the bullies' parents minimize or even justify their kid's abhorrent behavior.


I experienced some bullying but nothing extreme, mostly just mean teasing and ostracism. But here's a story I remember well: one time in 4th or 5th grade a kid was poking me, throwing little bits of gravel at me, etc. I got fed up and ran after him and tried to attack him. I got detention for it and the teacher said that next time someone bothers me, I'd better just report it to the authorities so I don't get in trouble. 

Like a month or so later the same kid was picking a fight with me again. Thinking I wanted to do as told, I found the nearest teacher and told her. Teacher just interrupted me and told me no one likes snitches and I need to learn to handle problems myself. And yes, this happened to be the same teacher that previously gave me detention and a lecture about relying on the authorities.

This was back in the 90s and I don't have any children in my life now but despite the advent of social media I assume bullying - and the administration's lazy response to it - hasn't changed a whole lot. But now I've typed it out, I have to ask: why exactly is "snitching" such a taboo thing? Like, I've heard tons of adults legitimately claim that tattling on another kid is worse than whatever bad shit that kid was already doing. Why do kids receive this schizophrenic message that the authorities won't help them but will punish them for speaking up?


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## Providence (Feb 7, 2019)

Stoneheart said:


> I had to change schools in 8th grade, we moved to the next suburb.
> 2 guys started picking on me in the first week and i didnt know what to do, i was the new kid and didnt had friends there.
> they beat me constantly on the back for a week and i got bruises all over my arms and back.
> my friends at the football club saw them and we came up with a plan. we showed up on the skatepark those two guys were hanging out all the time the next weekend and beat them mercilessly. they were super nice to me after that.
> after some time we became friends and we were sorry for what we had done to each other.



Its brutal, but that's the natural mammalian deal.  Adults aren't usually comfortable letting it play out,  but I suspect it's an important part of our development.


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## BeanBidan (Feb 7, 2019)

Bullying is necessary. It helps weed out  the undesirable or helps toughen people up for the world.


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## ProgKing of the North (Feb 7, 2019)

BeanBidan said:


> Bullying is necessary. It helps weed out  the undesirable or helps toughen people up for the world.


how do we know who the undesirables are when they're children?


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## BeanBidan (Feb 7, 2019)

ProgKing of the North said:


> how do we know who the undesirables are when they're children?


When you see them listening to linkin park and wearing a naruto headband.

Edit: or we could do what the Spartans did.


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## rooblue (Feb 10, 2019)

My high school friends and I had quite a bit of mild bullying within our small group (4-5 people), although we would not have considered ourselves bullies. I would always align myself with the ‘bullies’ whoever they were at the time to save myself from becoming the target. I guess I’m a fucking spineless loser in that sense. Having said that, our small group is still very close with one another. 

I think about the kids who used to cop a lot of bullying in our class, but most of them turned out pretty reasonable. I’ve even apologised to a few who I have regrets about and they usually always amiable and brush it off with, “we were just kids, don’t worry about it.”

I bet deep down they wish they had columbined us though...


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## Nobunaga (Feb 10, 2019)

I never really got bullied, i was treated more like the guy that you dont want to even get close to thanks to an incident involving me bitting a anoying prick that wouldnt leave me alone in the ear and stabbing his friend with a pencil on his hand in high school
Good times


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## cumguzzler666 (Feb 10, 2019)

I was bullied constantly in middle school by this kid on my bus stop who was a year younger than me, he would push me around every day and spit on me and just do annoying shit to me en general. I was too much of a retard to actually retaliate and just would bitch to the teachers, I told the assistant principal about it two times and nothing changed at all. They didn't confront the kid at all or step in or anything. Looking back on it idk if that was a good or bad thing for them to do, he lived near me and i would regularly hear his white trash dad beat him and intervention would've just made the beatings worse.

 Anyway, this continued through the entirety of middle school and he attempted to continue it in high school, when he was a freshman and I was a sophomore. At this point I was so fucking sick of his shit when he tried shoving me around after school one day I just went nuclear on him, I slammed his head into the side of a locker and while he was down I whipped my cock out and pissed on him.

Looking back on it I did kinda deserve it, I was a complete sperg and smelled and dressed like shit, I would also bring random shit from my house to school to impress people, which just made me look extra autistic. Honestly he did a good job of turning me from a utter fucking retard into a slightly less of an utter fucking retard.


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## Just Some Other Guy (Feb 10, 2019)

I wasn't bullied, but my older brother back in the early 90's was. He fought, got suspended, then our dad picked him up from school and took him to McDonalds.

Honestly I think bullies just need a good punch right back to set them straight. Too bad schools will gladly punish you for self defense, even with witnesses. It further insulates kids from reality.


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## HG 400 (Feb 11, 2019)

Kids just aren't being bullied hard enough these days.


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## whatintheheck (Feb 12, 2019)

I went to a fairly small private grade school, and I think the smallness of the classes might've helped minimize the amount of bullying that occurred -- perhaps kids are slightly less vicious to each other if everyone knows everyone and there's not as huge of a social pool for them to try to establish themselves in. And perhaps more significantly, being a private school probably filtered out a lot of the kids who ended up being bullies at the public schools in the area.

Still, there were a small number of pretty odd/socially awkward kids that did get lightly bullied -- it was never anything physical or consistent/frequent, it was more like some of the other kids would occasionally mock them for various stupid kid reasons, or simply didn't socialize with them (which is arguably worse). It was the kind of stuff that made it difficult for teachers to ever overtly acknowledge and step in to prevent because it was often subtle. But I totally understand how adolescents can be deeply and negatively affected by even 'light' bullying, especially for girls -- to me it seemed like the weird girls had it way worse than the weird boys growing up, or at least they seemed to have been more negatively affected.

Retrospectively I feel bad for those people, partly because they got bullied at all, but also because me and my group of friends never did anything to actively stop it, even when we knew it was a dick move on the other kids' part and we could have called out the bad behavior, or at least have been more friendly with the victims to make them feel more accepted.

It really can be a vicious cycle: some kid is perceived as 'weird' by his peers for whatever reason, thus gets picked on and/or ostracized, thus doesn't have as much opportunity to develop socializing skills, thus becomes even more weird/withdrawn, thus gets bullied harder and perhaps by more people, etc.

I agree with someone else's response in that there simply isn't a one-size fits all solution to the problem. A lot of bullying is way more subtle than some brutish mook demanding the bespectacled nerd's lunch money, and thus requires a more subtle kind of solution. And I can only imagine how much tougher social media has made it for outcasts growing up.

One thing to possibly help the matter is promoting and creating media with stories that has the 'cool kids' being nice and friendly with the weirdos and 'losers', and the jerks portrayed as being overtly cliquish and shallow. Cliques are inevitable, a lot of people are just pricks, and kids especially are cruel to each other, but maybe if it's reinforced enough that being kind and inviting is way cooler than being rude and exclusive, perhaps kids will be more likely (at least subconsciously) to adopt that kind of attitude and behavior. There's plenty of movies out there with this message, but a lot of them seem to be geared more towards teenagers in high school. Maybe there could be more of these kinds of stories for a younger audience, because 'Mean Girls' doesn't seem all that accessible for adolescents. For all I know there probably is a lot of this already out there,  of course I wouldn't know since I'm not watching media for adolescents.


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## AnOminous (Feb 12, 2019)

whatintheheck said:


> I agree with someone else's response in that there simply isn't a one-size fits all solution to the problem. A lot of bullying is way more subtle than some brutish mook demanding the bespectacled nerd's lunch money, and thus requires a more subtle kind of solution.



The problem is one of the things that can make bullying a lot worse nearly immediately is if the kid is seen as a snitch and that's more or less assumed when adults get involved.  Adults often know this and prudently stay out to some degree.

What is infuriating is when they do this, though, and then the bullied kid hits back and suddenly they're there to punish it.

If they do the hands-off approach to let things work out on their own, they should keep that shit up when the bully is the one getting a bloody nose.


