Do kids still give wedgies?
Purple Nurples?
Swirlies?
Anyone remember “frogging” and dead legs?
Towel snaps?
It’s crazy how taunting can be so much more traumatic that physical abuse. I think it’s because it does follow kids these days with the prevelence of technology.
Cell phones, face book et cetera…
Parents really need to develop kids self esteems. It’s sad some name calling and taunting led to a death but surely that is a pretty extreme reaction to bullying. Something else was wrong too.
[quote]LoRez wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]andrew_live wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Who the fuck are you again?
What the hell does this have to do with aggression? This isn’t a conversation about aggression and I don’t recall talking to you. For the record I have no problems with appropriately place aggression, never have. [/quote]
Eh, Looks like I had some ‘inappropriately placed aggression’ last night. But that is kinda the route this thread was taking: Aggression, being nice, dealing with bullies etc. somehow I got out of your posts (still am getting it) that you were against aggression.
This is what is classified as an open forum neh? Where people derp around and chime in as they please. [/quote]
No, I had my share of fights. It just did not work. I was a tiny kid. I weighed 65 lbs. in 6th grade, 85 in 8th. I was 125 lbs when I graduated high school. Whooping ass wasn’t my forte, but it wasn’t due to lack of effort. It was lack of ability and size. I took karate thinking that would help, that’s when I learned karate is a bit of a sham. Size and strength still win the day, so do numbers of people. In some way fighting seemed to make it worse because I wasn’t good at it. Perhaps if I could have done some real bodily harm then maybe, but I couldn’t.
Then there’s group think, when others join in, you cannot whoop a crowd’s ass. Occasionally, I had success. One time a guy gave me a wet-willy thinking I was passive as you guys apparently thought I was, just by instinct I punched him in the face. Then he kept messing with my paper in science so I stabbed his hand with my pencil and left some graphite in it, after that he left me alone, but it did not stop others. And when pretty popular girls join in you’re pretty much fucked.
I wasn’t passive, I was ineffective.[/quote]
Looking back on that now, don’t you think that both those responses were a little extreme? I guess I could see kids continuing to tease entirely because of the over-the-top response.
[/quote]
You’d really have to get a picture of the whole situation to understand. I don’t think I did anything extreme. I was reacting and desperate to get out of the situations. I didn’t respond extremely, I was pushed to the brink. I did what I had to do, I did what I could, none of it worked, but I tried.
[quote]
If you were to go back and change a few things, what you would do differently? Would you have convinced yourself to bulk up to not get pushed around? Would you have resorted to different strategies to get your point across?
Just wondering. No pressure to answer.[/quote]
Well if I knew about the benefits and joys of weight training, I certainly would have taken the option. Also, I think I would have liked to participate in sports, particularly football. There would have been weight training as well as a comradery. Our team stunk on ice, I couldn’t have made it worse. If I could go back knowing what I know now, I could perhaps have changed things and reacted differently to situations, I just simply didn’t know and I damn sure don’t want to go back, just to see if I could make a difference. With what I knew then, having no confidence, no real friends, being small, a little nerdy and getting ganged up on. Girls and guys picking on me and all that stuff, I just didn’t have a chance.
It’s a crap situation I don’t wish on anyone, except maybe bullies and other assholes.
As for now, back then sucked but that was back then and I worked very hard to learn and become who I wanted to be and not let these events define who I am. It was, what it was, but I am an adult now and I am not going to live my life afraid of people, bitter and angry, keeping people out of my life just to protect my fragile ego.
I forgive the people who did it, I don’t seek any harm to them and am not wanting them to suffer now. Life’s to short for that shit and I have better things to do then to worry about it now. I am just relaying my experiences and some have taken that to mean things or pass judgement on me for things that happened to me a long time ago.
Just because I am past it now, doesn’t mean I forgot about it or the hurt it caused. That’s not how it works. Like I said, the scars remain forever, but it doesn’t run my life by any means.
