Where is the line between good and bad bullying?

[Netizennameless]

You bully people for things that are within their power to change. You bully an alcoholic, you should not bully a legitimate retard. Alcoholism can be corrected, being mentally disabled cannot be.

 

[Mukhrani]

I think it's kind of wrongheaded and counterproductive to even make the distinction. Do you know what's part of real, adult life? Bullying. Bullying in social circles, in workplaces, in families, even in places of worship. They tried to eliminate bullying from workplaces, and ended up creating whole departments of professional bullies (HR) in the process, which are to a large part staffed by bizarre sadists who get off on being nasty to people from behind the shield of authority. So the idea that children should be completely shielded from bullies is to me as asinine as they idea that they should be completely shielded from rain or disease or lying. Does it suck sometimes? Yes, but life sucks and schools should prepare you for that, not mollycoddle you until you cannot deal with 'adulting'. Children should not be socially micromanaged outside of basic classroom decorum, and discipline should be reserved for physical altercations.

Of course while this formula might have worked well enough in the past it would face significant headwinds in 'current year'. Bullying is really just social punishment. If it's become a societal norm to baby children at home and have zero behavioral standards, then a bullied child will just retreat into the cocoon of supportive family life and develop sort of peter pan syndrome instead of facing the real world head on. Back in the day it was normal for a kid's dad to teach him how to throw a punch, or for a girl's mom to teach her the intricacies of dealing with the bullshit that girls have to deal with in life.

The parents recognized the real world as a tough place with rules which their children would have to adapt to, and saw their role as preparing their children for that. If you have the daft idea that your child is some sui generis marvel that descended into the marvel from on high, and that the world is destined to warp itself around their whims and dreams, then you are not only setting your child up to be a dismal failure, you are also ensuring that he will function as a rock thrown into the gears of society. If enough parents are throwing rocks, the whole system will malfunction and bullying will go from being a form of mostly benign social correction to something much more ugly and malicious.

 

[balupton]

Constructive bullying tears them down and collaboratively helps them back up, it's sportsmanship, it's salvation. Destructive bullying tears them down, without any collaborative assistance to redemption, it's a penalty. Apathetic bulling, where one leaves someone to wallow in their own cruelty of incompetence, bullying themselves, without any redemptive guidance, is equally tormenting; as the shameful will just get sucked up into endless exploitation cycles, and there is no reconciliation or healing for the bystander either (at the extreme, this is Lacey Fletcher's death; it's also the school shootings and suicides from a kid that the entire class knew needed help).

The films Kumare (2012), Experimenter (2015), Compliance (2012), Teacher (2019), Lean On Me (1989), The Ron Clark Story (2006), Front of the Class (2008 ) show the balances and imbalances here, and the importance of inducing shame to destruct someone's self-assured yet-dangerous firmament, and the importance of universally-collaborative reconciliation towards redemptive salvation, and the need for self-helping guidance to end perpetual cycles of exploitation.

Shame without universally-collaborative redemption degrades into other and self bullying disorders, suicides, sadism, and so on. Salvation and redemption are things humanity discovered, if they do come naturally they are so fragile in childhood they are easily destroyed, thus require gentile guidance from self or other teacher. However, without any shame, depravity and fantasy reigns.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

There isn't one. It's all bad.

Let me tell you a story. When I was in Boy Scouts we had this one tool that refused to do work. He was like a tard without being a tard. Would bluster and rage, real cantankerous, if you tried to get him to pull his fair share. Nobody else acted like that. There were a couple of us that were older boys (the troop was built from scratch around us) - same age as him - and the little ones loved us. This guy made everything difficult.

We would bully the hell out of him because it, laugh at him, take his bluster and throw it back. Nobody ever threw hands, because he was a pussy. He had a younger brother that joined in glee, but the little brother would take a bullet for him (as is how it should be). But sometimes this guy would get his shit together enough to be fun (I enjoyed his company outside of the context of Scouts), and if one of us was continuing to pick on him when he was "being good," we'd tell that one to cut it out and they would.

You know what our bullying-based carrot and stick system achieved?

Absolutely fucking nothing. Fella was the way he was, and ultimately he didn't mature as a person until he was put in a position of authority.

 

[Masturbator]

Bullying is caveman nigger behavior that a Sam Hyde sketch has psyopped people into believing is a social check and balance and not a school shooter generator.

there is a estabilished pattern between of most bullies being failures in the future or otherwise on societal outskirts

going contrary common implications bullying it inself is not positive for society nor communities e.g if you have having beta males forming a circle they are just going to shit where they eat for awhile then leave

 

[VIPPER?]