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## a feel (Feb 12, 2019)

Well, Merula bullied me until like year four, when we celebrated Christmas together and I asked her to be my Yule Ball date. I think we'll be fine now. Sure, she's still kinda mean every now and then but it's a huge improvement and I know she has my back.


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## Clovis (Feb 15, 2019)

Probably an Unpopular Opinion, but I think we're too quick to label any disagreement as bullying these days.  Kids need to have negative social experiences as much as positive ones to learn from and a lot of adults seem to have a rose tinted perception of children all being friends and getting along. 
Actually, not just schools. I see people in the workplace and on social media using the word bullying to shut down any disagreement.

I can think of a few adults in my life who owe what little social awareness and normal behaviour they can manage to 'bullying' at school. Which arguably is just kids rejecting their peers for being obnoxious/smelly/dumb or whatever. Some kids need the epiphany that if they want to be accepted they have to stop being obnoxious.

I guess I'm just trying to say that the childhood  social environment is complex and we shouldn't just interfere and shut it down if someone gets their feelings hurt and invokes the B-word.

That said, physical harm like throwing ppl out of windows and systematic tormenting of individuals is obviously wrong in and of itself, step in and stop that when it happens.


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## kitty shit (Feb 16, 2019)

Eh, considering what people deem bullying today, I was probably most definitely a bully in jr. high. 



Spoiler: powerlevel



So when I was in like 7th or 8th grade, this really nerdy kid with jeans two inches too short and greasy hair, who really enjoyed running around playing pokémon in the hallways, decided he was into me. Not only did he decide he was into me - had he kept it to himself, it would've been alright - he also had to go on social media posting about it + how he enjoyed jacking off to photos of me. Anyway, so I decided that was fucked up, right? So not only did I call him out on his bullshit, I also went and complained to my friends who beat the fuck out of said kid. Oh, and then I spent the rest of the school year tormenting him - you know, making a fake fb profile of him to embarrass him in front of the few friends he had (and the rest of the school), always acting really sarcastic whenever we had class together (kid did not understand sarcasm), asking him shit like "what does it feel like to have absolutely zero social intelligence?" and "how come your brothers are so normal when you're like r.etarded?". He cried a lot that year.

A solution to stop _that _kind of "bullying"? Teach your kids social awareness and that it's not ok to go on social media posting about how they like to jack off to pictures of girls in their classes.



Not so sure what to do about real bullying though, like the event described in the original post. Only ever heard of one such occasion while in school. Some dudes beat up this chick and set fire to her hair extensions. They were expelled and the incident was reported to authorities. Not sure what happened to the girl. I think she and her family moved towns or something.


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## La Luz Extinguido (Feb 17, 2019)

Is retarded to believe in the ultra glorified morality of this times, the one with the bigger stick is the "good" person and the people he smashes into a pulp are the "bad" people, it has always been like that no matter what hypocrites otherwise preach about to feel better.


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## vanilla_pepsi_head (Feb 19, 2019)

Clovis said:


> Probably an Unpopular Opinion, but I think we're too quick to label any disagreement as bullying these days.



Nah I think you're right, schools are hyper aware of small stuff (like exclusion or behind-the-back shit talking) and will force a group to include a kid they're picking on, which is horribly uncomfortable for everyone. Kids just learn sooner to be sneaky about picking on people and calling anything "bullying" just turns into a huge joke.

The thing is, I find increasingly that "bullying" just means internet shit. Social media wasn't a thing until I was in university so I can't say I fully understand how important it is to kids nowadays but I find the concept of "cyberbullying"  ridiculous. I suppose social media can be an extension of insults or exclusion that a kid might already be putting up with, it is not at all the same thing as a gang of kids taking a dump in your backpack and following you home to beat the shit out of you. I mean, if this generation of kids are such pussies that the worst they do to someone is call them ugly and unfriend them on Facebook that's great, but I have a feeling the real nasty shit still goes on and gets ignored the same as it did in 1998.

The only "cyberbullying" issue I find to be a real problem is older kids distributing nudes or sex tapes, and that definitely needs to be dealt with when it happens, but the big takeaway for me there is the importance of teaching kids not to let anyone make intimate recordings of them in the first place.


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## Clovis (Feb 21, 2019)

Looking back at my school I always think it was interesting which kids got bullied. I can think of one fat ugly ginger from scummy home: should have been a natural born bully magnet. But she had a strong personality and sailed through school whereas  a completely nondescript nice quiet kid had a hellish time thanks to a weaker personality and less social poise.

A lot of the talk around school bullying makes out it's kids being picked on for differences they can't help but in my experience it's not that simple.

On the other hand most people on the internet getting "bullied" _do_ seem to behave exceptionally and draw attention.



vanilla_pepsi_head said:


> The only "cyberbullying" issue I find to be a real problem is older kids distributing nudes or sex tapes, and that definitely needs to be dealt with when it happens, but the big takeaway for me there is the importance of teaching kids not to let anyone make intimate recordings of them in the first place.



I'm confused by the cyber-prefix on most things. If you're harassing/scamming/thieving/inciting violence/whatever...those things are already crimes. I don't think it makes and difference if youre breaking the law in meatspace or via the internet.
I guess MSM and a lot of people took a long time to catch up to the conceptual shift the internet brought about and they still think human interaction facilitated by communications technology is some how less 'real'.


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## Ginger Piglet (Mar 3, 2019)

Schools that sweep bullying under the carpet are the worst. They should have the testicular fortitude to admit that it happens, and explain what they're doing about it.

What they should not do is adopt some stupid "both sides are to blame" or "restorative justice" line because that does the square root of fuck all.

At the end of the day, if I ever have offspring I'm going to tell them that if they're bullied, and the school won't see to it adequately or at all, find the person responsible, and beat the shit out of them, and to fight dirty in so doing. While at the same time keeping a contemporaneous list of the times that I. they were bullied, II. they told the powers that be about it, III. the powers that be did fuck all for whatever reason. Then when I, the parent, am called in to a meeting, I'll show them this, and how absent any support from you cunts who claim to have "anti bullying policies" or similar virtue signalling nonsense, they had no option but to do this, and they'll find the bullies in question and expel them at once, or I'll relish the opportunity to battle them in Court and drag all their dirty laundry into the public eye.


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## Lemmingwise (Mar 3, 2019)

It's a complex issue. Some kids that get bullied really do deserve it. Some bullying is out of control. Sometimes playful ribbing is perceived as bullying. Bullying can be very traumatic and damaging. It can also prevent people from being selfish or insufferable. To stick kids together in groups larger than 16 to be "educated" is in itself a form of bullying, mandated by the rockefellers of the world who want to make sure your kids don't think too independantly.

In the words of Frederick Gates, director of Rockefeller foundation in 1913:



> _“In our dream we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand.  The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.  We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science.  We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters.  We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians.  Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."_



(compulsary education and a lot of the way it is structured is the result of the actions of the General Education Board, which was started by *John D. Rockefeller * in 1902)

As for the people sharing their personal bullying experiences, you're probably so vain that you think this song isn't about you:


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## JektheDumbass (Mar 3, 2019)

If it wouldn't be a crime if an adult did it to another adult, then it isn't bullying.  I got bullied until I joined a sports team, got jacked, then started pushing back.  You only have to throw a kid across the room once before people stop fucking with you.  

My school was useless, you only got punished for defending yourself, the actual bullies didn't get shit.


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## Dolphin Lundgren (Mar 3, 2019)

I was bullied all throughout middle school by other girls. Boys left me alone but girls really are brutal towards their own kind. This was in the time where schools didn't handle bullying or do anything about it. I was the kind of person who allowed it to happen and kept to myself, so maybe I was an easy prey. It got so bad that I'd start getting in school suspension to avoid going to classes. In my case I was bullied in school and the bus, and because of that I befriended a girl the next year just so I could secure a seat on the bus.

