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

[nonvir_1984]

I've seen what bullying has done to both the bully (some continue it into adult hood) and the victim (can lead to poor performance at school and psych issues, and even worse).
So, I think it needs to be addressed, but the worst thing is to have a "conference" and put the bully in the same room as the victim. It just keeps it going. I guess my views are also informed by what I saw. In two cases, the victims - a boy and a girl - killed themselves. They were actually nice, smart but quiet kids. Just a bit different. And I've always felt a bit of a shit I did not befriend them some more - and I know some of my contemporaries also live with that. Bullying can affect a lot of people - victims, witnesses and bullies their entire lives. It's because we realyl don't know how it is going to play out but that there will be some bad, we need to address it.
The bullies - who were sport stars - made the usual excuses and their groupies went along with it. But gradually they were shunned as people grew up and realised they were knuckle dragging pricks.
In another couple of cases, I saw the victim lash out and really do some damage to the bully. In one case, the principal questioned us, and a few of us pointed out how pathetic the teachers were - and that they tacitly condoned it. Not the right answer. It also probably did not help that a few of us had absolutely no sympathy for the bullies, and said so.
The bullies grew up - and continued bullying. I was told by one of the girls I went to school with that one day, one of them was walking out of a bar and someone smacked him with a baseball bat and worked him over. It's not good, IMHO, to live with resentment like that. But I guess it was a way for that person to reclaim them self-respect. But the bullies still won, because the victim was still in their power and the victim could only escape by doing something bad like that. Apparently the whacker was screaming something along the lines of "Let's see how resilient you are!". I did not realize what that meant until my friend said that in the "mediation" session, the counsellor and the bully kept telling the victim he needed to be more resilient. I need to add that the bully used to grope girls and so on and when they lots it he'd tell them they needed to be resilient. WTF.
What I learnt from this is that there is no justice in the world; the bullies mostly always win, unless someone takes to them and uses extreme responses - which is not good; and one should try to be as self-reliant as possible: you can really trust no one.
I guess its a long way of saying that we should not tolerate bullies, and if a person bullies and then gets wacked, then that is just an occupational hazard and their own fault.

 

[Kulee Baba]

Bullies are neccessary because people need to understand at an early age that there will be people who are straight to malicious to you for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

How you learn to deal with these types is insanely important.

 

[Pathos]

Bullying can build character in some situations but imo its just too unreliable as a method of building character. On one hand you do have instances in which people are able to rise up against their bullies and become better for it but how often does that actually really happen? Also if you don't have a good network of supportive adults/mentors then good fucking luck figuring out how to deal with such an oppressive situation on your own. Your options are to either rise above, become broken and isolated, or become broken and move on to break others.

I don't think bullying is a necessary evil, but my own position isn't helped by the fact that I can't name an evidence based alternative that would be more effective and reliable.

 

[imightberusty]

Yeah some people just need a wake up call and sometimes bullying is that. It just depends on the bull-ee, honestly. And I dunno if I could ever see some super-successful person who got bullied in the past crediting the situation for their success. Wouldn't call it necessary.

Just like most stuff, it's a thing that happens and it's how the individual deals with it afterwards that makes it what it is to them.

 

[The best and greatest]

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.

I have some thoughts on this that extends well beyond the purview of this topic, but it boils down to "Humans are animals but only because we choose to be." I don't like arguments from nature generally because such arguments rely on infantilizing us as a species as if we are slaves to our nature no different than the other animals that live in their own shit. I do not believe this. I believe that a man is an animal that chooses to walk upright and adopt civility/rule of law voluntarily. So maybe you're correct and we have natural inclinations toward these kinds of social behaviors. Its still a poor excuse though.

We shouldn't attempt to rationalize our shortcomings as being merely natural, because you can extend that same argument onto any facet of human behavior and still have it work unless you want to go down the rabbit hole of trying and failing to determine natural from unnatural behaviors.

