Bullying: Stop the complaining.

[Timedraven 117]

There's a great quote by Nancy Reagan that goes along the lines of "not letting others affect how you feel". I may not be the smartest tool in the shed, but that idea goes a long way.

Yeah thats unfortunately crap. Being a human being we are shaped by or peers. If everyone called me fat and stupid everyday, what do i become? Fat and more timid seeming making me seem stupid.

My english teacher is blond, in school everyone called her a dumb blond. She is a very smart person, but because of the negative peer pressure she seemed dumb seeming when she was not. What they call us does matter.

 

[Seagoon]

snip.

Snip, snippity, snip

I think the reason so many campaigns support the solutions you just mentioned is because the idea is to lower the amount of bullying, not to just bully the bullies. Sure there will always be bullies in all areas of life, but the reason that thy are so prominent in younger ages is because at some point people grow up and reach a point when they have to ask themselves if being a dick to people because they're different to you is really the nicest thing they can do...

 

[CJ1145]

Its

snip

There is a difference between a mild teasing and bullying. Look calling someone fat is ok as long as its in good fun and you are not doing it repeatedly. If you get called fat every day for 4 years straight your going to be affected as a person. Thats bullying. Thats what the big deal is.

Thanks for the spell check. Appreciate it.

There's a great quote by Nancy Reagan that goes along the lines of "not letting others affect how you feel". I may not be the smartest tool in the shed, but that idea goes a long way.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend, but I need to be frank: that's one of the flat-out dumbest things I've ever heard.

The human mind does not work like that. You cannot just decide not to be affected by things, particularly in the volume that bullying tends to deliver. Whether you want to believe it or not, being told something time and time again will start to have a tangible effect on the way you view yourself. It's quite literally how humans are raised. We take in information that we are told. It's how we learn, and the more we're told something the bigger a presence it is in our minds, and the harder it is to ignore.

 

[SaberXIII]

I defnitely agree that kids should be encouraged towards independence and stand up to bullying, but it's a subject that has to be handled with the utmost care. Depriving kids of any method by which they can enlist assistance would be incredibly counter productive, as some people just can't stand up for themseles - for example the shy or the weak - or they might be in situations in which personal defence isn't possible - such as being without friends and faced with a large group of bullies. Also, I sincerely disagree with the suggestion that bullying should be responded to with a good old smash in the chops. On a moral level this could make the bullied no better than the bully, though this is dependent upon how the relationship between the two parties expands, since it could just escalate matters. Also, part of the mindset of being a bully is the superiority of power or strength. If a person attempts to fight back and loses then the bullying will only intensify in an effort to subdue and crush resistance, but if that person is victorious then they're new position could give way to being a bully of other people, and personally I'd rather be subject to bullies than become one. Unfortunately, in this day and age you don't get the traditional and rather easy to deal with lumbering knucklehead bully who picks on you because he's bigger than you, power is becoming an abstract concept. The ability to bully psychologically and via many different mediums is making bullying harder to track, identify, prove and resolve.

 

[Mau95]

A kid killed himself not too long ago here in Belgium because some kids were bullying him and wanted 10 euros from him. No one seemed to know what was going on. One solution is to at least inform someone about the problem you're having.

 

[Fisher321]

I agree with OP, the only solution is to teach children to stand up for themselves. Maybe this is what is wrong with society nowadays.

Edit: This is a description of a shirt and found it related to the ongoing discussion in the thread

From http://www.rangerup.com/patriotday.html

When you walk around the mall nowadays, you'll find a plethora of peace signs (or nuclear non-proliferation signs). Peace is en vogue again, as war has become decidedly out of fashion. The term "violence doesn't solve anything" is being thrown around by pundits and parents alike.

No one desires peace more than the professional soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman does, and no one knows more than our troops how important it is to engage with and destroy our nation's enemies.

It's become cliche to remind people of 9/11. We're going to go ahead and do it anyway. Many innocent civilians, as well as our brothers and sisters in the NYPD and FDNY lost their lives that day. Our enemies attacked us and killed our people, and no matter how much Americans like to wear four lines inside a circle, they are going to keep coming after us - unless we destroy them first.

This shirt commemorates the attack on our nation with the modern New York skyline with the proud members of the NYPD, FDNY, and US Military reflected in the waterline. But the back does not dwell in the past - the back of the shirt reminds us of what is necessary in the future - of the battle our troops have taken over from the police and fire departments in NY and Washington DC.

Violence isn't always the answer, but sometimes it is the only answer...

 

[Fisher321]

OP, I wanna say I'm one of the few people here apparently who respect your opinion, but posting them here was stupid. Most Escapists WERE those people who wanted to let other people solve their problems for them, and fear taking any form of initiative. The world is violent, and sometimes you have to be violent back.

Wow, I can't believe I found someone I agree with on here. Maybe we should team up sometime?

And yes I agree with you 100%

Holding up 3 lines in a circle isn't going to stop bad people from hurting us. Sometimes violence is the only answer..