Bullying people to get better doesn't work. All it does is prompt the person to make a choice between stopping and just doing what they were already doing somewhere else, and most people will pick the latter. Today we have hopping to a new Discord, a few decades back people would start weird communes in the desert, in antiquity people would become hermits. Even in state militaries, they don't do that shit at basic anymore because all it does is alienate anyone with any potential for leadership, dissuades loyalty, and hurts unit cohesion.

It's important to learn how to handle it early in life, but even more important for people to learn how to provide constructive criticism instead of "bully". Bullying only works as a gatekeeping tactic (and the usefulness of gatekeeping or its methods is out of scope itt)

 

[not william stenchever]

Bullying people to get better doesn't work.

even more important for people to learn how to provide constructive criticism instead of "bully".

It's definitely a fine line to tread if you're wanting to be constructive while dealing harshly with someone. For me getting shamed in my youth into being less weird and annoying probably worked because it was my older brother and his friends doing it. They had the positive reinforcement part too of letting me get more involved with their activities as I mellowed out.

 

[Soggy paper straw]

Bullying is caveman nigger behavior that a Sam Hyde sketch has psyopped people into believing is a social check and balance and not a school shooter generator.

99.9% of bullied people don't become school shooters. This idea that you have to treat the weirdos with kid gloves otherwise they will become psycho killers is retarded and more harmful than some bullying done because they are weirdos

I'm going by the definition posted, tough-love is not that, nor it is disagreeing with someone, criticising someone fairly but harshly, etc.

The issue with "fair but harsh" is that people are not fair by nature, it is a learned behavior. While in an adult, professional environment this is the expectation, I think it is not realistic to expect children, especially younger ones, to be harsh as long as they are fair. Kids, and teens, are not capable of that nuance.

Same as people talking about "constructive criticism". Parents and teachers should teach kids how to do that, but they will get it wrong. I don't think that calling their behavior "bullying" and branding them as bullies is productive or positive for society.

Taking this on a small tangent. I think this is an issue for how boys are treated, and it is pushing them towards the manosphere. This preemptive branding of "misogynist" is creating self-fulling prophecies. Among adults, we see a lot the "if saying this normal thing makes me a racist, then so be it." or the "peaking" for trans issues. Accepting a negative label that the moral arbiters have imposed on you does lead to lowering inhibitions related to that topic (how many otherwise liberal women have now no issues making all sort of jokes towards transwomen? They would recoil in horror to similar jokes towards any other group, even call for censorship of such jokes).

So the idea that children should be completely shielded from bullies is to me as asinine as they idea that they should be completely shielded from rain or disease or lying. Does it suck sometimes? Yes, but life sucks and schools should prepare you for that, not mollycoddle you until you cannot deal with 'adulting'.

This is the response I agree with the most.
Is there such a thing as good bullying? Perhaps, but it's more likely that the same level of bullying made some people better while it only harmed others.
Also, let's imagine we agreed on what good bullying is. What then? Are we going to correct children on how to do their bullying?

The old adage of "life is unfair" is very important here. Unless we are confident that we can remove bullying in adulthood, and by that I mean all sort of mean behaviors, etc, then it is important that kids learn when they are young how to navigate those situations.

I think there is something very important about bullying at very young age that too many generations have lost. I am talking literally playground age. I think the older you get, the more likely is that the bullying becomes more serious and just bad/harmful.
I would argue that, beside future psychopaths, very young children should be left to sort out their conflicts [as much as possible]. Learning how to be part of a group, negotiate "power dynamics" in a group, etc... is better than having adults direct all play time so that it is fair and evenly split.

Younger children also have shorter memory and the social complexity in a playground is lower than at school. Making a mistake in a social situation while playing in a playground does not have the same adverse impact than a faux pas at school. Thus, that makes the perfect environment for children to learn.

I am not advocating for adults to ignore bullying. Children and teens need to know their parents will try to shield them from harm, and that teachers will enforce basic society rules (e.g., no violence) fairly and predictably. In the end, it is a very thin line between enabling bad behaviors versus stunting growth by being overprotective.

I think it is not possible to define objective "good bullying" behaviors. But fundamentally I think that bullying is not a useful definition when trying to talk about practical things. Trying to not go into semantics, I would say that good bullying should feature: low stake situations, younger children, non-serious harm (e.g., pushing a child away from a toy vs punching), not excessive asymmetry in power.