[quote]andrew_live wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Occasionally, I had success. One time a guy gave me a wet-willy thinking I was passive as you guys apparently thought I was, just by instinct I punched him in the face. Then he kept messing with my paper in science so I stabbed his hand with my pencil and left some graphite in it, after that he left me alone, but it did not stop others. And when pretty popular girls join in you’re pretty much fucked.
I wasn’t passive, I was ineffective.[/quote]
Alright, mobs and girls pretty or not kind of leave you fucked. But good job letting loose on the one jerkass. And I dont think that was over reacting because I know what built up fustration can make you capable of. At least you didnt bottle it up and pull one of those old school schoolyard shivings. I bet his hand is scarred. I bet he remembers the kid he picked on one too many times. Its a good lesson to learn but it shouldnt need to be taught.
Too few people ever stand up. Your story makes me think of Green Street Holligans’
[/quote]
Well, like I said if I was capable of putting somebody in the hospital one good time, or something like that, then perhaps it would have been more effective. But that’s really what I don’t think a lot of people understand about bullying, it’s seldom ever just one person. It’s a person with friends who join in, who know other friends who also join in and it snowballs from there. One person can be managed and I did work up the courage to fight, but I couldn’t fight everybody. What was weirder is sometimes I would challenge people to fight me, they refused and still they and their friends would continue the picking.
The golden ass whooping would be great if it would fix it, but it’s seldom the case where it’s just one person and what the hell do you do with bullies who won’t fight? I was prepared to have my ass kicked in the case I am thinking about, since the dude was a lot bigger than me, he wouldn’t fight me. Next day, same crap.
Rounding back to the original topic with Amanda, that’s what happens, it snowballs and everybody joins in the ‘harmless’ fun. Even the ‘nice’ people end up getting a good laugh at your expense. Certainly I wasn’t the only person who got treated this way. School was miserable for all of us.
But I worked, I made friends outside of school, I made myself as scarce as possible at school and I got out of it. Once I got out of high school, it was over.
[quote]pat wrote:
I wasn’t the only person who got treated this way. School was miserable for all of us.
But I worked, I made friends outside of school, I made myself as scarce as possible at school and I got out of it. Once I got out of high school, it was over.[/quote]
Someone send that to Amanda, oh wait she killed herself. Too bad she didnt figure this out. I just hate how this whole thing is being blown out of proportion in the news/radio. When we were kids we werent retards, we made it though. We moved on. … mostly.
So what really is the ‘issue’ here? That she killed herself? That bullying happened? It sounds like she made it pretty damn easy for these cretins to find her and harangue/harass/heckle her.
Highschool really is being made out to be the most important thing in the world for teenagers. Its not being treated as what it is. A stepping stone. A small one at that. Maybe if we had better teachers. Maybe a whole new system.
Kids in my city now have to pay upwards of $400.00/year to go to highschool. I’d never heard about that before. I know a few kids who were pretty stressed about that because of their living situations.
I recently had a ten year HS reunion and it was crazy to see some people from what feels like a life time ago. It is annoying to see people put on a front for sure.
Then again, I saw people who are very self confident, athletic (mud runs, gym time, various leagues et cetera), successful and who are assholeish who were the high school bean poles and outcasts.
My initial reaction to one particular guy was that he is a fraud, putting up a front. Then I remembered life keeps happening and shaping people. He really did put in the work at the gym and grew some size and strength, which led to athleticism, which allowed him to compete when he couldn’t make the cut in his prior life.
Objectively speaking, he was handsome with a beautiful gf who was no doubt the first. In high school he’d be lucky to get his dog to go to prom with him. Point being, in his new situation with his new peers he is the guy that he is in that moment.
This guy has found success in business (Club Promotions in LA) and other aspects of life and a certain level of confidence was achieved, replacing the underconfident, down trodden kid with poor genetic pre-dispositions and developmental time lines.