 

[Recoil]

I have some thoughts on this that extends well beyond the purview of this topic, but it boils down to "Humans are animals but only because we choose to be." I don't like arguments from nature generally because such arguments rely on infantilizing us as a species as if we are slaves to our nature no different than the other animals that live in their own shit. I do not believe this. I believe that a man is an animal that chooses to walk upright and adopt civility/rule of law voluntarily. So maybe you're correct and we have natural inclinations toward these kinds of social behaviors. Its still a poor excuse though.

We shouldn't attempt to rationalize our shortcomings as being merely natural, because you can extend that same argument onto any facet of human behavior and still have it work unless you want to go down the rabbit hole of trying and failing to determine natural from unnatural behaviors.

You speak the truth, man. I think the problem is that a lot humans can't yet choose not to be animals. Impulse control is still a mystery to most of us and I think it's gonna be some time before the human race gets to where people like you are. I don't think those 'natural inclinations' will start to fade until we all have a higher baseline level of intelligence. As in, the whole species.
Most of the planet is borderline exceptional, from what I see.

 

[vanilla_pepsi_head]

To an extent. The unfortunate truth is that practicing a superficial level of conformity is necessary to function properly in society (or else become as unemployable as the average lolcow). If you recognize that early you also learn for yourself when you consider it more important to stand by your own identity/beliefs which is integral in developing a sense of identity. By all means teach kids that gossiping and shunning and whatnot are immature and impolite but don't shield them from the reality that it happens. They need to learn it's sometimes necessary to work with people you hate and be civil while doing so, but forcing kids to "include" someone they don't like during their leisure time is a bad idea.

That said I think once it gets to the point of something that would be considered illegal in the adult world (beatings, sexual assault, following them home, etc) then someone should intervene. Some kids get shit on constantly for no reason and become social lepers, and that sucks, but all you can do is make sure they don't get harassed too severely - forcing people (even kids) to like each other is impossible and likely counterproductive. The only real "solution" is to make available a safe place for them to hang out by themselves if they choose to, like let them sit in the library during recess or some shit.

 

[Sweetpeaa]

The narrative around bullying is often completely out of touch or just wishful thinking. People get bullied because other people just don't like them. This is the most common reason. The ''Bullies'' often treat everyone else pretty well (friends, family, teachers) in many cases. Who they don't treat well is the person they don't like.

The belief that bullying is all the result of bad self esteem on the bullies part, abuse or a budding sociopath in the making is as I said above wishful thinking. It also invalidates the feelings of the bullied person. Most bullied kids and teens aren't stupid, they know they're unpopular and people don't like them. Many even know why they're unlikeable. This type of thing will never change. It's necessary yes, because it's unavoidable.

 

[PaleTay]

The narrative around bullying is often completely out of touch or just wishful thinking. People get bullied because other people just don't like them. This is the most common reason. The ''Bullies'' often treat everyone else pretty well (friends, family, teachers) in many cases. Who they don't treat well is the person they don't like.

The belief that bullying is all the result of bad self esteem on the bullies part, abuse or a budding sociopath in the making is as I said above wishful thinking. It also invalidates the feelings of the bullied person. Most bullied kids and teens aren't stupid, they know they're unpopular and people don't like them. Many even know why they're unlikeable. This type of thing will never change. It's necessary yes, because it's unavoidable.

I find it kind of depends, we mainly bullied a kid who would stare at random stuff and masturbate (Derich reminds me a bit of a more socially competent version of him actually), some fatties, and a rich kid who tried too hard to impress people.

I've found a lot of the female bullies grew up to be extremely progressive and use that ideology to bully others.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Since the question is on bullying* itself, I will say it's not necessary in the same way an appendix isn't necessary. It might have some use in creating beneficial bacteria, but taking it out when its enflamed is necessary and its removal does not produce long-term harm.