Looking back on the whole thing I get why one of the girls picked on me because I remember at one point the one who did it the most mentioned that her mother was murdered. Of course when I heard it originally I secretly thought she deserved it because I hated her so much.

I'm not sure what can be done about it nowadays. Maybe the parents should be punished.


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## Ginger Piglet (Mar 3, 2019)

JektheDumbass said:


> You only have to throw a kid across the room once before people stop fucking with you.



Or until they simply waylay you in a gang or bring in a knife or suchlike. Granted, most bullies will get the idea after being severely beaten or suchlike but there's the occasional maniac who will happily stab you just by way of face-saving and don't care that this will more than likely get them into stupendous quantities of shit.



JektheDumbass said:


> My school was useless, you only got punished for defending yourself, the actual bullies didn't get shit.



Now that's an experience wholly familiar to me. Usually it's cloaked under "zero tolerance" so the powers that be don't have to expend the effort investigating things.



Oscar Wildean said:


> Boys left me alone but girls really are brutal towards their own kind.



Oh absolutely yes. While teenage boys simply go in for hiding stuff or random acts of violence, girls will make elaborate plans that end in the humiliation of their chosen victim.


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## Fareal (Mar 3, 2019)

Girls have a method of bullying that is quite devastating and that no school, no matter how well-intentioned, can do anything about.

They can do a full, complete shunning of the chosen victim.

They don't "do anything" that the parents can complain about. They just never speak to the victim, never associate with them, never invite them anywhere.

There was a girl in my class at secondary who got this treatment. Ate every lunch alone, never picked to be anyone's partner at anything, never got called up in the evenings, never acknowledged by anyone at break times, never invited anywhere full stop.

No one insulted her, no one touched a hair on her head, and at least once a term her mum was up at the school demanding our headmistress "Did Somethingggg" about how miserable this kid was. And our headmistress always said the same thing, "I can't make the other girls be friends with her."

I do not know to this day how a school is supposed to stop this sort of social exclusion happening.


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## Ginger Piglet (Mar 3, 2019)

Fareal said:


> Girls have a method of bullying that is quite devastating and that no school, no matter how well-intentioned, can do anything about.
> 
> They can do a full, complete shunning of the chosen victim.
> 
> ...



Hmmmm. The way I'd do it is try to work out who has decided that [shunnee] is worthy of this, and forces everyone else to go along, and forcibly partner them with [shunnee] at things in general, at everything ever.


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## Fareal (Mar 3, 2019)

Ginger Piglet said:


> Hmmmm. The way I'd do it is try to work out who has decided that [shunnee] is worthy of this, and forces everyone else to go along, and forcibly partner them with [shunnee] at things in general, at everything ever.



You know, the thing is, I could not tell you how or why it was determined that X would be the scapegoat of our year group. Genuinely. She was in all ways unremarkable. Although she lived with her mother and stepfather, so possibly being the only child of divorce in the year was a thing. It was also known that her mother worked, which was considered a source of deep shame and low social status in our school at the time. But those facts alone couldn't explain it. My class had mostly done the last year of primary together, so she was already the Designated Victim before I was enrolled there. But it was apparent - somehow - that anyone who attempted to pull her out of the well would be her replacement. (ever read Judy Blume's Blubber?)


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## Lemmingwise (Mar 3, 2019)

Oscar Wildean said:


> Looking back on the whole thing I get why one of the girls picked on me because I remember at one point the one who did it the most mentioned that her mother was murdered.


People usually think it's because of trauma and bad home situation, but it's really because she has the same reckless genes that put her mother in that position.


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## vanilla_pepsi_head (Mar 3, 2019)

Shunning sucks at some ages because it can keep kids from ever developing proper social skills, but compared to active harassment it's really not that bad. They'll learn to cope most of the time by just reading a book or something. The solution to this would be to set the kid up with some non-school activities with other kids (or hell even adults, even broke people can volunteer at a food pantry or something), but forcing kids to socialize with them at school is just torture for everyone involved. Embarrassing for the kid forced to interact with them (get stuck with the "loser" kid and they start hating them more, maybe to the point of escalating to actual harassment) and a million times worse for the kid being shunned.

Being shunned/harassed all the time makes it a hell of a lot more likely that kids in a new group will shun/harass them too. Even if there's nothing unusual or off-putting about them, forming social bonds and being a member of a group just becomes unnatural and it's like kids can smell blood. So changing schools might help, but usually not. I don't think the school could intervene in any way in these cases without making everything worse. The only thing I can possibly think of is helping them get referred to some kind of social anxiety/social isolation support group if they're open to the idea,


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## Azovka (Mar 7, 2019)

ATaxingWoman said:


> I don't know how prevalent this problem is in the rest of the world (*aside from France, where teachers not taking bullying seriously seems to be much more prevalent of an issue*)



I grew up in France - can confirm.



Spoiler: Powerlevel



In middle school, when I was about 11-12, I got bullied by other girls for being a teacher’s pet (which I was tbf) and being ugly. 
They’d make fun of me for having hair on my forearms (which wasn’t much or nowhere near as bad as they made it out to be, but it gave me a lifelong complex), for putting my hair into a ponytail or braid because it was supposedly greasy (it wasn’t. I played competitive tennis with the Paris Ligue and had practice every evening for hours, so a tight ponytail was the best way to deal with my hair), and for dressing weirdly (I was in a rich private school at the height of the American Apparel - Franklin Marshall craze in France, and I failed to see their appeal).

Thing is, I talked back. I was that kind of smart-mouthed downie that just wouldn’t shut up, because what’s the worst that could happen?
Well, at some point, these girls had enough of banter and called in their older brothers and sisters to ambush me after class and “talk sense into me”.
And so they did. They cornered me in a school bathroom, and let me tell you - when you’re 11, 16-17 year olds look very adult and impressive. And yet I still wouldn’t shut up.
I just made fun of the fact that the girls from my school needed help to resolve Facebook and middle school banter (it was like 2008-2009, when FB was becoming the hot shit in France among kids). So one of them smashed my face against the sink and broke my nose.

Which was really unexpected because, surprisingly enough, most if not all bullying at our private school was limited to banter, not physical violence.

Anyways, I went to see the Principal Educational Adviser (CPE in French), a middle-aged French woman who until then had liked me a lot since I was the best student in our year.
And as I was crying in her office with my bloody nose, she just told me to basically suck it up, and that I deserved it. And that she saw no reason to investigate the girls or the events or sanction anyone. (Not that I was trying to get anyone sanctioned, I was just scared and didn’t know what to do).

I ended up going to the ER later that evening, and transferring to another school at the end of the year.
Funnily enough, that Educational Adviser was against me leaving, and took it out the following year on my younger sister, by giving her negative comments in her report cards for no reason, so my sister transfered as well.

And now for the effects that bullying had - I did learn that being a teacher’s pet was bad, and that taking care of yourself and dressing nicely was desirable for a girl (not that I was crass or dirty mind you, I just really didn’t care about fashion in the sense that I could come to school wearing a BARCA football t-shirt with a man’s hoodie and large jeans with terrible sneakers because they were the first things I saw in my closet).
I also came to the belief that bullying is fine, as long as it doesn’t spill over into physical abuse, and that nobody really cares about it (though I later changed my mind about the latter part - it was mostly due to the fact that our parents lived abroad, and we stayed in France with our elderly grandmother and governess, neither of whom cared much about any of it).

However, while I believe that bullying builds character, it did leave a psychological impact on me.

When I transfered schools later that year, I started dyeing my hair bleach blonde, completely changed my wardrobe and even bought two of these dreadful, overpriced American Apparel sweaters, and started to act more outgoing and friendly instead of focusing on academia and grades.

And it did work. I was pretty popular in my new school, and even started bullying some social outcasts myself because I thought it was funny.