And, yeah, he had become kind of an asshole in the cocky sense of the word, but a genuine asshole IMO. It’s who he is. He shouldn’t act like a 5 year old any more than his high school self. He probably always was an asshole, just unable to express himself and hadn’t found his niche to spread his wings.
Some were “nice”. It’s just who they are and they can show it now without being stifled.
Some seemed to make it a “mission” to be extra nice, super fair and generally a care bear.
I would argue these people are the most damaged as they live their lives through an existential mission to “make right” what was wrong for them instead of closing a chapter, becoming who they are as they move through life and leaving the past behind. It’s like they figuratively live on their scars.
Fortunately they react with positive outreach and an uber friendly persona instead of withdrawing and killing themselves but they are just as broken inside and there is nothing genuine about it.
And for a kid to kill herself, there has to be more wrong than bullying. A missing support structure, mental illness et cetera
[quote]batman730 wrote:
This is kind of a good point. The whole “just stand up to a bully and he won’t bother you anymore” line plays out better in an after school special than it does in real life. Bullies are predators who employ asymmetrical rules of engagement. i.e. they will always have a size/numbers/meanness advantage. Since it’s not really practical to sneak up behind a guy on the schoolyard and shiv him in the neck for stealing your lunch money, it can be extremely difficult to overcome those odds. If you fight but are ineffective, I can absolutely see how that would make it worse, by adding to the sport you offer without providing any real deterrent. There really is no easy answer.[/quote]
You’re observation is spot on. Then add the numbers. People jumping in and that further complicates the situation.
[quote]andrew_live wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
I wasn’t the only person who got treated this way. School was miserable for all of us.
But I worked, I made friends outside of school, I made myself as scarce as possible at school and I got out of it. Once I got out of high school, it was over.[/quote]
Someone send that to Amanda, oh wait she killed herself. Too bad she didnt figure this out. I just hate how this whole thing is being blown out of proportion in the news/radio. When we were kids we werent retards, we made it though. We moved on. … mostly.
So what really is the ‘issue’ here? That she killed herself? That bullying happened? It sounds like she made it pretty damn easy for these cretins to find her and harangue/harass/heckle her.
Highschool really is being made out to be the most important thing in the world for teenagers. Its not being treated as what it is. A stepping stone. A small one at that. Maybe if we had better teachers. Maybe a whole new system.
Kids in my city now have to pay upwards of $400.00/year to go to highschool. I’d never heard about that before. I know a few kids who were pretty stressed about that because of their living situations. [/quote]
The ‘issue’ is that when you are in it, it is so profoundly miserable that anything sounds better, including death. Don’t think I didn’t consider it, oh, every day.
Why didn’t I? Grace of God, otherwise I don’t know.
[quote]andrew_live wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
I wasn’t the only person who got treated this way. School was miserable for all of us.
But I worked, I made friends outside of school, I made myself as scarce as possible at school and I got out of it. Once I got out of high school, it was over.[/quote]
Someone send that to Amanda, oh wait she killed herself. Too bad she didnt figure this out. I just hate how this whole thing is being blown out of proportion in the news/radio. When we were kids we werent retards, we made it though. We moved on. … mostly.
So what really is the ‘issue’ here? That she killed herself? That bullying happened? It sounds like she made it pretty damn easy for these cretins to find her and harangue/harass/heckle her.
Highschool really is being made out to be the most important thing in the world for teenagers. Its not being treated as what it is. A stepping stone. A small one at that. Maybe if we had better teachers. Maybe a whole new system.
Kids in my city now have to pay upwards of $400.00/year to go to highschool. I’d never heard about that before. I know a few kids who were pretty stressed about that because of their living situations. [/quote]
Assuming you mean what’s the larger social ‘issue’ that is causing such a widespread emotional reaction to this event, I think it’s because this girl has become something of a symbol for a much larger and more pervasive problem. It’s not about Amanda Todd, she just personalizes the issue into something more concrete.
