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Gwar! wrote:I am amazed people still bully in the US.

Surely the bullies know that one day the bullied WILL snap and M16 their face into bonemeal right?

Right?

Or are US bullies that dim?

My point This isn't 1957. People would probably not hesitate to beat the crap out of you if you bully them. I can't help but think of bullies as fat guys with short hair and hygiene problems...But I'm sure it's more diverse than that

Would anyone consider gang violence bullying? I'm not sure what it's considered...

I don't understand why the bullied don't have that instinct!

I was under the impression that everyone gets bullied one way or the other? Yeah some get bullied more than others but is it that difficult to stand up for youself?
"but NeedsMoreDakka then the bullies will just beat you up " I knew a kid in middle school who was bullied by one kid in particular pretty horribly, one day he had enough and got into a fight with him. He lost, but the other kid actually gave him credit for not taking anymore crap, i dont think anyone really bullied him after that.

I cant stand it when people just allow themselves to get walked all over. If you cant up to someone directly get back at them indirectly AT LEAST.

Tyyr wrote:I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.

The only time I've seen bullying truly stop was when person being bullied in some way became a threat to the bully. Either through getting a parent/teacher involved, which brings its own social stigma, or through becoming a physical threat to the bully to the point where they stop for fear of getting their ass beat. That's it. That is my own personal experience of course but it's what I've seen.

Turn the other cheek just gets the other one punched too.

This only works if a child encounters a bully, or two buillies. systemic abuse is rather different!!
The idea that you can take them all on is a pointless dream. Also most bullying is not physical its mental. If the peer group is against you and you respond to mental abuse physically the victim not the bully is at risk. Bullying victims are often written off by schools to make life easy for themselves.

This is becoming more common and there have been a number of reports in the press of a vicitim being expelled rather than face a bully. In one infamous case the cleaning lady who reported the bulling of a child to the childs paresnt was sacked, the victim expelled and the bully exonerated. Saying 'you must have provoked him' is easier than dealing with a disruptive child, especially now with declining respect increasded violance and a double helping of PC crap to threaten anyone who tries to discipline an out of control lout.

NeedsMoreDakka wrote:I was under the impression that everyone gets bullied one way or the other? Yeah some get bullied more than others but is it that difficult to stand up for youself?
"but NeedsMoreDakka then the bullies will just beat you up " I knew a kid in middle school who was bullied by one kid in particular pretty horribly, one day he had enough and got into a fight with him. He lost, but the other kid actually gave him credit for not taking anymore crap, i dont think anyone really bullied him after that.

I cant stand it when people just allow themselves to get walked all over. If you cant up to someone directly get back at them indirectly AT LEAST.

cool story, but what do you mean "indirectly"? How would you deal with that kind of problem indirectly? Put his facebook up on 4chan? Tell his friends he has herpes?

There's a limit to what can be accomplished by indirect means. Most likely, he'll find out about it and just bully you more. That leads to a giant waste of effort on your part....

People bully others because they have the belief, whether real or imagined, that they can get away with it. If the victim just sits there passively while they are taunted, teased, hit an/or otherwise abused, the bully feels they have license to continue. They see the victim as submitting to their, real or imagined, superiority.
People outside the situation see this behavior and, if they associate with the bully, join in or, if they identify with the victim, either stand passively by, turn away, or redirect the 'bullying' upon themselves.
Those reporting on the 'rampant bullying' in schools tend to look at the victim and try gain empathy for them. They rarely talk TO the bullies, just about them....
But if you look behind the curtain of bravado and alpha behavior, you will find many 'bullies' are also victims, usually bullied by an elder sibling or parent in some fashion.

But raising pacifist children isn't the way to solve the issue. It goes against human nature. this was a key to the whole Matrix series, and the Serenity movie. Humans need the will to fight, to continue. Extreme pacifism denies this basic human instinct, but even Ghandi found a way to "fight".

The suicides in the OP.... There is more behind them than plain old school bullying. Maybe the reporters need to delve a bit deeper than the sensational headlines and do some real reporting on the causes and effects that led to those people just giving up.

Samus_aran115 wrote:cool story, but what do you mean "indirectly"? How would you deal with that kind of problem indirectly? Put his facebook up on 4chan? Tell his friends he has herpes?