Hell, I remember there was this one girl that was way into anime / weeb shit, and used her school agenda as a personal diary.
Her name was Sarah, and she used to sing the OST to the anime Princess Sarah during school breaks, and dress up as Sailor Moon, or whoever the green one is, during school parties.She also liked an equally social nutcase guy from the school, whose biggest passion was pen-spinning.

And for 3 years or so of high school, we’d make fun of her, and try to set her up publicly with that other guy to witness her humiliation (she was very naive and childish, and would  yell shit like “Felix, do you want to be my boyfriend?!” during recess. And the ensuing awkwardness was pretty damn hilarious).
I also remember taking her school agenda during a lunch break and just taking pics of all the pages where she wrote about her life, and then sharing them with the rest of our year.

Anyways, lets just say it was just consistent mocking and abuse that I partook in, and not just against this girl, though she was the most memorable one.

Then, in our final year of high school, I went to the parent-teacher conference representing myself (since again, my parents lived abroad), and had the pleasure of meeting this girl’s father.
And he turned out to be hardcore abusive. Not to me, mind you. To his own daughter.
When Sarah introduced me in the hallway, his first comment was something along the lines of “ah, so this is the girl that’s tied with you for grades” (our school had a policy where every week, we had class rankings on top of report cards, and we were usually tied for 1st).
And then he just started berating her in public, saying that she was worthless, and he didn’t even know why he came to that conference because she clearly had no future, and she couldn’t even be top of the class in Russian (which, uhm, I am Russian, it’s my mother tongue, and I took that class as an easy credit, so she really stood no chance there), etc.
Suffice to say, it was pretty damn awkward.

And that’s when her diary started to make sense. See, when I took her diary to share, I did read it. And she was writing shit about her  “crying and locking herself in her room”, and generally stuff we thought hilariously emo.
I mean, she thought herself to be an anime princess, and wrote with the purple prose of a failed fanfic writer.

But after meeting her father, the whole “emo” parts made sense, and I felt pity for her, and stopped with the bullying.
We never became friends, and I don’t think she ever forgave me, but we started sharing our Latin notes and working together, and ended up leaving high school on good terms.

Another thing to note is that in this new private school, the teachers and educational staff didn’t care about the rampant bullying either. Hell, our sports teacher and volleyball coach, who most girls had a crush on, even laughed at it openly.

I’m not sure what’s the morale of this story beyond a huge powerlevel.
Personally, I still enjoy laughing at other people - I mean I am in the farms, aren’t I?
And I still believe that bullying forges character, though I am against physical violence.
But on the other hand, I have pretty big self-confidence and body image issues that mostly stem from the bullying I endured, to the point where I’ve been bulimic since I was 14.

Anyways, to go back to the quoted comment - yes, French teachers do not care about bullying at all, from what I experienced at least.

Ps: I could also add that my high school was kind of famous in Paris for its suicides. The first week following my transfer there, a Grade-12 guy jumped off the 6th floor into the courtyard and killed himself during recess.
A friend of a friend that got held back a year tried to slice her veins in the school bathroom, got saved, had counselling, and ended up jumping in the Seine months later.
And a girl I did an Art project with in 10th grade tried to overdose on pills in our last year, got saved, and was forcibly put in a psychiatric institution for 3 weeks.

That’s just of the top of my head. Pretty sure, there’s many more cases I wasn’t aware of.

But hey, our school brings up the French elite, “la crème de la crème” as they would say, so it must be worth it.


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## ATaxingWoman (Mar 7, 2019)

Azovka said:


> I grew up in France - can confirm.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This reinforces the impression I have of French teachers, although my experiences weren't as extreme as yours (I did not grow up in France, but I am half French and lived abroad for many years where I went to an international school). I remember one time in 6th or 7th grade during French class when the teacher wanted to sort the pupils into groups for a team work project of some sorts. There was one boy who hated me with a burning passion for reasons I have never been able to figure out and when I was placed in the same group as him, he immediately and loudly started proclaiming his disdain for me. What did the teacher do? Absolutely nothing. Needless to say, the rest of that lesson was an absolute blast.

Another thing I've noticed is that if a French teacher dislikes you, they are more likely to openly show it and engage in bullying themselves (in comparison to, for example, a Swedish teacher). I suspect it goes together with the whole "strict and ruthless" shtick most of them have got going for them.


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## MadDamon (Mar 7, 2019)

Back in the days, like when I was just getting into primary school, I was bullied because I was tall, dark and had a weird voice. People used to love to toss my stuff s into the trash can, steal my stuffs, destory my homeworks etc. The most memorable thing they make me do is to kneel before them to beg for forgiveness.

And that's why I'm posting on kiwi nowadays.


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## Whatevs (Mar 7, 2019)

I still remember my first bully experience.



Spoiler:  Powerlevel



I had just started first grade and being the midwest, it was a really cold morning, frost on the ground and everything. I didn't know anyone so before classes start, I'm just sitting on a swing minding my own business. This boy and girl approach me, she says "hey, this is my swing, get off it" I do the usual kid reply of "your name isn't on it, go sit on another swing" the boy pulls me out of the swing and we start pushing each other. What this kid didn't count on is that me and the neighbors I had, we used to watch karate and kungfu movies all the time then do the moves on each other. So I instinctively grabbed his arm, turned my body then did a hip toss to throw him into the frozen ground. It knocked the air out of him, the girl goes screaming to a teacher and I get dragged to the principal's office to spend the rest of my first and the next day being suspended.

So I come in after my suspension, I'm sitting there on the swing again. The girl approaches me alone, sits down in the swing next to me, I ask her where her friend is. She says "oh he's not my friend anymore, do you want to be my boyfriend?" Being first grade, I'm like "whoa a girlfriend, hell yeah!" so we're sitting there and some kid passes us, she says to me "I hate that boy, you should go punch him." I'm sitting there perplexed, and tell her "I don't even know that kid, why would I fight him? Why do you hate him?" she says "I just do, go hit him for me." 

I look at her then tell her "I don't think you can be my girlfriend, please leave me alone. If you bring another boy up to me to start a fight, I'll punch you in the mouth too." She stomped off in a huff, never bothered me again.



Boys fight and it's usually over with. When girls do it, especially teaming up to do it, its miserable as fuck, and I have plenty of stories of that.

But I'm kinda glad I got bullied through growing up and had parents that told me to fight back. It prepares you for the real world.


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## Ginger Piglet (Mar 7, 2019)

ATaxingWoman said:


> This reinforces the impression I have of French teachers, although my experiences weren't as extreme as yours (I did not grow up in France, but I am half French and lived abroad for many years where I went to an international school). I remember one time in 6th or 7th grade during French class when the teacher wanted to sort the pupils into groups for a team work project of some sorts. There was one boy who hated me with a burning passion for reasons I have never been able to figure out and when I was placed in the same group as him, he immediately and loudly started proclaiming his disdain for me. What did the teacher do? Absolutely nothing. Needless to say, the rest of that lesson was an absolute blast.
> 
> Another thing I've noticed is that if a French teacher dislikes you, they are more likely to openly show it and engage in bullying themselves (in comparison to, for example, a Swedish teacher). I suspect it goes together with the whole "strict and ruthless" shtick most of them have got going for them.



Did a year at the Sorbonne in my university days. Exams were anonymously marked; you'd write your name and candidate number on a flap which you'd glue down at the end so M. Le Professeur wouldn't know who you were. 

I saw several French academics marking it on the metro and looking under the flap and re-sticking it in order to adjust the mark according to how much they liked the student. One of my compatriots got 9.5++ out of 20 on one exam. She would have passed but the lecturer didn't think she deserved to.