As I said earlier the umbrella of “bullying” allows people to put off a range of behaviours that would be considered criminal in the adult world as a case of kids will be kids. The result is, in many cases, significant emotional distress and varying degrees of physical harm.
I pushed a grown man down in the street, dumped out his briefcase, stole his lunch and his Starbuck’s card then threw his shoes in the ditch it would be robbery, assault etc. not “boys will be boys”.
As to whether kids have endured bullying at least as long as there have been schools, it’s kind of beside the point. Our collective past contains many staggering and prolonged acts of violence that people have endured. So what? Does that mean as a society that we shouldn’t take action to try to reduce/eliminate these things? Or should we just tell people to harden the fuck up and deal with it? Bullying is a reality, sure, and people need coping strategies on an individual/family level.
Everybody should try to make themselves less likely targets for crime of any kind. However on a social level we need to develop/implement strategies to reduce/prevent it. It’s how we (try to) deal with violent crime. 1 in 3 women will be the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime. That’s a reality that many people will have to face. Do they need to deal with it? Yes, they have no choice. Do we as a society need to keep working toward a future where this doesn’t happen? I think so.
[quote]Matt_D wrote:
I recently had a ten year HS reunion and it was crazy to see some people from what feels like a life time ago. It is annoying to see people put on a front for sure.
Then again, I saw people who are very self confident, athletic (mud runs, gym time, various leagues et cetera), successful and who are assholeish who were the high school bean poles and outcasts.
My initial reaction to one particular guy was that he is a fraud, putting up a front. Then I remembered life keeps happening and shaping people. He really did put in the work at the gym and grew some size and strength, which led to athleticism, which allowed him to compete when he couldn’t make the cut in his prior life.
Objectively speaking, he was handsome with a beautiful gf who was no doubt the first. In high school he’d be lucky to get his dog to go to prom with him. Point being, in his new situation with his new peers he is the guy that he is in that moment.
This guy has found success in business (Club Promotions in LA) and other aspects of life and a certain level of confidence was achieved, replacing the underconfident, down trodden kid with poor genetic pre-dispositions and developmental time lines.
And, yeah, he had become kind of an asshole in the cocky sense of the word, but a genuine asshole IMO. It’s who he is. He shouldn’t act like a 5 year old any more than his high school self. He probably always was an asshole, just unable to express himself and hadn’t found his niche to spread his wings.
Some were “nice”. It’s just who they are and they can show it now without being stifled.
Some seemed to make it a “mission” to be extra nice, super fair and generally a care bear.
I would argue these people are the most damaged as they live their lives through an existential mission to “make right” what was wrong for them instead of closing a chapter, becoming who they are as they move through life and leaving the past behind. It’s like they figuratively live on their scars.
Fortunately they react with positive outreach and an uber friendly persona instead of withdrawing and killing themselves but they are just as broken inside and there is nothing genuine about it.
And for a kid to kill herself, there has to be more wrong than bullying. A missing support structure, mental illness et cetera[/quote]
And that’s what I mean about taking the situation you were in an letting it shape you. You were a high school loser so you spend the rest of your life over compensating. Fortunately, that’s not the route I took, but it would have been easy to turn in to an asshole especially after I started going to the gym and putting on some significant muscle.
Hell, when I got to 208, I was one stocky mother fucker.
I didn’t want t be that guy. I am not interesting in making others feel worse for having been around me. I want people to have been glad to meet me, to have had a positive experience for being around me.
I did manage to learn how not to put up with people’s crap, though. I try do it the right way though. I don’t come threatening with guns or anything.
There was a person, not long ago messing with my family, I warned them to stay away from my house and my family or I would get a restraining order. They showed up at my house the next day, the restraining order showed up the following day.
[quote]batman730 wrote:
[quote]andrew_live wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
I wasn’t the only person who got treated this way. School was miserable for all of us.