 

[Tablet County]

99.9% of bullied people don't become school shooters. This idea that you have to treat the weirdos with kid gloves otherwise they will become psycho killers is retarded and more harmful than some bullying done because they are weirdos

It's a simplification/exaggeration. What I mean is that bullying (whether its traditional shove-in-locker bullying or the more modern crybullying) often does nothing but cause a kid to associate social interaction with humiliation, pain and suffering and directly contribues to antisocial behavior.

I think there is something very important about bullying at very young age that too many generations have lost. I am talking literally playground age. I think the older you get, the more likely is that the bullying becomes more serious and just bad/harmful.

Younger children also have shorter memory and the social complexity in a playground is lower than at school. Making a mistake in a social situation while playing in a playground does not have the same adverse impact than a faux pas at school.

See above. There are shared personality traits that are associated with people who were bullied as a child. I agree that mollycoddling isn't the solution and probably causes as much harm as bullying does for different reasons, but acting as if bullying is something which should be encouraged just sounds ignorant and makes me wonder if you've ever actually met a child in real life.
It doesn't toughen kids up, it either forces them to retreat into themselves in order to avoid being hurt again or turns them into bullies themselves in an attempt to regain a feeling of control or power, or even just to fit in. Sure the kids don't have the capacity to consider these things intellectually at such a young age, but acting like they just forget getting shoved to the ground for their lunch money or something because they're not developed enough is retarded.

 

[Soggy paper straw]

It's a simplification/exaggeration

Yet it is something that some teens, who generally lack nuance, have actually internalized. Many teens will joke about how the bullied kids in their school could become a school shooter. This stereotype created more harm than good

Sure the kids don't have the capacity to consider these things intellectually at such a young age, but acting like they just forget getting shoved to the ground for their lunch money or something because they're not developed enough is retarded.

That is not what I mean when I say that bullying is not bad. I also said that hypothetically finding the "correct, positive bullying" is retarded because adults encouraging bullying is wrong.
Let me be a bit more clear on what examples of "bullying" I think are good:

• Children going down a slide multiple times, and going in front of other children. (Eventually, a parent should reprimand this behavior, but see if the children can sort it out first amongst themselves)
• Children not letting a child take part to a group game of tag, or targeting a specific kid for tag. (Same as above)
• Children pointing and laughing at a child because of some stupid reason. (Same as above).

Yes, a 4 year old is not going to hold a grudge from one week to the next towards another kid, not anything that cannot be solved with minor intervention from an adult. If you look at contemporary teaching practices for younger children, there is a lot of emphasis on preventing any sort of unfairness (as it is characterized as "bullying").

Getting your money stolen is not something that would be in my definition of what is generally "good bullying". Stealing is also a very clear behavior where adults can intervene. I think it is more useful to say to the "bullies" to not use physical violence and to not steal and avoid the word bullying altogether when talking to the kids. The reality is that kids now roll their eyes at the term, so it is not very helpful to talk about it to them.

I don't want to make this a semantic problem. In the end, I would not call what I say is good bullying as bullying, but others maybe would. In that sense there is no good bullying.

mollycoddling isn't the solution and probably causes as much harm as bullying does for different reasons

So, where would you draw the line? Because I would argue that anything that is not complete moddycoddling means allowing some level of bullying, unfairness, and conflict.

For instance, I don't agree to teach children that "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything". That does not mean a child can say whatever, there is a line. I cannot easily explain where the line is, but I have to concede that I would allow a child to say mean things in some cases, but not in others.
To me it seems you are trying to say that bullying is never good, but also want to concede that some mean behaviors (or however you want to characterize them) are okay. Some people would call those behaviors bullying, so I am not sure where that leaves you

 

[Tablet County]

I don't want to make this a semantic problem. In the end, I would not call what I say is good bullying as bullying, but others maybe would. In that sense there is no good bullying.

To me it seems you are trying to say that bullying is never good, but also want to concede that some mean behaviors (or however you want to characterize them) are okay.

That's fair. A playground shoving match that ends in somebody crying isn't bullying by my standards. When I talk about bullying I'm talking about kids getting the shit beaten out of them, having their stuff stolen, or getting manipulated into getting in trouble with adults or humiliating themselves in front of their peers.
So yeah, probably just a definitional/experiential issue.

 

[Vargerd]

you have to dig down deep into what 'bullying' is. Is it unprovoked physical attacks? Is it stalking and harassment? Is it just being mean?

you'd have a hard time getting people to really narrow down to where the sphere of bullying begins and ends.