There's a limit to what can be accomplished by indirect means. Most likely, he'll find out about it and just bully you more. That leads to a giant waste of effort on your part....

I was talking along the lines of planting drugs in his locker then telling the school police. Or telling one of your friends in a gang that he made fun of his sister/momma
Then again i grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood so if you live in the suburbs you'll have to settle with gluing random stuff of his together

NeedsMoreDakka wrote:I was under the impression that everyone gets bullied one way or the other? Yeah some get bullied more than others but is it that difficult to stand up for youself?
I cant stand it when people just allow themselves to get walked all over. If you cant up to someone directly get back at them indirectly AT LEAST.

If targeted by systemic abuse, you cant get away from that by toughing it out swinging fists or getting your own back. The system is against you as much as the students.

I don't think its about 'getting away with it' so much as expressing power over others. Its a natural desire, we all do it, even libertarians (they express power in order to prevent others from doing so).

The trick is to ensure that the expression of power doesn't go too far in those circumstances where it shouldn't. We can't have all the chiider thinking this is jyhad, now can we?

Edit: I should say, I was bullied when I was young. I ave the scars to prove it. I reacted by developing physical prowess, and acting a bastard to all that I met. I still have trouble coping with that tendency, but I actually credit the abuse I suffered with making me who I am.

From personnal experiances:

From Orlanth's example I am the other type.

I lashed back at my aggressors but I didn't do it in any kind of smart way. I stood up for myself against groups of asshats who thought it funny to steal my stuff or turn my bag and it's contents inside out. I know fighting groups isn't smart but I didn't care about being beaten just that I could show them that I wasn't gonna take any more crap.

I know that I didn't make the 'right' desicion by turning to violence. But I know that even though i ruined what little good reputation i had arround the school and replaced it with "He's men'al than 'un" that I had stopped them doing it so readily.

What annoys me more is that because I had councilling about my anger and such I got put on my school's special needs register which excludes me from certain duties such as being eligable for being head student not that I'd want to be a head student.

(I'm a 6th former at the same school i went to for secondary btw)

NeedsMoreDakka wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:cool story, but what do you mean "indirectly"? How would you deal with that kind of problem indirectly? Put his facebook up on 4chan? Tell his friends he has herpes?

There's a limit to what can be accomplished by indirect means. Most likely, he'll find out about it and just bully you more. That leads to a giant waste of effort on your part....

I was talking along the lines of planting drugs in his locker then telling the school police. Or telling one of your friends in a gang that he made fun of his sister/momma
Then again i grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood so if you live in the suburbs you'll have to settle with gluing random stuff of his together

Ah,so THAT kind of indirect. I see. Well, getting him killed by MS13 probably isn't the best way to deal with him, but it'd be pretty funny!

Orlanth wrote:

Tyyr wrote:I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.

The only time I've seen bullying truly stop was when person being bullied in some way became a threat to the bully. Either through getting a parent/teacher involved, which brings its own social stigma, or through becoming a physical threat to the bully to the point where they stop for fear of getting their ass beat. That's it. That is my own personal experience of course but it's what I've seen.

Turn the other cheek just gets the other one punched too.

This only works if a child encounters a bully, or two buillies. systemic abuse is rather different!!
The idea that you can take them all on is a pointless dream. Also most bullying is not physical its mental. If the peer group is against you and you respond to mental abuse physically the victim not the bully is at risk. Bullying victims are often written off by schools to make life easy for themselves.

This is becoming more common and there have been a number of reports in the press of a vicitim being expelled rather than face a bully. In one infamous case the cleaning lady who reported the bulling of a child to the childs paresnt was sacked, the victim expelled and the bully exonerated. Saying 'you must have provoked him' is easier than dealing with a disruptive child, especially now with declining respect increasded violance and a double helping of PC crap to threaten anyone who tries to discipline an out of control lout.

The idea of fighting back against all of them may be pointless, but if you fight back against one of them and win, then, as in my case, the others may give up.

The only reason I fought back at the time was because I had started taking rowing seriously, and was actually getting quite big, so I was able to scare them.

I was a sensitive kid, soft hearted and a bit shy.

