This is the way.
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I thought about this more and I’ve only ever seen it in movies and film. Like John Wayne or Steven Seagal. I don’t think it is a real life thing in most cases, but it can make for great entertainment.
Bullying as speech therapy.
Confronting bullying by permanently maiming an entire bar, achieving post-humiliation racial harmony.
My dad did the same thing several times. My first real street fight, when I was like 7 years old. An older kid started pushing me & my brothers around, and hit my one older brother in the eye really hard. The 4 of us all jumped on him and it was pretty much a draw.
Dad though, he was pissed about that eye on my brother. He took a butcher knife and had us point to where the kid lived, then beat down their door and dragged the guy out with the knife to his throat and made him and his son apologize.
Another time, my one brother got jumped in down town (pgh.). So, once again, grabs big knife, and my other brothers (now older, late teens) and went to find them. They were hanging out in the same place, doing the same thing, so it was easy to find them and get my brothers hat back, then rob Them for good measure.
Thats better. Cuz I spent all of high school and a large part of my early adulthood specifically targeting bullies by luring them into a fight and annihilating them. Weird psychotic little quirk of mine, but if you beat down the right guy, you basically have free beer for life at the bar you do it at, among other things. 
Anyhoo, you don’t want to run into someone like me when I’m thirsty. 
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I’m into your post.
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It’s like a weird protective mechanism or something. My son- 12 now, has never seen the type of violence or sheer volume of it that I did as a kid. He’s exceptionally intelligent, polite, and well behaved. But man, he has flat out fucked a couple of kids up and in a hurry when they’ve messed with his friends. Even as far back as day care, like 3 years old.
Its like an anti-antagonist gene or something.
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Right. @Dani_Shugart @twojarslave This is why I asked above what exactly is bullying versus torment because I’ve seen this proposal of benevolent bullying before. And as we’ve all observed and heard about, in many cases it causes major problems.
I don’t think we always need to treat each other with kid gloves all the time and males testing other males’ limits is inevitable, and that’s sometimes done to get the most out of one other, in a good way. Personally I could’ve used more of this.
I haven’t experienced much bullying, thankfully, though one experience was actually terrifying. The man apologized 20 years later trough Instagram.
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I had an interesting experience with bullying that made a lifelong impact:
Had two older kids bully me when I was in the 3rd grade. They were a grade above me. Really terrorized me as they’d get me every time we walked to the lunchroom. It was never physical, just threats and cornering and tormenting for no apparent reason.
Well, I told my mom. Later, at a Little League game, I pointed them out. My mom told me to walk up to them and confront them. Threaten to kick their asses. I did it. It didn’t get physical, and they left me alone from that point on.
The lesson is this: A bully of any type will bully you exactly as much as you allow them. Most back down quickly the moment they realize you won’t allow it. And usually, that just takes words.
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I avoided bullying in high school by getting my ass beat in Jr. high. I was maybe 5’3" at the time and confronted a bully who took my shoes and wouldn’t give them back. He was a classic “early bloomer” 13 year-old who was 6’00", 200lbs, with chest hair and a beard. He wouldn’t give them back so I punched him in the gut, then he punched me in the head and knocked me out. We became close friends for the rest of our teenage years.
I didn’t begin lifting weights or training grappling until my mid 30’s, but nobody ever messed with me in school after that. I earned a reputation as a “scrapper” when literally all I did was throw one punch and then get decked. I’m not sure it would work the same way in 2025, with cellphone footage of the whole thing flying around. It is harder to build the mystique of standing up to the biggest kid in class when there’s video footage of you getting owned, and not just word-of-mouth.
Cellphones and the internet certainly opened up whole new frontiers of bullying that weren’t a thing when I was in school.
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Ya know, my college did this. We all had a semester of boxing, semester of wrestling, then 2 semesters of martial arts (which was really just more practice in boxing and wrestling with a hint of BJJ thrown in, and I think one kick that we practiced for like 5 minutes and then never thought about again.)
I don’t really know if it has the effect you’re looking for. It ended up being a lot more of “all the guys who are already tough get together and clobber one another, while everyone who doesn’t want to end up bruised or bleeding pairs off to gently dance with one another”
I had a blast though.
Answering this directly, it’s a flat out no. BUT, the figure he described did actually really remind me of some of my football and wrestling coaches in high school. Two in particular. Both grumpy as hell, definitely screamers, and not above putting hands on a student, though only in a sports way. (I.E. coach demonstrates a double leg takedown that takes you a minute or two to stand up from). And I’ll be honest, I loved these guys. They looked out for us, gave great advice, and pressured us to succeed. Granted I could see how this could get toxic super quickly, but they didn’t.
Though to be fair, they weren’t ONLY grumpy screaming guys. Both were very fair, would often pull a guy aside for a quite conversation, definitely were motivators for success. Didn’t even really punish failure. But they definitely punished laziness, and god help you if you did something that they had moral issues with.
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Ol’ TwoJar putting the BIG in bigot !
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I alluded to this in my previous post. I actually thought of coaching while I wrote it. Men are going to sometimes act like assholes when trying to get the best out of others.
Right. The point of bullying is sadism. Hence why it’s done to weaker people or those with lack of manpower, no crew or gang willing to hit back. It is not done to someone as scary as Mike Tyson, even if he were in a fat phase, because the bully might wind up dead.
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I think this speaks to the importance of rapport-building. Take any group of guys who have known each other for a long time, throw in some form of shared suffering, and the stuff that comes out of their mouth would require trauma therapy if it were said to a random fourth grade teacher in Maine.
Of course, this can cross over into nasty territory, too. Several high schools in my area have been involved in hazing scandals where the stuff being done wasn’t at all “tough love”, “constructive criticism”, or even a good natured racist/religious/ethnic joke among friends.
No matter what the situation, being able to absolutely wreck most bullies with words or physicality is the only real antidote. Then there are the times where you just have to shut up and take it, like when you value your job or an opportunity enough to put up with mistreatment.
Advocating for systemic bullying directly wont go over well, but I understand the point being made.
Instead of asking for more bullying, maybe enable kids to stick up for themselves again. Bullies still exist, kids are just pussies about handling it now.
Coming from the “snitches get stitches”, latchkey generation with a totally analogue childhood where streetlights coming on was the sign to go home, I also see the “see something, say something” trope as weak. It hasn’t eliminated bullying, but shifted response to taking on a victim role and tattling. Even adults used to say things like “nobody likes a tattletale, go figure it out” and we did. Granted fighting was a 15 minute detention and forced handshake, where it’s a prison sentence and admittance to a terrorist list now.
Maybe remove fighting from terror lists.
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Yeah. The hysterical responses to Every little thing now are ridiculous.
says the guy who’s dad hunted people down with a butchers knife
I know. I realize the irony.
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