Do you think bullying is a necessary evil? - What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

[Chin of Campbell]

We place a lot of emphasis on putting an end to bullying in America, especially with the constant push for further acceptance of every little eccentricity that might present itself within the population. If you're an annoying little autistic faggot, you have every right to be and anyone who says otherwise can fuck off, essentially.

Subject-Relevant Powerleveling Ahead
When I was young, I was as autistic as they come. We're talking firing up the dial-up, drawing shitty video game webcomics, public roleplaying on MMOs and message boards, unironic "buying gf" shit. I craved internet attention like a lot of annoying autists. Real life wasn't much different, as I was a late bloomer. Catching hell became a daily activity both online and offline.

Through a combination of bullying on and offline (as well as good parenting), I began to learn that maybe being an annoying little bitch wasn't the way to live my life. I grew up into a fairly normal, if introverted, guy.
Subject-Relevant Powerleveling Over

I don't think that things would have turned out nearly as well had I been coddled and asspatted the whole way. We see an absolute epidemic of people who are incapable of handling criticism or outside opinions. That's probably the majority of people who have threads on this site, actually. While I certainly don't think having a snotty held-back kid twice your size wallop you once a week is going to fix your severe autism, I do think bullying plays an important role in the development of social skills in kids.

There are, of course, situations where it goes too far. You'll occasionally see the sad tale of a little one who could not simply step away from their bullies and paid the price. This seems to be more common in the digital age where social media means that everyone is in your face all the time, but I'm sure there are examples from "The Before Times" as well. This is the price you have to pay for our interconnectivity, and I would wager that it's these incidents that have driven the anti-bullying campaigns across the country.

TL;DR - I believe that bullying in moderation is important to weed out bad social behaviors and widespread anti-bullying campaigns and constant coddling are having some unintentional negative effects. Thoughts?

 

[MediocreMilt]

Shut up, nigger.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Spoiler: "Early, and often."

Ok, now that the obligatory joke is aside, yes I do think bulling is important.
It helps to correct dumb shitty behavior. At the very least, it help you learn to deal with criticism.
Not that I like the idea of my nieces or nephews getting ganged up on, but it's important to teach people how to defend themselves and not get pushed around, and bulling does help with that.

 

[roxitp0w3rwuzdabest420]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy8SIWTyJNs

Trevor Moore did a song on why we need bullies. Proving once again WKUK is always better then MDE

 

[The Pink Panther]

On the one hand, bullying is like an authoritarian ideology where you have to be bullied to conform with society's norms and "be put into line" which can kind of limit the thoughts, ideas, and expressions of others.

But on the other hand, sometimes that thing you're being bullied for can be considered bizarre in the mass perception of things where society is built to run in a civil manner or so or what is considered civil. If you act in an anarchist manner, it could lead to others acting in an anarchist way, thus causing other chaos and the downfall of society. What if furries ran society and we never criticized or insulted them for dressing up like animals because they identify as an animal and they think an animal suits their identity best rather than being human? You know how weird it would be for people to be in animal suits everywhere they go despite them being humans?

So, this is a very challenging concept of ethics as well as the way of politics as well depending on how you would want society to function, but bullying is, for the best, a necessary evil. Without it, counter-culture becomes the new norm, and not all counter-culture is great. This is a rather conservative perspective of the matter, but I find it reasonable, but rather complex.

 

[Recoil]

You see "Bullying" all throughout nature. It's about maintaining an evolutionary standard. Hence the name 'pecking order', the fittest birds pick on the weaker ones and EVERY bird picks on that one weird looking white one with the gimpy leg. THIN THE HERD!

We like to pretend we're better than this because we build cities and have written language, but the impetus to thin the herd of its weakest links is still there even though the demands placed on us by society mean that the nerdy kid whose lunch got stolen every week could very well be telling Jake & Chad to pump his fucking gas in thirty years.
Because of how we frame bullying socially, it's easy to think of it as a human phenomenon when it's really just an evolutionary phenomenon that we grow out of as our brains develop and we come to a higher degree of understanding.
Because bullies are an evolutionary phenomenon, they will serve a purpose in our species until they do not. Then they will fade away.

 

[RG 448]

If a nerd responds to bullying by bettering themself and making positive life changes, then that nerd has a shit bully.

 

[eldri]

as well as good parenting

That is the crux of it all though.
Bullying is necessary but, in turn, parents must know how to emotionally respond to their bullied child.

 

[ZeCommissar]

You have to remember bullying isn't a catch all term. Some bullying can be as little as calling someone mean names often and making fun of them, to dropping off dead animals on their front porch and making sure life is a living hell both online and offline. The extremes is why some people commit suicide, and kill their classmates, or actually become somewhat better people due to bullying.

We should definitely know ourselves that calling people out on their shitty, bizarre, and eccentric behavior doesn't always make them strive to do better. If it did then the majority of the lolcows that read their own threads would actually try to better their lives.

SPOILER AHEAD: They don't

At worst it gives them victim complexes and further cements them into their way of life.

While I do believe that the mother-state of "never ever be mean to anyone for any reason" and "always tell on the bully, never take matters into your own hands" is a problem for different reasons I don't think that means bullying is necessary or should even be encouraged.