Secondary school knocked that the hell out of me. I was relentlessly bullied by one boy (along with his ensemble of hangers on), who was a year older than me and he was the only black kid in the school, from the age of 13 to the age of 15. He would trip me up, call me names, shout abuse at me, throw rocks at me, spit at me, take my books and tear them up, throw my school bag over hedges and on a couple of occasions, he and his mates would pin me to the floor and suffocate me with my school tie. I had this treatment for 2 years.

I was in the CDT (woodwork) classroom, the teacher had buggered off somewhere and this older kid was staring at me from the queue for his classroom, whispering to his mates and they were all laughing at me. He suddenly ran into our classroom and pinned me against the wall and started threatening me, he spat in my face and rubbed it in.

I threw him backwards, picked up one of the classroom stools and wrapped it across his face. At that time I had snapped, I saw red for the first time in my life, for those of you who've never had that happen, you do see things in actual red. I realised something as I stood over him. I was bigger than him (not taller, I'm a fairly short 5'8) but broader and stronger built, as I'd started rugby the year before and shown an aptitude for it. He was weaker than me. He realised it too, as he looked up at me and I saw his fear. I grabbed that bastard and told him exactly what would happen if he ever crossed me again. He ran out of the school and stayed away for a while. He never bothered me again, in fact, when walking through the town, if I saw him, even with his mates, I'd cross the street to be on the same side and walk right into them. They still called me names, but they were 'nutter' and 'fething psycho' and they were done as I was walking away, never to my face. I had a few more fights in school and college, understanding far better that it's necessary to bear your teeth at certain folks, especially when you're young.

I learnt from school that overwhelming and excessive force will get me left alone and not picked on. It made me a more aggressive person and I'm bloody glad of it. I was not a bully myself, but the 'Don't Tread On Me' analogy is fairly appropriate. I retain a hatred for bullies and a need to scrap with them. My sympathies go to those poor kids who don't get to fight back and instead end up doing things like take their own lives. And I certainly agree that teachers, for the most part, don't do very much of anything about it, but to be fair, a good deal of that can simply be ascribed to them not knowing what was going on and having far too many kids to watch over.

School is warfare, if you lack the firepower to carve your own niche, ally yourself to others who can. Employ intellect to defeat your enemies if you do not have the physical ability to do so.

I had plenty of incidents of bullying growing up here's what I did:

Jackass used to call me names and do whatever he thought he could get away with. He had fake sincerity and acted like we were friends in front of authority then would bug the crap out of me (nothing physical). I ended up very fed up with it so I took one of my sisters tampons and covered it with cherry jelly and smeared it all around in his locker on his books and stuff. Then as he stared in disgust at his locker I walked by and ate a cherry from on top of his books.

He never bothered me again!

Another guy was a poorer student who would steal my lunch from my locker. One dogfood and tabasco sandwich later and that issue was solved as well!

Gwar! wrote:I am amazed people still bully in the US.

Surely the bullies know that one day the bullied WILL snap and M16 their face into bonemeal right?

Right?

Or are US bullies that dim?

That's something I don't get either. Every time I see some kind of school violence, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Yay, we still haven't learned from the past how many massacres now."

The people bullied in the OP, the one girl was being harassed in and out of school constantly from the sound of it, apparently with disgusting phone calls of "You'll be dead in the morning" or "They'll find you after school" that's enough to do someones head in. One was a gay student being bullied, which is a huge blow to the head and self-esteem and such, with how hard it is to even come out to close friends, being tormented over it constantly is way more than enough to just make some people kinda give up.

Orlanth: The one thing I never see in people's recounting of bullying, is what THEY did in order to be selected. That's not to say that you deserved any of it, or any of that sort of nonsense, it's just that you WERE chosen, and the bullies had some reason for doing it.

People tend to want to focus on the bullies, and how they're evil, evil people, but really, they're almost always just normal kids. If we could raise our kids to be better able to navigate their social network, I think that's really the solution. It's not that the victims are "too soft" it's not that the bullies are "evil." It's just that we're not preparing kids well enough to be on either side of that interaction.

For example: When I was in grade school, there was a special ed kid who would periodically be placed in with the rest of the school. In gym class we had to do wrestling, which I was pretty terrible at, and didn't like. This kid was a strange dude, had the strange grade school moustache thing, and I generally found him sorta diquieting. He got paired up to wrestle with me, and I expected to just sorta mess around, take it easy, and get through the class. Instead, he tried very hard, was very spastic, and generally made me angry. I think I felt he was trying to show me up, or prove he was "better" than me, and in my young mind a special ed kid should know he's not "better" than me. So, for a while after that I bullied him with shoves and taunts, until one of his teachers saw it, pulled me aside and told me not to be mean to a special ed kid. It clicked for me at that point that the kid was basically slowed, and being mean to him was ridiculous, and I stopped.