But I worked, I made friends outside of school, I made myself as scarce as possible at school and I got out of it. Once I got out of high school, it was over.[/quote]
Someone send that to Amanda, oh wait she killed herself. Too bad she didnt figure this out. I just hate how this whole thing is being blown out of proportion in the news/radio. When we were kids we werent retards, we made it though. We moved on. … mostly.
So what really is the ‘issue’ here? That she killed herself? That bullying happened? It sounds like she made it pretty damn easy for these cretins to find her and harangue/harass/heckle her.
Highschool really is being made out to be the most important thing in the world for teenagers. Its not being treated as what it is. A stepping stone. A small one at that. Maybe if we had better teachers. Maybe a whole new system.
Kids in my city now have to pay upwards of $400.00/year to go to highschool. I’d never heard about that before. I know a few kids who were pretty stressed about that because of their living situations. [/quote]
Assuming you mean what’s the larger social ‘issue’ that is causing such a widespread emotional reaction to this event, I think it’s because this girl has become something of a symbol for a much larger and more pervasive problem. It’s not about Amanda Todd, she just personalizes the issue into something more concrete.
As I said earlier the umbrella of “bullying” allows people to put off a range of behaviours that would be considered criminal in the adult world as a case of kids will be kids. The result is, in many cases, significant emotional distress and varying degrees of physical harm.
I pushed a grown man down in the street, dumped out his briefcase, stole his lunch and his Starbuck’s card then threw his shoes in the ditch it would be robbery, assault etc. not “boys will be boys”.
As to whether kids have endured bullying at least as long as there have been schools, it’s kind of beside the point. Our collective past contains many staggering and prolonged acts of violence that people have endured. So what? Does that mean as a society that we shouldn’t take action to try to reduce/eliminate these things? Or should we just tell people to harden the fuck up and deal with it? Bullying is a reality, sure, and people need coping strategies on an individual/family level.
Everybody should try to make themselves less likely targets for crime of any kind. However on a social level we need to develop/implement strategies to reduce/prevent it. It’s how we (try to) deal with violent crime. 1 in 3 women will be the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime. That’s a reality that many people will have to face. Do they need to deal with it? Yes, they have no choice. Do we as a society need to keep working toward a future where this doesn’t happen? I think so.[/quote]
My observation working with the youth, is that it happens way less than it used to. So what ever has happened between the time I grew up and now, has resulted in this happening less.
It’s weird, I read these little stories and chain emails about how kids used to be kids and would go out and play all day unsupervised until dinner time, if you fucked up dad would whoop your ass with a belt and how much better that was than now.
Then I look at the country in it’s current state, and see the result. These are the assholes who are running the country into the ground.
Somehow, I am thinking the old days weren’t better.
Yeah, I think some parents are ‘over involved’ these day, but overall, my observation is the youth of today is better behaved than my generation. The kids I work with are pretty amazing people. And bullying is far less pervasive. I asked them about that many of them say that it rarely happens and when it does, it’s the bully who is maligned.
Perhaps this is only happening in my corner of the world, but I do see it happening way less than in my day.
That being said, you’ll never get rid of it totally, and you don’t want to go to the extremes it would take, to totally eliminate it.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Matt_D wrote:
I recently had a ten year HS reunion and it was crazy to see some people from what feels like a life time ago. It is annoying to see people put on a front for sure.
Then again, I saw people who are very self confident, athletic (mud runs, gym time, various leagues et cetera), successful and who are assholeish who were the high school bean poles and outcasts.
My initial reaction to one particular guy was that he is a fraud, putting up a front. Then I remembered life keeps happening and shaping people. He really did put in the work at the gym and grew some size and strength, which led to athleticism, which allowed him to compete when he couldn’t make the cut in his prior life.
Objectively speaking, he was handsome with a beautiful gf who was no doubt the first. In high school he’d be lucky to get his dog to go to prom with him. Point being, in his new situation with his new peers he is the guy that he is in that moment.