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## Azovka (Mar 7, 2019)

ATaxingWoman said:


> This reinforces the impression I have of French teachers, although my experiences weren't as extreme as yours (I did not grow up in France, but I am half French and lived abroad for many years where I went to an international school). I remember one time in 6th or 7th grade during French class when the teacher wanted to sort the pupils into groups for a team work project of some sorts. There was one boy who hated me with a burning passion for reasons I have never been able to figure out and when I was placed in the same group as him, he immediately and loudly started proclaiming his disdain for me. What did the teacher do? Absolutely nothing. Needless to say, the rest of that lesson was an absolute blast.
> 
> Another thing I've noticed is that if a French teacher dislikes you, they are more likely to openly show it and engage in bullying themselves (in comparison to, for example, a Swedish teacher). I suspect it goes together with the whole "strict and ruthless" shtick most of them have got going for them.



Yes, this French attitude really seems more widespread than I thought. I don't know whether it's the culture or something else, but it really is quite special.



Spoiler: Powerlevel



Back in my high school, my Grade 11 (Première) French teacher hated me. He was one of those proto-hipster guys that would come to school dressed in their favorite smoked salmon color pants with an artificially aged leather bag and wax poetics about contemporary absurd theater plays.
And at the start of the year, he got it in his head that I was only in it for the grades, not for the "beauty of literature".
One thing to note is that everyone in the class was in it for the grades, seen as a huge emphasis was put on getting good report cards to get into good unis (bonus points if you applied abroad, as I was planning on, where all your last 3 years of high school matter).
We also were in the "Scientific Section" (in France, you don't get to chose the courses you want to study. You get to chose groups of subjects so to speak, centered around Literature, Economy, or Science, with Science being considered the "best", "most elite" career path), meaning French Literature didn't count as much as say Math or Physics.

And yet the teacher singled me out as being this sort of upstart, most likely because I criticized (constructively, mind you) the very first play he made us see at the theater.
For the record, it was _Dopo la battaglia_ by the post-modern Italian director Pippo Delbono,
Here's an extract from this absolute work of art, if you want to check it out.






To each their own I suppose, but personally, I'm a rather conservative gal - I like my plays with more plot and less screeching.

Anyways, back to my tale of petty, vengeful French teachers.
After the play, he asked us to write an essay analyzing it and giving our opinion. And so I did what was asked, and gave my input, saying that I honestly didn't really enjoy it. And so he gave me a 12/20 for a near perfect essay because "your opinion is wrong".

I care about grades (as did anyone back in our high school, where it was expected that we'd end up in the best classes prépa, Oxford, or Yale). And I wasn't having it. So I took it up with our school headmaster, and merely asked him to read my essay (our Headmaster was a distinguished History and Philology professor) and tell me if it was worth a 12. Clearly it wasn't, and my French teacher was forced to change my grade to a more "acceptable" one.
Perhaps I was entitled, but back then, one bad grade could ruin your university application, and being dismissed because "your opinion is wrong" was really an absurd justification for what was an otherwise great essay. (And if there's one thing I know, it's how to write French essays. I even got a Prize for it from the French Minister of Education).

Anyways, since then, my French teacher's dislike for me morphed into hate, and he made it pretty obvious in every class. While he never gave me unwarranted bad grades again, he called me out in almost every class in a disparaging manner.
Just to give an example - when we were studying _A Harlot High and Low_  and _The Lady with the Camellias _and _Manon Lescaut _and _Nana , _which are all novels about whores (our teacher really liked talking about that), he'd constantly single me out saying stuff like "and these whores used to wear their hair hmm kind of like ***_ over here", "and of course, most of them died from syphilis, careful  * _".  (Funnily enough, I was a virgin, even though no one believed me, and it kind of became a running joke among our classmates - being compared to a whore I mean).

He'd also often read extracts of my essays out loud to the class after grading them and comment saying shit like "it's a good essay, from an academic point of view but it lacks heart and depth. Clearly the person who wrote it is a phony".
Finally, when our French Baccalaureate time came (think UK A levels or US' APs), our teacher was there when we got our results, as was customary for our high school. And when my turn came to announce mine, he shook his head, and actually said "damn, I genuinely wished you'd fail".
Those are just some examples I remember. There were probably more on a day-to-day basis, but nothing that comes to mind or really ultimately matters I suppose.

The next year, when I got my university acceptance and my final French Baccalaureate results, I made sure to mail it all to him with a "thank you" message.

Also one thing to note, the behavior exhibited by my French teacher was nothing out of the ordinary for the standards of our school. As I said, our sports teacher and volleyball coach bullied other kids with us, well more like laughed at us bullying them. And I knew other kids from parallel classes that had similar experiences with biased teachers.
Our philosophy teacher threw a dictionary at a girl yelling "duck" once because she pissed him off by using contractions.

Yeah, high school was wild. In between the bullying, the suicides at our school, the extreme pressure to get into good unis, and teachers that hated students, it was pretty entertaining.


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## ATaxingWoman (Mar 7, 2019)

Azovka said:


> Yes, this French attitude really seems more widespread than I thought. I don't know whether it's the culture or something else, but it really is quite special.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That sounds like an French asshole teacher alright, and a pretentious one at that (that extract from the play was quite something).

And yes, it's probably a cultural thing. I can imagine this attitude is particularly prevalent in private schools where mostly rich kids go.


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## Azovka (Mar 7, 2019)

ATaxingWoman said:


> That sounds like an French asshole teacher alright, and a pretentious one at that (that extract from the play was quite something).
> 
> And yes, it's probably a cultural thing. I can imagine this attitude is particularly prevalent in private schools where mostly rich kids go.



It is, yes. French people aren’t very violent, as in they won’t make a scandal or get physical if they have a disagreement, but they will make jabs at you and generally try to make your life hell in every petty/catty way possible, smiling to your face all the way.

And if they don’t like you, they’ll sure as hell show it and be biased af. Same holds not just for school teachers, but also for customer service and retail, immigration service, doctors, etc.

The first time I went to renew my resident card at the immigration office, I ended up with a very fat, black lady that didn’t like me for some reason, and was so rude to me it made me cry after I exited the building. And I’m not the kind of person that cries easily. Not at funerals, not from breakups or whatever.
But having your future in the country possibly jeopardised because an immigration clerk didn’t like you and let you feel it is kind of sad.

And regarding schools, I’ve only been to private ones that are pretty posh and pretentious, so I can only speak for those. Just to give you an estimate, the tuition fee for my elementary school was €70,000 per year.
Though from what other people tell, it seems to be the same across the country.

Edit: (Not flexing with the tuition fee btw, not that it was my money anyways. Just bringing it up to illustrate that my PoV is limited.)


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## AF 802 (Mar 7, 2019)

All bullying is good. Even the extreme type that shows your dominance over certain groups of people.


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## AverageAnimeWatcher (Mar 11, 2019)

"ignore them" is the worst advice you can give to bullied kids. Unless it's purely online... But that's another story.


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## Bob's Vagene (Mar 13, 2019)

I was never really bullied, but I should have been, I was the kind of kid that normally would have, but I was fairly outgoing and a smartass so I turned into more of a bully myself. Not the push kids into lockers type, but the asshole type. I think it was really a defense mechanism. More of a, I''ll bully you before you can bully me type of thing, which is probably more common amongst bullies than people would know. A lack of self confidence.

That said, there's no solution to end bullying, but coddling children and creating safe spaces isn't the answer. Back when I was a kid everyone got occasionally bullied and they dealt with it, one way or another. Now 10 year olds are hanging themselves because people were mean to them. It's ridiculous, and parents need to teach their kids that the world can suck and they need to be tough. Not about trigger warnings and safe spaces. I think the lack of preparedness is leading to weak children who can't take real life. It's a bad scenario.


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## Guntburglar (Mar 13, 2019)

Almost everyone that I got into a fight with as a child/teen eventually became a friend or at the very least we were tolerable friends of friends. Contention is needed, It simulates how the natural selection actually works in the current year and prepares us for society. I really don't understand why my fellow millennials are still literally shaking over school yard shit that happened more than half of a lifespan ago.