The point here is that this kid, being mentally handicapped, didn't have the social skills to understand how I exepcted him to act, and then to compound the problem, I didn't have the maturity to understand his situation, and instead let my own frustrations and insecurities get taken out on him. Neither of us were "bad people" we just were confused.

Also, I don't think that there HAS to be a "pariah." It happens all the time, for sure, but it's not like a group of kids automatically selects one to beat on.

I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.

Then you haven't seen somebody actually ignore a bully.

Bullies want a reponse. They want to see that they're exerting power on somebody. If you truly IGNORE them, and give them no indication that they're effecting you, they will move on. If you wince, and hold in the tears, and they can see all that going on, they may feed off of it.

They can go punch on a tree all day. It will not complain. But they don't do that, precisely because it DOESN'T complain.

Probably the WORST thing you can do with a bully is fight back semi-ineffectively. Bullies don't really WANT to be cruel, most of the time, they just want to be powerful. If you fight back in a way that they can rationalize as you "deserving it," then they're going to bully all the more. They've removed guilt from the equation, now it's just them being powerful and against somebody who "deserves it."

This is also a big part of why staff doesn't want to get involved. They probably can't help you. They can threaten the bullies, but then they'll just add "tattle tale" to their list of insults, and find ways to harass you more surreptitiously.

Also, FWIW, all of this applies to "normal" bullies. Which is to say, pretty much everyone at one point or another. Some people have genuine mental problems, and are not mere bullies, but are actually acting out psychological disorders. Normal people don't REALLY want to be cruel.

Well, normal people don't really want to be cruel for the sake of being cruel.

For example, I've been cruel to many people out of a desire to make them act differently.

But then maybe I'm not normal.

But yes, fighting back and failing is far, far worse than not fighting back at all. Just from my own experience, I got far more pleasure out of beating my back-ups than I did from beating position stooges.

Gorgeous Gary Golden wrote:That's something I don't get either. Every time I see some kind of school violence, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Yay, we still haven't learned from the past how many massacres now."

The people bullied in the OP, the one girl was being harassed in and out of school constantly from the sound of it, apparently with disgusting phone calls of "You'll be dead in the morning" or "They'll find you after school" that's enough to do someones head in. One was a gay student being bullied, which is a huge blow to the head and self-esteem and such, with how hard it is to even come out to close friends, being tormented over it constantly is way more than enough to just make some people kinda give up.

The bolded section is called "Communicating a Threat".... If you have a recording of it, and take it to the police, State if you must due to influence from the callers parents, They can trace every call into the house and find the number.... In some states the PARENTS can be charged with the crime their children commit along with the kid. In most states it is a jailtime crime now.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
School is warfare, if you lack the firepower to carve your own niche, ally yourself to others who can. Employ intellect to defeat your enemies if you do not have the physical ability to do so.

I love you
Most of the kids i went to highschool with also were in my middle school, i certainly looked like an easy target, i was never a big kid, but i was scrappy and i was street smart. I was friends with all the "trouble" kids while staying out of trouble myself.
I ended up having to go to summer school one year in highschool and some other kid was in our class but from a totally different city, i havnt a clue why he was there. He had no idea what i was like so being the wrestle jock he let everyone know he was (constantly) he thought he could pick on me. it started with name calling and other insults which i fired right back, but not out of anger, i thought it was funny and thats the kind of thing i was used to. Well he didn't find me calling his names as i found it so one day before the teacher got into the class he came up behind me and put me in headlock (not the kind of "LOL I GOTCHU" kind of headlock) like the seriously trying to choke me kind, so i whipped my head backwards, hitting him mouth hard enough that he didnt have a good grip and i pushed him off. I stepped back and asked what the his problem was. Before he could get into my face again one of my good friends (who happend to be a full member of the Crips) stood inbetween us and started cussing him out, then a few other people i knew joined in sine he was from a different city nobody respected him anyway

Problem solved.