This guy has found success in business (Club Promotions in LA) and other aspects of life and a certain level of confidence was achieved, replacing the underconfident, down trodden kid with poor genetic pre-dispositions and developmental time lines.
And, yeah, he had become kind of an asshole in the cocky sense of the word, but a genuine asshole IMO. It’s who he is. He shouldn’t act like a 5 year old any more than his high school self. He probably always was an asshole, just unable to express himself and hadn’t found his niche to spread his wings.
Some were “nice”. It’s just who they are and they can show it now without being stifled.
Some seemed to make it a “mission” to be extra nice, super fair and generally a care bear.
I would argue these people are the most damaged as they live their lives through an existential mission to “make right” what was wrong for them instead of closing a chapter, becoming who they are as they move through life and leaving the past behind. It’s like they figuratively live on their scars.
Fortunately they react with positive outreach and an uber friendly persona instead of withdrawing and killing themselves but they are just as broken inside and there is nothing genuine about it.
And for a kid to kill herself, there has to be more wrong than bullying. A missing support structure, mental illness et cetera[/quote]
And that’s what I mean about taking the situation you were in an letting it shape you. You were a high school loser so you spend the rest of your life over compensating. Fortunately, that’s not the route I took, but it would have been easy to turn in to an asshole especially after I started going to the gym and putting on some significant muscle.
Hell, when I got to 208, I was one stocky mother fucker.
I didn’t want t be that guy. I am not interesting in making others feel worse for having been around me. I want people to have been glad to meet me, to have had a positive experience for being around me.
I did manage to learn how not to put up with people’s crap, though. I try do it the right way though. I don’t come threatening with guns or anything.
There was a person, not long ago messing with my family, I warned them to stay away from my house and my family or I would get a restraining order. They showed up at my house the next day, the restraining order showed up the following day. [/quote]
As long as it comes from you and not an adverse reaction to the past.
Personally, I would’ve whipped the guys ass and then got a restraining order but I’m more of a “take it to you” kind of guy.
Not that it has anything to do with bullying.
Anyways, we are all shaped by our experiences but control reactions to them, including how much they influence us and how.
I think kids need strong figures to teach true self confidence. When you genuinly like and respect yourself, all the bullies in the world won’t drive you to suicide. Nothing will.
Of course people are social animals and want to be accepted in general but if you know yourself it won’t matter if other people don’t like it, not to such a drastic degree.
I don’t know, I wasn’t really bullied per se so I’m in foreign territory.
I have, of course, known plenty of people who didn’t like me and said so, sometimes attempting to debase me with rude, probing and “mean” comments.
The thing is I know myself, who I am, what I like and my own flaws and for someone to point them out is kind of redundent and I could give a fuck less what they think. I’m not their “victim” though because in no way do they alter my self perception. Just some dude/chick who doesn’t like something and lets me know with an attitude.
I did have a great support structure growing up though, family, friends, I played sports and had the team commraderie… along with the “rivals” life includes.
I can see how this would lead to a certain self image over being rejected by peers but it brings me back to my point of needing better support structures in place.
You said you had friends outside of school, places to plug in and be you et cetera. I would imagine this was a part of your over all support. I don’t know what kind of life Amanda had at home but I think that is where the major problem lay.
Yeah the bullying and what not upset her but who doesn’t get upset or attacked in some way at some time? I am more concerned as to why she reacted the way she did than why she was upset to begin with.
What was broken in her life that shouldn’t have been? Communication with parents? Chemical imbalances? Negative influences on all fronts, including home life?
How did she not have anywhere to find joy and turn away from the darker side of life?
You mention contemplating suicide daily yet didn’t do it. Maybe God helped you but I bet it’s because you had enough positivity outside of school balancing the negativity in school.
You probably generated your own positivity from within by developing self confidence in your job, with your friendly peers, family, church or what ever. You had a certain place to know you’re above the bullshit.
Where was Amanda’s place? The real solution is in that answer, IMO. Kids will be kids and bullying will continue in one way or another.