Labeling everything 'bullying' leads to the same problems Null has with the term 'Doxing' it lumps the bad in with the good and because only the bad gets talked about, that becomes the sole meaning of the word

Bullying how it used to be generations ago actually worked much like boot camp did for the military did back in the same time frame. It more or less 'broke people down' so they could be 'built back up' in a way that is more useful to society as a whole. It helped stomp out the more degenerate behavior in kids before it fully took root. Imagine how bad a high school boy would have got it in the 80's or 90's if he showed up to school decked out head to toe in full my little pony gear, carrying a doll. Because we have to accept utter degeneracy now, it flourishes like a weed.

Let me just leave you with a song by someone much funnier than I am.

 

[VIPPER?]

A big problem with this thread seems to be differing definitions of "bullying". Some people are saying it's any casual name-calling or roughhousing, some edge more towards serious physical injury, others are saying it's sustained emotional harassment, and differing requirements for lasting damage (and of what type) beyond that.

What is bullying? We can't talk about it until we agree on what it
is.

as asinine as they idea that they should be completely shielded from rain or disease or lying.

God I wish I were shielded from rain, disease, and lying. Good thing I own a coat and rent an apartment, try to get my vitamin C and avoid people coughing on me, and am posting on a forum that is effectively a wide network of de facto "independent journalists"(spies) who yearn for complete information.

Bullying how it used to be generations ago actually worked much like boot camp did for the military did back in the same time frame. It more or less 'broke people down' so they could be 'built back up' in a way that is more useful to society as a whole.

As someone who was at basic right in the time where they were phasing that stuff out, that method really does not work. I'm not sure if the new recruits are just different people in a different context so the going methods stopped working, or if the methods were always bad, but that's not a thing they do anymore and seems to result in "better" post-basic recruits. In my country that pendulum swung too far, but that's out of scope here.

I maintain that that sort of "break them down to build them back up" doesn't work in a modern military context, at least not in modern volunteer forces where you are expecting a minimum of competence and interest going in, and have to compete with private job markets. Certain hazing-type behaviour does work -- during an inspection, it is never good enough, so you as the DI flip the cot regardless. You find a reason to, to make the recruit do better next time. It's not that they did badly, it is that there is a constant chase for perfection, and perfection is unattainable. You can always do better. A future command would want a soldier/sailor/airman who genuinely tries his best rather than meeting a standard.

That isn't the case in playground bullying. Comparing high school nonsense among children to how the military generates useful personnel is dishonest at best and delusional at worst.

if some kid is wearing an MLP shirt, who gives a shit. All the bully is doing there is expressing his distaste in too extreme a way over something that does not affect him. That bully is a child too, and doesn't have some greater organizational objective. The actions of the ponyfag child do not matter to the actions of the deagle nation child. Worse yet, who's to say that the bully isn't distasteful himself? The bully is a sports fan, obsessing over the winning hockey teams. Okay, so the MLP kid stops wearing his MLP shirt, but now endeavours to become a Las Vegas Kings fan. A fate worse than death

 

[Mukhrani]

It doesn't toughen kids up, it either forces them to retreat into themselves in order to avoid being hurt again or turns them into bullies themselves in an attempt to regain a feeling of control or power, or even just to fit in. Sure the kids don't have the capacity to consider these things intellectually at such a young age, but acting like they just forget getting shoved to the ground for their lunch money or something because they're not developed enough is retarded.

Just about every kid in my elementary school was bullied at some point. Lots of people didn't have those outcomes - in fact the vast majority didn't. The most common outcome is that you form a posse with a couple of other kids and put the bully in his place collectively. Some kids become tertiary predators who bully the bullies if they feel like they are targeting other kids unjustly. Bullies start out like a lion in a sheep pen, but quickly slip down the pecking order, until a few years in they're basically scavengers who are allowed to linger on. The kids who get bullied at that point are ones who do objectively retarded shit like walking around with a stuffed animal on their head all day because they think it makes them 'unique'. The bullies are allowed to target that kid, but the day he takes the stuffed animal off his head, starts to act normal, and makes some friends he stops being a target.

I remember when I was a sophomore watching the jock squad come down like a fucking hammer on this bully who was picking on the smallest freshman in the new incoming class. Bullies are not this all-consuming apex predator in the school ecosystem past like the second grade, they're more like mangy hyenas.