What is the problem is the child psychologists trying to psychologize it and like the cosplay scientists that they are, give all kinds of rationalizations and assigns motivations out of the ether, resulting in advice that's actually more harmful than the bullying itself. (e.g. "Bullies must have low self-esteem, they're just jealous, they come from a troubled family," etc.). This advice ends up being useless for mediation purposes because the terms between bullied and bully are stop and continue. Teachers and administrators trying to play diplomat is the worst multi-purpose hat they have to wear as they lack the knowledge and subtle cues necessary for real diplomacy. And I'm making the assumption that they act in good faith. My real opinion is that these people are only trying to avoid filling out embarrassing paperwork with their meddling and have no real interest in conflict resolution. Hence zero tolerance policies that ignore that violence is often the most effective means of resolution.

*For simplicity's sake, let's define bullying as legally permissible acts. If we're going to include criminal acts, that necessitates far more extreme responses from everyone, and that kind of thinking is how we got Twitter censorship.

 

[Lemmingwise]

The bully/victim discourse bothers me. It's kinda marxist in a way, envisioning one to be eternal tormentor and the other eternal victim.

I think most of the time a better way to look at it is social competition.

After all, there are plenty of instances where someone is being very annoying to everyone and taking them down a peg isn't victimizing them, but putting them in their place. You also see it if you give some small power to someone who isn't used to having it. Plenty go mad with it in seconds and start inflicting harm on others.

And when you have an anti-bully discourse dominant, it doesn't remove bullying, but the prime way just becomes crybullying, the DARVO type of bullying. There is no clear way to "remove bullying" anymore than we can rid ourselves of crime (or of contraband in prisons).

That's not to say it can't be terribly destructive, but our responses in trying to "solve bullying" are often at least as destructive. I see it as a kind of contempt for children, thinking it's easy to make them behave how you want because they're children.

 

[ThatOneLurker]

I never would have gotten laid had I not been bullied in high-school.

 

[KEKMUHLORD]

Yes. I was a fatass in middle school who never had any confidence.

I started to get bullied for my weight and my Dad told me to stand up for myself.

I did. Bully backed off and I started to workout shortly after, gained confidence and joined sports teams.

Getting bullied was the best thing that ever happened to me.

 

[Slap47]

If you start gaining weight Japanese people will poke your stomach and laugh at you. This pushes citizens to do better and lose weight.

It is no coincidence that Japan is a very healthy country and the United States with it's health at every size movement is very unhealthy country

 

[Kornula]

"We need hardship and oppression to develop the psyche..."
Frank Herbert.

It seems to me that hippies want to remove all obstacles, sharp pointy, shiny things that can be fun. In fact, they've done a bang up job creating a generation of entitled monsters that are coming up to literally bite us all in the ass today. They replaced all the fun things on playgrounds of yor. They want kids to be "safe" when they play. No risks at all. But if we remove risks, we don't learn It's that simple. (this can be applied to "bullies" as well. )

We need to learn how to face everything on our own. Removing obstacles, both tangible and intangible we become pussies. ...oh wait, it's happened.

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.

Please tell me "Jimmy" died at the assembly. That would be hilarious

 

[Fougaro]

If you were bullied in school there is an over 90% chance that you unironically deserved it, usually for being a sped or other things that were within your abilities to change. If you fought back against your bullies or, even better, got your shit together, good for you! If you still hold grudges from back then, you are still a sped who hasn't learned anything, someone akin to MovieBlob.

 

[LargeChoonger]

Evil?

 

[José Mourinho]

As said before it really depends on how the bullying is done.

If it's just a group of kids making fun of a fat kid for being fat, calling him names and that's it, either to make themselves feeling better or just find a fat kid out of the ordinary, it's definitely them being dicks, but you can't blame them either because it's a natural response for kids being kids to see someone who has a body shape different compared with them. They could just encourage him to lose weight and shit like that, but it's more fun for them to just make fun of him which once again, natural behavior. I mean come on, this is a forum literally made to make fun of weird people on the Internet, it's natural for us to make fun of weird people. Anyway, it could either lead to the fat kid making an effort to improve himself to get back at the "bullies", or complaining about the bullying but actually does acknowledge that he's fat and actually takes some steps, or in the worst case scenario his parents coddled him more to make him obese (please don't). Still, I don't consider this as bullying to begin with. By that logic, we might as well say Steven Colbert is bullying Donald Trump which obviously makes zero sense whatsoever.