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## MerriedxReldnahc (Mar 13, 2019)

I've concluded that there are around 3 distinct types of "bullies".
1. Random assholes. 
2.Catty bitches
3.Vindictive fragile narcissists who haven't figured out they're actually bullies

I've had issues with 1, but they weren't as bad to deal with. I never really reacted to people picking on me and while "just ignore it" isn't great advice it worked sort of ok. What worked better is when I was able to make a self-depreciating joke or somehow laugh with them. Didn't do it often but when I did I found that it totally defused the situation. Not everyone can do that, and young me certainly couldn't, but it was the best way to deal with that. Sometimes it was just Jr. High kids being typical Jr. High turds and they ended up mellowing out. 

Group 2? Fuckin awful. Chicks are terrible to each other. The snarky people who pretend to be nice to you and snicker behind your back are so hard to deal with. Worst of all is when it's a teacher that falls into that catagory, which I've had happen a few times. Hard to call them a faggot when they're controlling your grades. I've never really worked out how you deal with them other than not be around people like that. I've had to deal with them in my adult life which is easier but more perplexing. I do think there's a bad mindset going around that being snarky is the same as being funny.

But Group 3- This is the worst. This is the "bullies people becasue they feel bad about themselves" archetype that schools keep trying to convince us is real. It is real but not really in the way they say it is. I've seen some people get kind of bullied for being weird, and immedietly weaponize their victim complex to be worse than the original bully. (Not to drag politics into this, but SJW stereotypes pretty much are this. Lolcows like Andrew Dobson are too ) It's probably a side effect of telling kids that bullies are "just jealous", too.  The only times that I've been repremanded and labeled as a bully came about from befriending a Group 3er, getting sick of them being a demanding parasite, and telling them I was done. They throw a fit and get their parents, the teacher, the counselor, whoever they can involved and claim that you're being mean and won't be friends with them. Now you've got authority figures lecturing you that not being a doormat counts as bullying. One guy I went to school with was a bit notorious for getting people sent to the office for something a simple as looking at him for a second too long and he genuinely thought it was justified. These are probably the hardest bullies to really deal with becasue it's harder for an authority to see what's going on and to somehow articulate to the kid that they're being a shithead.


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## AnOminous (Mar 13, 2019)

MerriedxReldnahc said:


> I've concluded that there are around 3 distinct types of "bullies".
> 1. Random assholes.
> 2.Catty bitches
> 3.Vindictive fragile narcissists who haven't figured out they're actually bullies



The kind most lolcows have.

4.  Chads whose mere existence causes precious snowflakes to feel bullied.  They aren't actually bullying anyone, but their sheer magnificence radiates pain and misery to the lolcows who feel their marked inferiority and drabness while the Chad is around.


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## SweetDee (Mar 13, 2019)

Pixy Misa said:


> "ignore them" is the worst advice you can give to bullied kids. Unless it's purely online... But that's another story.




Exactly.  Middle school was when I mostly ignored the bullies before snapping and getting into an altercation.  After that, word got around and I was mostly left alone.  In high school I'd learned my lesson well and the first time someone started giving me trouble, I swung at her.  I wasn't bullied for the remainder of my high school days.  The only thing bullies respond to is immediate and unexpected physical retaliation.

EDIT:  Learn how to throw a punch/fight.  Best advice to give any bullied kid.


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## Stalinist (Mar 14, 2019)

Can confirm.
I bullied kids to avoid being bullied, not proud of it, would have quit as soon as someone punched my face because I was a pussy inside. Luckily i quit that shit when i quit seeking approval of others. I think of the Ralphamale as someone who never ceased that type of behavior.

As I got older I also learned that when someone is trying to intimidate you by looking into your eyes with that hint of violence "just cuz" (real ralphamales know what i mean), if you just look back with a more violent stare, 99.999% times they look down or away and """loose""" (pretty gay thing to even be involved with i know). Edit: never be the first to do this though, that is gay and will give you useless pride and make you lazy where it matters.

If you actually meet someone really prone to engage in a fair fight, someone more than willing to actually fight, it's way different, that's like meeting a big wild animal or some shit.


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## Kiwi Lime Pie (Mar 18, 2019)

Heinrich Himmler said:


> Kiwis, what are the opinions on this phenomenon?
> Have you witnessed cases of bullying or have been victims yourself?
> Have you been the bullies yourselves (no, laughing or a-logging to internet crazies it's not bullying) and have grew out of it?
> What could be useful preventive measures/solutions?



- I've never witnessed anything as horrifying as your wife, @Heinrich Himmler. But it wouldn't surprise me if kids are mimicking something they saw on Youtube or social media, especially since this is the same generation that will eat toxic laundry soap on a dare. Anyone whose actions could injure or kill another student deserve strict and swift discipline, though.

- I've seen a grade school classmate bully people and try to intimidate them with words and crude language. Once most people figured out he was a tryhard wannabe edglord, they largely ignored him or told him to take a hike, resulting in him seeking out a new target. More horrifying, this guy may have driven a girl in our class during 7th grade due to his trying to repeatedly grope her during math class. She was conspicuously absent when 8th grade started, transferring to the nearby public junior high.

I was on the receiving end of some of said guy's stuff, but once my mom told me to stand up to him, that largely ended and he may have even spoke positive of me the day I likely helped our team win a game of touch football on the playground. That said, another guy during 1st grade pushed me in the mud completely out of the blue. My neighbor that walked me and her sibling to/from school saw it and went with me to report it but nothing happened to the bully because I forgot to remind the teacher the next day. ☹

I may have posted this in the school story thread, but I had a student falsely accuse me of calling her a bitch when I never even heard of the word. Our guidance counselor bullied me into confessing saying "she doesn't lie" and telling me if I didn't admit to it, I'd be suspended.

It probably counts as bullying for sure under today's definitions, but I called some guy the year below me a dork brain because he'd always act quiet and timid but used it as a facade to constantly whine and complain about stuff when he did speak. Instead of speaking up for himself, he waited almost an entire year and then whined to the above aforementioned counselor during some group meeting that I was calling him a dork brain. But who didn't call whiners names in 7th/8th grade? I grew out of that before high school... and learned to keep my opinions to myself when someone really did act like a dork brain in the future. 

I agree with those that said conflict resolution and peer mediation, if done correctly, can help with the routine stuff that happens as part of the growing up process. If an act of bullying reaches the point it becomes criminal or threatens someone's safety or life, however, it needs to be dealt with more appropriately.




Alpha Loves You said:


> It's worth mentioning that most people who bully never see themselves as bullies, just having a laugh. Bullying is very subjective in this manner and people who mean to just poke fun a bit can be branded as horrible monsters while an actual evil kid can just be called a little troublemaker.





PorcupineTree said:


> I bullied a few people when I was younger because I thought they were annoying,



I agree. As above, classmates teasing someone that whines too much, says something dumb, or acts annoyingly is more something that's being poked fun at and not bullying so long as the comments don't become hateful. Yet, those students really do end up being the ones seen as monsters or trouble-makers. Meanwhile, my classmate that had his hands all over a girl didn't even seem to get a slap on the wrist or any concern over his cringe-worthy behavior unless it was dealt with after school so to keep it kept hush hush.



Clovis said:


> Probably an Unpopular Opinion, but I think we're too quick to label any disagreement as bullying these days. Kids need to have negative social experiences as much as positive ones to learn from and a lot of adults seem to have a rose tinted perception of children all being friends and getting along.



Agreed. Today, people politely offering constructive criticism such as, "Gee, green isn't your color," or "Maybe painting in art class isn't something your good at," are immediately branded as bullies. Helicopter parents that are quick to swoop in to keep their kids from facing/dealing with adversity don't help either. Many times, bullies rely on mean words to get their thrill in tormenting others. If kids were taught that most of the time, bullying will fail if they don't let words upset them, that would be half the battle. Of course when words escalate into hateful comments or violence, that needs to be reported and the school needs to act appropriately.