 

[Vargerd]

if some kid is wearing an MLP shirt, who gives a shit. All the bully is doing there is expressing his distaste in too extreme a way over something that does not affect him. That bully is a child too, and doesn't have some greater organizational objective. The actions of the ponyfag child do not matter to the actions of the deagle nation child. Worse yet, who's to say that the bully isn't distasteful himself? The bully is a sports fan, obsessing over the winning hockey teams. Okay, so the MLP kid stops wearing his MLP shirt, but now endeavours to become a Las Vegas Kings fan. A fate worse than death

my example was a kid coming to school decked out head to toe in my little pony gear while carrying a my little pony doll, not just wearing a shirt. I'd argue a kid who came to school from head to toe in a specific team's merchandise, from shoes and socks, to underwear, to hat, would deserve mockery too, granted not as bad as the my little pony boy for 1 simple reason

A kid who loves whatever sports team might be related to someone on that team and really look up to them. That aside, there is that 1 in a million chance the kid could become a player on that team, and kids wanting to do something grounded in reality (they don't want to become an 'influencer' basicially) should be encouraged. Even kids understand if they want to be on the 'big team' they need to be one of the best, so they work hard at it. every school I attended has 1 or 2 kids who were really really into their sport, they worked harder than their classmates and were better than them, same for the kids in other schools, they were largely unmatched until they started getting to state-level competitions. maybe they didn't make it all the way to the major national leagues, but learning to work hard for something real is a net positive.

The pony kid with the chris-chan-esq fantasy of going to ponyland and living a carefree life with his pony waifus needs to be knocked off that fantasy before it sets in too deep and he becomes a SSI-leeching burden on society like chris-chan.

 

[TJT]

The reality is that policing bullying to an extreme degree only protects you within a the controlled environment of K12 education. If dumbass Johnny picks on you through your K12 experience you learn to deal with it. If Johnny is removed and you don't get bullied because the system removed him you then are unprepared to deal with bullies outside of that system that will not be removed by anything.

Such as at university, or your office job, or whatever the case may be. Okay so you were safe during your formative years and have zero coping mechanisms for this when Bob at the office takes your lunch every other day, steals your work and presents it as his own, etc. But Bob is clever and charismatic enough to get away with this and the office won't prevent him from doing this. What do you do then?

 

[Großmann]

The reality is that policing bullying to an extreme degree only protects you within a the controlled environment of K12 education. If dumbass Johnny picks on you through your K12 experience you learn to deal with it. If Johnny is removed and you don't get bullied because the system removed him you then are unprepared to deal with bullies outside of that system that will not be removed by anything.

Such as at university, or your office job, or whatever the case may be. Okay so you were safe during your formative years and have zero coping mechanisms for this when Bob at the office takes your lunch every other day, steals your work and presents it as his own, etc. But Bob is clever and charismatic enough to get away with this and the office won't prevent him from doing this. What do you do then?

I disagree. I have a family member that was homeschooled and almost never encountered anything that could be called bullying growing up. She went to university and managed her life just fine while being on dorms, academic groups, and greek life. The key is for parents and family members to teach their children how to function in society and to build their confidence and self-esteem to deal with shitty people. If you have confidence and self-esteem, you will understand that your value is intrinsic and not derived from what fags around you think.

Edit: I just read @Vargerd’s post. His example about MLP wear out in public is an example of parents not doing their duty to teach that kid what’s appropriate to wear in public. Bullying is not needed to correct that.

 

[TJT]

Anecdotal. I have a family member that was removed from our public K12 and into private all to avoid bullying.

 

[National Defense Advocate]

The reality is that policing bullying to an extreme degree only protects you within a the controlled environment of K12 education. If dumbass Johnny picks on you through your K12 experience you learn to deal with it. If Johnny is removed and you don't get bullied because the system removed him you then are unprepared to deal with bullies outside of that system that will not be removed by anything.

Such as at university, or your office job, or whatever the case may be. Okay so you were safe during your formative years and have zero coping mechanisms for this when Bob at the office takes your lunch every other day, steals your work and presents it as his own, etc. But Bob is clever and charismatic enough to get away with this and the office won't prevent him from doing this. What do you do then?

Have you tried following Bob home? You don't even have to hurt him, just let him know you know where he and his kids sleep.

 

[Kittyguns]

If the recipient cannot tell if you have a legitimate issue with them or are just a sociopath committing random acts of malice, then you are not doing it correctly. However, children are not going to think of that (bully or bullied), so trusting them with actually getting shit done is a stupid idea in the first place.