If it's however a group of kids beating up a fat kid for being fat and/or even stealing his lunch money, that is a completely different story and obviously that part is definitely not necessary.

 

[malt ipecac]

Yes. I was a fatass in middle school who never had any confidence.

I started to get bullied for my weight and my Dad told me to stand up for myself.

I did. Bully backed off and I started to workout shortly after, gained confidence and joined sports teams.

Getting bullied was the best thing that ever happened to me.

If you were bullied in school there is an over 90% chance that you unironically deserved it, usually for being a sped or other things that were within your abilities to change.

As said before it really depends on how the bullying is done.

If it's just a group of kids making fun of a fat kid for being fat, calling him names and that's it, either to make themselves feeling better or just find a fat kid out of the ordinary, it's definitely them being dicks, but you can't blame them either because it's a natural response for kids being kids to see someone who has a body shape different compared with them. They could just encourage him to lose weight and shit like that, but it's more fun for them to just make fun of him which once again, natural behavior.

When an "official" source, like a politician, an anti-bullying organization, or a school, talks about "bullying," they're using that word to lump together a rather large set of interactions. Of course, "bullying" is always bad -- evil, even -- when presented in this context. You guys make me think that this lumping-together is a major reason it's so difficult to talk about "bullying" in polite society.

Bullying a person for some inborn trait, e.g., for being of a certain race, is never constructive because there's nothing a person can do to change such a trait. Bullying a person for a mutable trait, on the other hand, can provide that person with valuable and honest feedback that isn't often communicated in any other means. If anti-bullying policies make everyone afraid to tell Carlos to stop screeching all the time, Carlos might grow up screeching while wondering why his peers mostly avoid him. If Carlos stops screeching, I'd call that constructive bullying because he'll be better off as a non-screecher for the rest of his life.

Is such bullying the best way to convey this feedback? No, of course not. It would be better for a well-meaning friend or adult to explain to Carlos how his screeching will make others uncomfortable and negatively affect him in the long run. But if no such well-meaning individual is present in Carlos' life, the alternative to this "constructive bullying" might be vague feedback or no feedback at all. In the long run, the bullied version of Carlos is better off than the alternative Carlos, who grows up a clueless, screeching pariah.

If you fought back against your bullies or, even better, got your shit together, good for you! If you still hold grudges from back then, you are still a sped who hasn't learned anything, someone akin to MovieBlob.

If it's however a group of kids beating up a fat kid for being fat and/or even stealing his lunch money, that is a completely different story and obviously that part is definitely not necessary.

Part of why we're able to talk about bullying in the past tense -- as something that occurs among kids and teenagers, but not as often among adults -- is that we don't really have the right to exit or pick our own associations until we're older. If I think there's even a small possibility I'll be assaulted or robbed if I go to a certain place for lunch, I simply won't go there; if I find a person combative or obnoxious, I won't associate with that person. School-aged kids don't have those options.

Bullying doesn't stop among adults because everyone matures and thinks wiser of it. It stops because adults are empowered to select our environments and peer groups for ourselves. Unless, of course, you're in prison, where "bullying" is rife and brutal because prisoners' right to self-select is taken from them.

As long as our schools follow the "minimum-security prison" model, bullying will exist. We could try to improve things by giving kids more options to leave toxic environments. Or, we could maintain the toxic environments as-is, but decorate them with more "Bully-Free Zone" posters and make kids sign "no bullying at my school" pledges, or whatever the fuck.

Do I even need to state what I think will happen?

 

[Eggplant Wizard]

I will say that bullying can’t be tolerated if retaliation is not allowed. If the one being bullied has to “put up with it”, then you have a broken system. The bully needs to learn that people will draw the line and when you cross it you will get punched in the face. Since schools actually see retaliation as a bigger evil, we cannot have bullies in schools due to the fact that bullies get a free lunch.