Hmm why was I a target for bullying.... Lets see... poor family in a lower middle class burb, wore second-hand clothes, had 2 older sisters, was WAY too light in weight, smart, pre-educated, well read, teachers adored me, Classic "nerd" even in 1st/2nd grade.
Tried to "fit in", didn't work for me. By 8th grade I knew essentially who I was and all.... then my parents started moving every year.. new school, same old blockheads. By 11th grade I was a typical angry young man and just wanted some stability.... 4 high schools in 4 years due to my parents changing jobs does little for social skills. Each time I found a way to make the situation work for me. I found little, quiet, and sometimes Big Violent, ways to make things work for me.
By 12th grade I was the ultimate misfit, But I could hang with nearly any group I wanted to. Yeah, the Debs and Preps still had issues but that was their classlessness showing.

I became who I wanted to be and not what they thought I should be..... In a sense, I made them adjust to me, not me adjusting to them.

I'm just going to leave this here...

I've not had too much trouble with bullying, I generally try to get along with everybody.
However, if I get gak from people, I have no problem with letting them know that I'm not going to let them get away with it.
I'm not big, sort of on the skinny side (5'10 135 lbs) but I've no problem with fighting someone twice my size if they are giving me crap.

Small and crazy beats big and strong every time!

dogma wrote:

Polonius wrote: Basically the high school hells that get portrayed in media, where highly stratified cultures exist based on economics and/or athletic ability really do exist.

Yep, but it should also be said that academic ability plays a role in some places. My high school contained about 600 kids, and the average PSAE (No Child Left Behind test) was a 22 ACT equivalent. The 5 kids that regularly earned perfect scores on the PSAE (36 ACT equivalent) would show up 2-3 periods late, and receive no consequences.

That's also true. I know that's one reason I was never bullied much, every school knew I was very smart and helped out their scores, so the teachers were more inclined to protect me than yet another average student. Being a big kid that wasn't afraid of pushing back didn't help. I roughed one kid up a bit, and my gym teacher must have seen it because he told my parents at a conference. He said he was glad I did it.

I guess it's a different paradigm when I knew that I would never get in trouble for fighting back, while any bully would get suspended. Which is one reason I don't try to deny bullying, even though it never really affected me.

Polonius wrote:

dogma wrote:

Polonius wrote: Basically the high school hells that get portrayed in media, where highly stratified cultures exist based on economics and/or athletic ability really do exist.

Yep, but it should also be said that academic ability plays a role in some places. My high school contained about 600 kids, and the average PSAE (No Child Left Behind test) was a 22 ACT equivalent. The 5 kids that regularly earned perfect scores on the PSAE (36 ACT equivalent) would show up 2-3 periods late, and receive no consequences.

That's also true. I know that's one reason I was never bullied much, every school knew I was very smart and helped out their scores, so the teachers were more inclined to protect me than yet another average student. Being a big kid that wasn't afraid of pushing back didn't help. I roughed one kid up a bit, and my gym teacher must have seen it because he told my parents at a conference. He said he was glad I did it.

I guess it's a different paradigm when I knew that I would never get in trouble for fighting back, while any bully would get suspended. Which is one reason I don't try to deny bullying, even though it never really affected me.

The opposite of that seemed to happen with me.

I was bullied because I was smart, In year 5 I was getting the marks expected of year 8s, and one of the kids in my year (and by extension his group of freinds) hated me for it.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:I'm just going to leave this here...

Epic Win in that post.

Phryxis wrote:Orlanth: The one thing I never see in people's recounting of bullying, is what THEY did in order to be selected.

Because it's immaterial to the discussion. Take the kid who liked to wear pink and wear a stuffed monkey on his arm. I'm not to stuck up to admit that I think that's more than a little off and when I was a teen I'd have probably steered clear of him at a minimum. It's pretty obvious why this kid got singled out to be bullied. Same with the Bosnian(?) girl. The reason they got picked out was obvious. However that has nothing to do with it. Wearing pink or talking with an accent is not an acceptable reason for calling someone in the middle of the night and making death threats. In these instances the kids getting bullied, from the story, did nothing to the bullies to warrant the attacks.

They were singled out for the same reason most kids get singled out, they're different and as a consequence outside the bully's social group making them a fair target. Be it for the bully's own sense of power or just to feel like more of a part of their social group by hounding someone who isn't. The target is different and therefore fair game.