 

[RG 448]

Bullying isn’t some societal necessity that serves any purpose, it’s just fun. The nerd isn’t supposed to get something out of it.

 

[エリス]

Bullies are the white blood cells of society.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Yes, and no. Parents are supposed to challenge their kids to improve. There might be some cases where "bullying makes them stronger," but really this is just in my opinion a bad thing having a silver lining to it, which fixes another bad thing in some cases. Parents should be teaching their kids proper values, and teaching them to actually stand up for those values. If I ever have kids I'm going to tell them outright "you see some other kid getting bullied, get the fuck in there, and stand up for him/her. If you get your ass kicked, get stronger until you stop getting your ass kicked." If a teacher gets on to my kid, I'll tell her to suck a fat cock, and take him to a private school.

Yeah, that might cause a lot of short term grief for me, and my family, but in the long run it should produce a kid who's honorable, and has the strength to back it up.

 

[dreamworks face]

When I was in high school, I had a diabetic friend named Jimmy. Jimmy had type-1 diabetes - his diabetes was so bad that he had a computer controlled insulin pump built into his body that would constantly monitor his blood sugar and automatically inject insulin if necessary... in 2003.

Jimmy apparently hadn't made it through the lecture that candy was bad for your body though - he would buy a shit ton of candy and reeses and shit from the school store and let the magic insulin pump do its thing. We started giving him shit about it - we'd be like "Jimmy, you're going to die!" "Jimmy, you stupid diabetic, why are you eating so much fucking candy? Are you retarded?"

So later that year, there was an "anti-bullying" assembly, where all the kids who got bullied got to share their stories about how bullying makes them feel bad. And lo and behold here comes Jimmy with a whole song and dance about - "People make fun of me because I'm diabetic."

What a fucking retard.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

Spoiler: "Early, and often."

Ok, now that the obligatory joke is aside, yes I do think bulling is important.
It helps to correct dumb shitty behavior. At the very least, it help you learn to deal with criticism.
Not that I like the idea of my nieces or nephews getting ganged up on, but it's important to teach people how to defend themselves and not get pushed around, and bulling does help with that.

It's a shame that some people can't take the hint coughtheukcoughtumblrcough

 

[RG 448]

When I was in high school, I had a diabetic friend named Jimmy. Jimmy had type-1 diabetes - his diabetes was so bad that he had a computer controlled insulin pump built into his body that would constantly monitor his blood sugar and automatically inject insulin if necessary... in 2003.

Jimmy apparently hadn't made it through the lecture that candy was bad for your body though - he would buy a shit ton of candy and reeses and shit from the school store and let the magic insulin pump do its thing. We started giving him shit about it - we'd be like "Jimmy, you're going to die!" "Jimmy, you stupid diabetic, why are you eating so much fucking candy? Are you exceptional?"

So later that year, there was an "anti-bullying" assembly, where all the kids who got bullied got to share their stories about how bullying makes them feel bad. And lo and behold here comes Jimmy with a whole song and dance about - "People make fun of me because I'm diabetic."

What a fucking exceptional individual.

See, your mistake was trying to warn him about his questionable life choices instead of just beating him up and taking his shit. That’s why he felt safe enough to eat cheese to an entire assembly.

 

[queue-anon]

I was bullied, and I don't know if really helped me change any aspect of who I was at the time. (I'm kind of stubborn, and most of what I was bullied for was bullshit and/or was something I couldn't control.) But I think one benefit that it had for me is that it taught me that there's no point in trying to cater to the popular, mean kids, and there's no point in changing who you fundamentally are to suit other people. I credit these lessons for why I don't so easily buy into groupthink. People often buy into completely insane ideas because they're afraid of being cast out of their social club. Maybe more of them would have benefited from a few years of most of their peers hating their guts.

 

[RG 448]

For real though, it serves no purpose. It’s not a necessity. We only get to be kids once, we should all be able to enjoy the experience.

 

[qt farmer :)]

"kids being kids" is one thing, but being a "bully" is another. I think both of those have been conflated in recent years and that has become the main target of this over-coddling. kids taking the piss out of each other I think is fine and mostly harmless in the long-run. but we have to remember that bullying behavior in children ALWAYS comes from somewhere, and that's where the concern should be placed; if some kid is a bully, then someone influential in their life is enabling and nurturing that behavior. and no one benefits from that.

you can grow a thicker skin in a positive environment, and grow positively from it. or you can grow one in a negative environment, and then dwell on that and act out in a negative manner.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

It's the parents jobs to mold their kids into decent, functioning individuals. If your kid is getting bullied, then you either failed as a parent or you're just dealing with some guy hiding all his insecurities by bullying random people, which in turn means their parents failed.

 

[Clop]

It's not bullies that are necessary, it's conflict that's necessary.

Bullies are just the kids of utter garbage people who couldn't nurture and challenge their child, there's nothing normal about a troubled kid making other kids' lives miserable. Anyone here who ever bullied anyone knows damn well that they had issues. The only way bullying is an evolutionary trait is when the bullies end up antisocial alcoholics or spoiled whores.

Dealing with conflict prepares you for the real world, it prepares you to deal with a bully. Look at the news and tell me how much conflict or nipple-twisters these brats ever got.