I feel similar about "cyber bullying." Mere words on a screen can't and shouldn't hurt someone, generally speaking. If the threat is specific - for example, "I know where you live and your parents Dick and Jane wouldn't like it if you got hurt tomorrow" - there is a process for dealing with that. Again, parents that don't teach their kids how to cope or stand up for themselves is probably why kids are killing themselves over "mean words" they read on social media.



Ginger Piglet said:


> Schools that sweep bullying under the carpet are the worst. They should have the testicular fortitude to admit that it happens, and explain what they're doing about it.



Or those that expect the victims to do the work for them. In my mud incident, my teacher expected a five year old to remind her the next day that he was pushed in the mud in front of someone else. Most five year olds couldn't even tell you what they had for breakfast that morning because their memory is still developing.

But yes, schools that downplay serious bullying offenses are peeve-worthy. Worse, my city's school district brings in speakers to tell middle and high schools that bullying LGBTetc people is wrong. While that in itself isn't objectionable, the fact it's presented as "Don't bully the alphabet soup students" as opposed to, "We shouldn't bully any of our schoolmates" is curious.


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## Violence Jack (Mar 18, 2019)

I was a little doormat as a kid. I guess because i was a lonely kid, but also tried to stay out of anyone's way especially their dumb drama. Anyway i was big and could throw my weight around if need be. One time i was waiting for my mom to pick me up from middle school and this rat-faced fink of a little fuck ran up behind me and open palmed smacked my stomach. Me, being an immense pussy at the time I basically froze as A) i didn't think someone had that much of a problem with me. Nobody ever bullied me to my face or attempted to fight me. or B) I thought it was light ribbing that kids did. I didn't really know the boy that well, because he looked like he mainlined meth at age 7.

So maybe i just looked like a shitty chubby victim. Maybe he was gauging whether or not i would fight him. Either way i was bigger than him and he was a scrawny loser so when it happened all i could do was freeze. Then the worse part came when i saw my mom walking up the sidewalk shouting at a 12-14 year old "You stay right there!" I was blown away that something this fucking sitcom-lite happened to me. Maybe I should've talked to more people and figured out if i was hated or something i guess? Regardless i went home and had a panic attack over the fact that my mommy had to stop the mean boy from smacking my tumtum. I was worried about how everyone would view me. Later in life I realized I was essentially freaking out over the death of a social life i didn't have. I think the boy got suspended or something my mom told me the principle described him "as having troubles."

Now my life's not ruined or anything. At least not by this instance I do a damn sight better on my own in that regard. But damn do i not understand what goes through people's heads sometimes. I guess some people are just born bad. Really regretful, but nothing of value will be lost im sure.


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## Clovis (Mar 18, 2019)

Kiwi Lime Pie said:


> - I've never witnessed anything as horrifying as your wife, @Heinrich Himmler.


Stop bullying Himmler's wife.


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## Megaroad (Mar 18, 2019)

Been on both sides.

Initially posted some powerleveling sob story but nuked it.

What I'll say from the side of actual bullying others, it was a warped and regrettable defense mechanism to draw attention away from me to others and I still kick myself sometimes for mocking people for shit they have no control over.  I'm talking people from generally normal but slightly weirdo kids to hardcore autistic people.

Of course furries don't count.


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## W00K #17 (Mar 18, 2019)

Fortunately was never really bullied much, from about 7th grade on I was just the pothead kid who listened to jambands and fished alot and was friendly with everyone. Never gave anyone a reason to fuck with me.

In high school, one of the worst bullies got the shit kicked out of him by an openly gay black kid who was like 6'6. The bully fucked with him constantly, I'm not sure why youd fuck with someone nearly a foot taller than you. Maybe he though because he was a fag he wouldnt ever snap, but boy did he ever. Glorious.


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## Sweetpeaa (Jun 11, 2020)

Let's just focus on the ''bullies'' for a minute.

While there are those ''group think'' bullies who like to bully someone from their school just because they're unpopular either on social media or real life. Which is the most common type of bullying. For most of these people doing the bullying it's just a phase and many of them grow into adults without behavioral issues.

But then there is the other type. An aggressive person who want to terrorize someone. These people are only getting started.


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## Kiwifarmsname (Jun 11, 2020)

depends if it gets personal or not


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## tampax pearl (Jun 11, 2020)

I think everyone on Kiwi Farms has probably been bullied at some point. Most of us probably ended up being the runt of the social litter, and when you're being bullied, you notice it a lot more. You develop survival skills other people don't have to. In my experience, I found being funny often made people less likely to bully you. So that's what I did. Kids have this radar where they _know_ who has trouble at home. I don't know how they do it, but that's usually who ends up being picked on, and it's a brutal cycle. With boys... boys are easy. Boys might physically hurt you, but they're like puppies. You have to watch out for the girls. The girls will make you want to kill yourself. And they don't stop until they're completely satisfied. It's horrifying.

Never been much of a bully myself; I like helping people. Had to be placed with the little kids in the shelter because some staff pulled my dad aside and said the big kids would be "too mean" to me. But I think it all starts in the home. Children learn to be mean. I was around mean people, and so were a lot of the other kids. The boys turned to rough housing to get their energy out, and the older ones got creative. They were looking out for themselves, like their parents had before they reached the shelter. You had women waiting outside in the alleys to give 5 dollar blowjobs to try and make some kind of living in the shelter. Some kids saw that, and kids learn from what they see. 

We need to set a better example to children to reduce bullying. Leave politics and cruelty out of their view- they needn't worry about that while they're young. Instill in them work ethic, integrity, and respect for other people at a young age, and they will be on track. They've lost the sense of community because race, class, and political views have been shoved onto them before they can even comprehend what they're being told. We saw it in Sesame Street. Let kids be kids, but raise them to be healthy kids and not sociopaths.


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## Dwight Frye (Jun 12, 2020)

I was never bullied that much. I was a nerd back when being nerdy was uncool, and I'd sometimes get shit for playing D&D, Magic the Gathering, watching anime, reading for pleasure not for school ect.. I just ignored it. Nobody ever physically bullied me, just called me a loser or a fag or a virgin, basic shit. Just words, why let it get to you?

Some of them saw that I didn't give a fuck what they had to say and actually started being more friendly later on, would invite me to come with to go smoke or something. The rest eventually just quit because they couldn't get the reaction they wanted.

This was all late 90s/early 2000s so no social media or smartphones everywhere. I do wonder how things would have been with social media around to act as a tool for "bullying" I'm in my mid-30s now and I'm sure my experiences back then dealing with dumbasses are a lot different than what kids are dealing with today.


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## Prince Jello (Jun 12, 2020)

I can't say I was particularly bullied during high school. I had good grades and was a weeb, but never drew attention to it - one of my classmates was a proud weeb and was openly mocked for it, so I knew what not to do. I did get some snide comments about my appearance (I had very thick bifocal lenses which made my eyes ridiculously small and blurry), though I never responded and the remarks quickly stopped.

However, I can remember a girl in my social circle who seemed to beg to be bullied. She was your average socially awkward girl with no fashion sense and weird interests, but nothing so out of the ordinary that she would attract the attention of potential bullies. I guess she just wasn't cringy enough. Eventually, the last year of high school began, and we drifted away from her. She kept trying to be our friend, buying us shitty candy/pens/stickers and crying when it didn't work.
As time went by, she got even more desperate, whining to teachers about how we were mean to her, how she started cutting because of us, how she wanted to throw herself off the top of the school's mezzanine (which was about three stories high). Near the end of the year, a local news channel did a story about bullying, and she went to the journalists because "she had a story to tell". Basically, she said to the cameras that her friends turned on her and became her worst nightmare, how they told her to hang herself and made a Facebook page where they would relentlessly mock her. Thankfully, nothing happened to us, but I can't fucking believe I saw her face in the local news, moaning about her imaginary bullies.