It's just that we're not preparing kids well enough to be on either side of that interaction.

That's the problem, you can't. They're kids. They are not mentally and socially developed enough to handle it "like adults." From the perspective of the bullied what are their options? Tell the teacher? Do you remember the social stigma attached to rats? And lord help you if the teacher didn't do anything about it. Now you're a rat and just pissed off the bullies. Do nothing and ignore them? How many 13 year olds do you know that are that stoic? The socially acceptable solutions don't work for kids. They don't have the self control to ignore someone totally and they don't have the long term view to realize that even with the social problems telling the teacher is the easiest way out. So the bullied either knuckle under and internalize it or they lash out.

In my case it was the latter. I got suspended from school three times and one detention for fighting. My parents raised me to try and sort things out peacefully but at the end of the day you don't just take gak from anyone. If they don't drop it, make them drop it. It was a solution to the problem that a kid could handle. Try and talk it out but when they get physical defend yourself.

I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.

Then you haven't seen somebody actually ignore a bully.

And I would ask you just how many children do you know that are capable of that kind of stoicism?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gorgeous Gary Golden wrote:That's something I don't get either. Every time I see some kind of school violence, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Yay, we still haven't learned from the past how many massacres now."

I don't suppose the simple explanation that teenagers are just stupid ever occurred to you?

This entire situation honestly pisses me off. Throughout my entire time in school I'm proud to say that I was friends with just about everyone be it my team mates from the football team to the kids I went to warped tour with. It didn't matter if they where gay or wore pink, it didn't matter if they had a learning disability or an accent. Yes there where things they did that I steered clear of but that didn't stop me from being friends with them. I also tried not to judge them beings as I have gages, tattoos and more predominently play a game consisting of miniatures so I had no room to judge them for what they chose to do.

So to see that this happened just simply isn't right for me and goes against everything I believe as a person. When I read the article and read about how the girls who had bullied the girl with the accent laughed at her during her wake because of the dress she was wearing. It's people like that who just......it's bull. This isn't even close to "we're raising our kids to be weak" a sentiment that I usually agree with because for the most part kids these days are incredibly spoiled in my opinion. That notion has nothing to do with this.

This is pure and simple the results of a failure to listen and act by bolth the the parents and the school. Despite their differances from those around them they where still people, and in no way should they have had to conform to anyones standards nor adapt to better fit in with those around them and action should have been taken.

What is sad and evident by the actions of the girls at the wake is that those who bullied the children who commited suicide probably feel no remorse for what they caused. This leads me to question not the parenting abilities of the bullied but the abilities of those who raised the bullies. In my opinion this is a travesty that should never have happened.

Polonius wrote:Suicide is a pretty clear indicator of mental illness, at least at most legal/medical levels. There are plenty of environmental triggers (such as bullying) that can make those conditions worse, but bullying is probably not the root cause of these kids suicides. Reading the article, three were suicides and one was an accidental drug overdose (of anti-depressents), which I think changes things a bit.

Add in that one of the kids also lost two siblings to suicide or overdose, and you start seeing a much more complex picture than "School allowed kids to be bullied to death!"

Now, schools seldom take serious steps to curb bullying. They should be proactive in stopping that behavior. On the other hand, reading those stories, maybe trying to conform a little bit could have saved these kids some trouble, you know? Dressing all in pink and bringing your plush toy monkey to class isn't exactly behavior to exhibit if you want to avoid bullying.

Nobody gets to be who they really are in high school. We pretty much all got through by trying to be as normal as possible and waiting to get the hell out.

The bullying of the croatian girl is just bizarre to me. I went to a pretty multi-ethnic, immigrant heavy high school, and while we cheerfully called people "boaters" or "yugos", everybody generally got along.

Me and my friends do the opposite of being as normal as possible. We're the ones that yell Waaagh! and Cheese! make random noises at people. Being a nerd is awesome. Acting normal just makes you take bullying harder because you aren't used to it. In fact, when me or any one of my friends are bullied for being an Atheist or a Nerd or something like that, we can always think of a better insult to counter with, so we usually aren't bullied much anymore. People just got tired of us taking fifteen minutes to explain why their insult is stupid. Oh, and to anyone who calls us nerds, we use the response "Hey, that's our word!". lol

But seriously, I can't imagine wanting to kill myself over anything especially bullying. I think kids these days might actually be a bit weak. There are so many weird emo people at my high school. Also a lot of rednecks, too, unfortunately. And also emo rednecks. That is a WEIRD combination.