There will always be outcasts (though you can’t be an outcast if you don’t care. Jocks are technically band and orchestra outcasts but it isn’t percieved that way, is it?)
How do kids getting bullied deal with it? How do they perceive it? How do they perceive themselves in it? Surely a parent can see if their kid is on the bad side of the childhood social strata and should proactively help their kids, before they die and not after.
The issue is bigger than the bullies in Amanda’s case. If the bullies are the instigators, virtually every one else who should share some responsibility in her 16 year old quality of life is guilty of neglect.
[quote]Matt_D wrote:
And for a kid to kill herself, there has to be more wrong than bullying. A missing support structure, mental illness et cetera[/quote]
That certainly was the case for this girl. And that’s the key. Some kids are more sensitive and need extra attention to build their confidence. Many times they don’t get it until after they’re dead.
[quote]Matt_D wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Matt_D wrote:
I recently had a ten year HS reunion and it was crazy to see some people from what feels like a life time ago. It is annoying to see people put on a front for sure.
Then again, I saw people who are very self confident, athletic (mud runs, gym time, various leagues et cetera), successful and who are assholeish who were the high school bean poles and outcasts.
My initial reaction to one particular guy was that he is a fraud, putting up a front. Then I remembered life keeps happening and shaping people. He really did put in the work at the gym and grew some size and strength, which led to athleticism, which allowed him to compete when he couldn’t make the cut in his prior life.
Objectively speaking, he was handsome with a beautiful gf who was no doubt the first. In high school he’d be lucky to get his dog to go to prom with him. Point being, in his new situation with his new peers he is the guy that he is in that moment.
This guy has found success in business (Club Promotions in LA) and other aspects of life and a certain level of confidence was achieved, replacing the underconfident, down trodden kid with poor genetic pre-dispositions and developmental time lines.
And, yeah, he had become kind of an asshole in the cocky sense of the word, but a genuine asshole IMO. It’s who he is. He shouldn’t act like a 5 year old any more than his high school self. He probably always was an asshole, just unable to express himself and hadn’t found his niche to spread his wings.
Some were “nice”. It’s just who they are and they can show it now without being stifled.
Some seemed to make it a “mission” to be extra nice, super fair and generally a care bear.
I would argue these people are the most damaged as they live their lives through an existential mission to “make right” what was wrong for them instead of closing a chapter, becoming who they are as they move through life and leaving the past behind. It’s like they figuratively live on their scars.
Fortunately they react with positive outreach and an uber friendly persona instead of withdrawing and killing themselves but they are just as broken inside and there is nothing genuine about it.
And for a kid to kill herself, there has to be more wrong than bullying. A missing support structure, mental illness et cetera[/quote]
And that’s what I mean about taking the situation you were in an letting it shape you. You were a high school loser so you spend the rest of your life over compensating. Fortunately, that’s not the route I took, but it would have been easy to turn in to an asshole especially after I started going to the gym and putting on some significant muscle.
Hell, when I got to 208, I was one stocky mother fucker.
I didn’t want t be that guy. I am not interesting in making others feel worse for having been around me. I want people to have been glad to meet me, to have had a positive experience for being around me.
I did manage to learn how not to put up with people’s crap, though. I try do it the right way though. I don’t come threatening with guns or anything.
There was a person, not long ago messing with my family, I warned them to stay away from my house and my family or I would get a restraining order. They showed up at my house the next day, the restraining order showed up the following day. [/quote]
As long as it comes from you and not an adverse reaction to the past.
Personally, I would’ve whipped the guys ass and then got a restraining order but I’m more of a “take it to you” kind of guy.
Not that it has anything to do with bullying.
[/quote]
Well the violations were not overt like that and it wasn’t a ‘guy’ I really cannot get into the details, but it would have been a much more tolerable and fixable situation if it were physical in nature. It was way more underhanded and devious than that. Somebody fucking with my family in some sort of physical way is much easier to deal with. Woman can be waaaaay more evil than that. The solution was to remove her presence and all contact with the backing of the law. Basically it breaks down like this, the judge thought it was a compelling enough situation to grant the restraining order. They just don’t hand them out willy-nilly. That should tell you something right there.