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## Mr. ShadowCreek (Jan 18, 2022)

A father famous case actually happened close to wear I grew up. A girl called Megan Meier got bullied on Mypsace and eventually took her own life. She met with a boy on their named Josh Evans who she found cute and became friends with. At first, he seemed nice but soon his messages turned vile. Megan already had emotion problems and this person telling her she was ugly and should kill herself was the last straw. She then hung herself in her closet where she was found by her parents. The parents wanted to get revenge on Chris, but he deleted his account. He also didn't exist. Yep, there was never a person named Chris Evans Megan was talking too. It turned out to be Lori Drew, the mother of her former friend. She claimed she never meet to truly hurt Megan and that Megan bullied her kid. There was no evidence for this though. After months of going to trails Lori was found not guilty mostly because of weak cyber-bullying laws. She actions did change the laws later on though. 

It was kind of big where I lived. She was in the next town over and even went to the same school district that I did most of her life. I was a freshman in high school when it happened and remember hearing about it on the announcements. It was sad to see a middle-aged woman was so bitter that Megan stopped being friends with her kids that she bullied a 13 year-old girl to death. I know she and her family became hated here but I'm not sure what happened to her later on.


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## Dave. (Jan 18, 2022)

Not really bullied, but I was a 'bully' myself. I didn't really care that much about people who were disabled or had issues themselves as I was a genuine empath back in the day so that stuff I got and understood, but you had some sociopathic faggots who loved to tell the teacher over benign shit that was harming nobody. My friend got suspended because he was smoking pot and kind of an addict and he was cut out of alot of school activities as well because this gay furry back in the day wanted to be a moral bastion that day. I told him he needs to stay the fuck out of our business and something like that didn't involve him. The moment I snapped and shoved him into a locker was when he was bragging to his teachers that pot was bad and that kid that got suspended got what was coming to him because drugs are bad and he hoped he got help. It should've happened when he was prancing on the ground like a dog when one of my classmates brought his dad's service puppy in and it kind of made my blood boil when he did that. 

It's not the only time this has happened, there was this lesbian weeaboo fuck who lied about me being a homophobe and I took violent action. Nothing major, but I did punch her in the face which I'm not proud of. To be well honest, I'm not proud of the shit I did back in those school days and weed was definitely against school policy and you're probably dumb for doing it, but I don't know. I was a genuinely violent teen back in those days, but I had a moral compass. I didn't hate people who were autistic as many times they just stood in their lane. I also wasn't really a homophobe as there were some that were cool and kind of agreed with me that the gay furry probably had the shit coming to him. I don't know, I'm not proud of what I did back in those days and I kind of regret it.


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## Ginger Piglet (Jan 18, 2022)

A university friend (who I failed to upgrade to gf) had a story about how she got really quite spectacular revenge on her school bullies. I think I've posted it before but I'm going to do so again. We'll call her Lucy because that wasn't her name.

Basically, she had the sort of big tiddy goth gf thing going on before that was kind of a thing. But at school she was Not Popular for a variety of reasons that made absolutely zero sense to my autismal brain. Towards the end of term, the bullying sort of stopped for a few weeks, or at least was toned down. Anyhow. Popular Girl declares that she's feeling guilty about bullying Lucy and arranging for her friends and hangers on to bully her, and so one of her hangers on, a middlingly popular girl, invites Lucy to a big house party at Popular Girl's big fancy house. Popular Girl was R I C H. As in, got flash car for 18th birthday and always dresses in designer couture and has parents who donated a new sports hall to the school just because. That sort of rich. Lucy wasn't badly off but wasn't in that sort of league in terms of familial wealth.

Well, you can see this coming already, can't you. Lucy goes to party and once she's been dropped off at Popular Girl's house and her mother is down the drive and away, it becomes clear that the whole purpose of the party is to bully the shit out of Lucy in every conceivable way and with Lucy miles from home where she is unable to escape it. Seems that Popular Girl also did the homework and found loads of things to dredge up to sneer at her for. Why don't you kill yourself Lucy. Why are you still a virgin - oh wait, you lost it to Smelly Boy behind the sewerage farm. And stealing her (non smart - this was the early 2000s) phone and throwing it into the drainpipe so she couldn't call home to leave. That sort of thing. Eventually Lucy goes in floods of tears to the toilets and decides to camp in there gently sobbing to herself. She's also had quite a lot of cider and is a bit drunk.

While in there she notices in the bathroom a big bottle of bubble bath. The really thick kind that foams like anything. A plan is hatched. She takes a massive cider piss into the toilet, tops it off with a nice shite, and then empties all the bubble bath into the cistern, before leaving with the bog unflushed. And who should be waiting outside to use the facilities? Why, Popular Girl. Lucy wanders off down to the end of the driveway and waits.

Popular Girl uses toilet and flushes. 

Lucy is subsequently told that a torrent of pissy foam with turds floating on it came right up around Popular Girl's nethers and out the toilet and all over the floor and down the hall, sending prissy bitches screaming in utter terror.


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## Fish Fudge (Jan 19, 2022)

I moved around a lot as a child, from country to country, so I always the "new kid" who had a weird accent. I was tall, and slim, so that all just put a target on my back.

This was a long time ago comparitvely to a lot of you, but it was fairly brutal. Mainly it was just fights, or worst-case, or getting jumped by a group. I remember coming back from school multiple times with bleeding knuckles and having to hide it from my parents in case they freaked out. Vaguely remember people throwing glass beakers at my head, had to get stitches for that one.

There wasn't really any concept of bullying, at least not seriously, back then. Largely it was viewed as just a normal part of the experience. I won't lie and pretend it didn't impact me - it was awful - and hardened me towards trusting people.

Out of every nationality, when I lived in England - they were the biggest faggots about it. English boys bully like teenage girls from literally any other country. It's kinda bizarre.

On some level, I kinda wish none of that shit had ever happened - but on the other hand, there is some truth to the whole "A Boy Named Sue" thing.


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## Gravityqueen4life (Jan 19, 2022)

Mr. ShadowCreek said:


> A father famous case actually happened close to wear I grew up. A girl called Megan Meier got bullied on Mypsace and eventually took her own life. She met with a boy on their named Josh Evans who she found cute and became friends with. At first, he seemed nice but soon his messages turned vile. Megan already had emotion problems and this person telling her she was ugly and should kill herself was the last straw. She then hung herself in her closet where she was found by her parents. The parents wanted to get revenge on Chris, but he deleted his account. He also didn't exist. Yep, there was never a person named Chris Evans Megan was talking too. It turned out to be Lori Drew, the mother of her former friend. She claimed she never meet to truly hurt Megan and that Megan bullied her kid. There was no evidence for this though. After months of going to trails Lori was found not guilty mostly because of weak cyber-bullying laws. She actions did change the laws later on though.
> 
> It was kind of big where I lived. She was in the next town over and even went to the same school district that I did most of her life. I was a freshman in high school when it happened and remember hearing about it on the announcements. It was sad to see a middle-aged woman was so bitter that Megan stopped being friends with her kids that she bullied a 13 year-old girl to death. I know she and her family became hated here but I'm not sure what happened to her later on.


holy crap i remember this. the comments on her suicide page were Savage. its kinda bullshit the mother got away with it. would not have happen in todays internet.


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## Noir drag freak (Jan 26, 2022)

The annoying thing about bullying for me was that I couldn't escape.  I'm an effeminate gay guy. I own it. I was mostly bullied by the guys for not trying to fit in or befriending them. It was mostly harmless looking back at it. Probably even helpful in some ways. In all, it did make me stronger and more independent.  I mean didn't respect them so I wasn't truly bothered by their comments. What hurt was that I couldn't escape. 

What I hate about the bullying narrative is that they try to make it seems like every bullied victim is fragile. Yes, bully hurts. When I was being bullied, I was mostly annoyed. The thing that annoyed me the most were teachers who thought that my feelings were being hurt or intervened.  What about the kids who are indifferent to bullying? Not everyone wants to live their lives according to the narrative of the fragile victim of bullying.


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