Because it's immaterial to the discussion.

It's entirely material.

People want to blame bullying on the bully being an evil monster who just has to be "stopped." This is emotionalism, and not really useful. Bullies are very often normal kids who are just making bad decisions. They're not monsters. They're also a lot more plentiful, and often a lot better adjusted than the person they're bullying. There's often very little to fix.

You're upset that these kids got worse than they deserved. I agree. But it doesn't matter what you think is fair. You solve problems based on what works, not on what you'd like to have work.

I'm not suggesting that the victim is "to blame." Instead, what I'm suggesting is that the goal here is for people to not get bullied. If the victim can be helped/educated/prepared in such a way that they don't become a victim, then nobody gets bullied (or the bullying is less severe), and the victim is less victimized.

You can wish that all the bullies would be punished in some suitable and poetically just way, but that's not going to happen.

That's the problem, you can't. They're kids. They are not mentally and socially developed enough to handle it "like adults."

Well, you can always do better...

But generally, I agree. I think that when you have millions of kids interacting every single day, there are going to be casualties. Some people have mental health issues. Some signs get missed. Bad things happen.

No question we should be trying to do better, but I don't think there's really news here. Kids have always bullied each other, kids have always killed themselves over it. The media is sensationalizing the problem, but it's really not helping to solve it by doing so. I'm sure people will argue that "attracting attention to the problem" will help, but it really won't if it's stupid attention.

And that's precisely what "stop bullying now" is. It's stupid. It's like wishing for "an end to war." It's uselessly impractical. The real answer is much less profound, and much harder. You work on teaching all kids a little more empathy, you work on addressing why a particular kid is acting out, or spotting the kid that's concealing mental health issues, etc. etc.

And I would ask you just how many children do you know that are capable of that kind of stoicism?

Your argument seem to be internally conflicted. You want to have all the bullies act out of character. Because, let's face it, NOT bullying is actually out of character for kids. And there's also a lot of them yet you seem to think that ALL their behavioral issues can be addressed...

And yet the issues of the victim can't? It's ONE person. It's also one person who, generally, is legitimately "odd" compared to the other kids.

Again, NOT trying to blame the victim, I'm simply saying that it seems that a great majority of the time, the most practical fix is with the victim. Why is the victim wearing pink? Why does he feel a need to act out that way? The victim is an immigrant, and they need help fitting in, adjusting to the culture.

At the end of the day, you have to decide if you want "justice done" or if you just want injustice to be reduced.

There's a cinematic appeal to the former, but the latter is both more realistic and better for all involved.

Think about it... Are you going to have somebody follow this victim around, protecting them from each and every person that might potentially mistreat them? Giving little sermons about emptathy to every kid they run across? It's unrealistic.

It's also foolish if the victim really NEEDS help. You should help the victim, not try to go around teaching every single person that they meet how to work around that person's need for help.

It's not the victim's FAULT that they need help. But they still need it.

I was bullied because I came from a ho dunk, redneck, small town, and I had long hair and listened to metal. If you didn't play sports at my school you had to dress like a cowboy and listen to country or nobody liked you and you became an outcast.

How did I fix it? I pulled a knife on the first kid to really try to physically bully me (He tried to hit me with his truck once when I was crossing the street in front of school) after that I was left alone, much like many of the stories given here.

What does this say? Either parents, kids, or teachers, need to Man Up and quit caring about being PC and address the real issues.

That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.

TheBlackVanguard wrote:That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.

Not really. Some cases of "bullying" can be hellish. If you're beaten or threatened with disgusting things day in, day out, by people who *do* do these things to be cruel, it's pretty easy to just lose hope. From there it can be pretty easy, just a day of extra terrible treatment could drive someone to just end it on their own. Through personal experience, when everyone is just against you for whatever reason, when you have no real way to fight back, when the faculty themselves are even against you being able to do anything, it's like going daily to some deep, dark hole that you forget you're even gonna get away from eventually. Some people can just persevere or emotionally shut themselves down to get through it, but some others won't be so fortunate and could just end up some complete and utter wreck.