You had it right in the previous sentence. Where do you think self-confidence comes from? It’s totally a social thing. You don’t know you did a good job unless someone says ‘good job’. You don’t know you’re a good person unless you are told you are a good person. Now the nucleus for this starts at home, but it can be taken away from you, by force. It may take some longer than others fall, but everybody has their breaking point. If you are told everyday, that you are a worthless piece of shit by a lot of people, eventually it sticks. Throw in some authority figures and you have no chance. I am not speaking from personal experience totally here, I am saying all the self confidence and liking yourself in the world cannot not save you.
I suggest you look at the Stanford Prison experiment. It’s an eye openning and freightening look at human behavior, responses to authority and social status and it’s effect on both parties.
If you can continually ‘like yourself’ and have self respect, when seemingly everybody hates you and treats you like crap, you are some kind of special.
If it seems like everybody likes you somethings wrong. And if it seems nobody dislikes you, you’re probably a pretty ineffective person.
I agree, the parents were either passive and uninvolve, part of the problem, narcissistic and scarcely aware of her existence. There is a slim chance she shut them out her world totally, which is possible as well, but I seriously doubt they were doing what they were supposed to as parents.
She felt helpless and wanted it to end. That I do know. Death is a sure fire way to end it. We’ll never know all the intricacies of her psyche, but yes it can hurt that much that you will do anything to get out of it.
You don’t need to have a brain short circuiting to want to get out of a situation so bad you’re willing to kill yourself to do it. It can be that miserable. I don’t think the articles really did her experience justice.
Ah, when you are in that kind of situation, there isn’t much joy to be had. I slept as much as I could. Stayed away from school as much as I could, but even fun things aren’t fun. She really did need an advocate. That would have helped her the most. It seems she was at the point were no matter what she did, it was a bad decision. Desperate people act desperately and often that is more bad decisions, compounding the problem.
It’s harder for me to imagine as a pretty, young girl, rather than a skinny little dork like I was. It’s one of these situations where I wish I was able to meet her before she took the plunge, because I am pretty sure I could have helped.
Eh, I don’t know why I never pulled the trigger. I was, I suppose, scared enough of death.
I shut everybody out butI suppose I had just enough joy in my life and enough breaks from school to sustain.
Sure there will be outcasts, there will be wierdos and people who act different. I don’t think thats the issue, it’s the overt meanness and the ganging up on helpless people and the egging on of the groupthink scenarios.
Just because you (not you, but in general) are put off by somebody or they appear quirky isn’t a reason to the mean as fuck and get others to jump in and be mean as fuck, day in and day out. It becomes a self feeding animal. The bullies feed off of each other, and the victims evidently make stupid decisions that exacerbate the situation.
There is a lot that goes into to it. One of the issues in my situations is that the authority figures knew it was going on and didn’t care, didn’t do a damn thing. The bullies did that shit right in front of teachers and shit in my case, and there was no discipline, no response, they didn’t want to get involved.
What the victims can do, really depends on how much they are being bullied and by whom. If it’s one kid, take a baseball bat and hit the kid in the kidneys and the problem is solved. If it becomes a group action, well then there’s a lot that needs to be done and the victim is going to need help, they cannot handle it on their own. It isn’t just about the victims taking it, it’s when everybody turns a blind eye, then it gets out of hand.
Like I said, it appears to be way less then in my day. There’s always going to be somebody being bullied and there will always be bullies.
Something that happens now that wasn’t around in my day is awareness and far less tolerance for it. That will make a difference, but in the end, you will always have ‘Amanda’s’ there will always be tragic stories.
[quote]imhungry wrote:
Seems like this is mostly appropriate…[/quote]
Where’d you fine that picture of me!!! LOL