 

[ilexuki]

i agree with the OP, kids need to stick up for themselves when faced with bullies. growing up i've had to deal with bullies throughout various stages of my life. telling the teacher pretty much screwed you,

1. everyone now knows you are a tattle tale so hopefully you made friends before you told the teacher, cause now class mates aren't going to want to associate with the tattle tale (this applies even into adulthood)
2. if the bullying wasn't going to beat your ass before, he/she definitely is now, possibly several times.
3. all other bullies at the school now know not only are you a tattle tale, but you are easy prey, so enjoy the next 3-4 years.

when i was younger, if you tried to bully me or any of my friends, i'd jump on your face and punch you in the head to you realize that bullying isn't the right career choice for you, and i did this all the way up to high school.

when i got to high school, things had changed, you couldn't just beat someone's ass, because there was a good chance the person would come the next day with their friends or older brothers and jump you. none of my friends were fighters so i'd pretty much be screwed. i mellowed out and kept a low key, my high school was really big so it was easy to stay under the radar. every now and then someone would try me, but i'd ignore them unless they kept at it or put their hands on me, then i'd roll the dice and risk getting jumped. after the whole columbine and 9/11 incidents people weren't too eager to pick on the quiet kids.

i think the important part is to not stand there and take shit, even if you are going to get beat up for it. nowadays parents,teachers, and the police make a much bigger deal over fighting. if you stand up for yourself, attempt to defend yourself and fail, you still win, the guy that beat you up will get suspended, possibly legal action depending on where you live, and you'll no longer be worth the trouble to pick on.

 

[acturisme]

Every bully is an opportunity for you to learn to take control and hit back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE5BZE2J8DE

 

[guidance]

I don't think there is ever one way to deal with every bully. I've had two people try to bully me in my life, I don't know if they were just bad at bullying and gave up to easily but I got rid of them both without violence. In elementary school a kid tried to beat me up, but as soon as he landed his first hit I turned around, stared at him right in the eyes and said "wow your a dick" and walked away. Never touched me again. In highschool a kid kept trying to screw with me. He would bump into me in the hallway, place stuff in my hair when the teacher wasn't looking, and try to knock my papers off my desk. But everything he did I made it look like it didn't bother me, I would just pick the papers up, shake the stuff out of my hair, and keep walking in the hallway. I would give him a friendly smile in the hallway and when he would specifically target me in dodgeball I would smile and wave. Eventually he just gave up, stopped trying to do anything to me, and that was that.

I am not saying these things would ever work for other people, my situations clearly werent that bad and violence just wasn't needed. But my point that not every bullying situation can be solved by the same manner, sometimes you can tell someone, sometimes you can screw with them, sometimes you just have to hit them back. Unfortunately thats how things are.

 

[ilexuki]

I notice about the Jeremy Wade Delle case, and that someone else posted that great song by Rise Against. The Jeremy Delle case, I think, is a great example of what can happen when a kid is told "stand up for yourself", isn't old enough to understand it in the way it was probably intended, and has already been pushed to an extreme psychological state due to relentless bullying.

Also, Jeremy would be a kickass song even if it didn't have an important message.

Spoiler

Other people have said this better than I have, but I think the fundamentals of it are these: when it comes to the problem of bullying, the responsibility for stopping it does not lie with the victim. If you were bullied and managed to end it by standing up for yourself, then great, but you shouldn't have had to. You shouldn't have been bullied in the first place. When you were bullied, there should have been systems in place to effectively stop it. If there weren't, then that is a problem, and it needs to be addressed.

I think it's fantastic that bullying is a prevalent topic in the media. Not only does it lessen the feeling in bullied kids that their problems are unheard, but there is every chance news stories about bullying raise awareness for kids who bully, make them aware of the consequences of their actions, and perhaps make them reconsider doing so in the future.

fundamentals is...what?no! fundamentals are, before we developed society to keep us safe from other animals and other humans,the world worked like(and still does in many forms and different places)this, if you are weak, you die. if a guy came into your house and stole all your food, you had to get it back, or die waiting for superman to swoop in and teach that mean guy about sharing and the power of friendship, and to convince the guy to give your food back.point is bullying isn't anything new, it's just now,the stakes are low so you don't have to hit someone with a rock until they stop moving for taking your things. you have to decide for yourself whether allowing a guy to punch you in your face everyday just cause he can is ok with you.

so yes, if you are getting bullied it is your responsibility to do something about it, not wait til the teacher notices you keep coming back from recess with your ass kicked. how you go about dealing with it is another thing, but i don't know who you think is supposed to be responsible for making sure you don't get your ass beat, and nobody makes fun of you if not you yourself

 

[dantoddd]

how rampant is bullying. It seems almost everyone at 'the escapist' had been bullied at some point or the other in their lives. I went to school in a very poor part of the world and never experienced or saw bullying. Yes, there was a lot of violence in school, but those were either rivalries or just aggressive disagreements between friends.

 

[Kingpopadopalus]

The only instance that this telling a teacher helped me was when some 8th graders decided it would be fun to choke out a 1st grader, my friend went and got the teacher and then those people left, then again, this was back in California and it was a school with all the grades in one.

After that when I moved to Wisconsin, I was bullied again and I just sucked it up until people learned to respect me when I flipped a kid off the back on the bleachers for it. In my opinion school staff doesn't help when it's kids of the same age, can't emphasize that last part enough. When it's kids of the same age, let them fight it out, if one loses, then it's just inspiration to get more in shape and so that way they can stand up to their bully.

Sometimes I question if it's the new life style we lead that has lead kids to become weaker or if it's the fact that we over protect them and ban all sorts of physical contact in social areas. Fights happen, people get mad, just make sure no one is fatally wounded and it's all good. If it's not on school grounds where there can be moderators, it's gonna be outside of school where things tend to escalate.

 

[Sindaine]

I tried dealing with the problem directly; it got me pushed down a flight of stairs. Fuck off and die in a fire you shitbrained ******.

 

[Doctor_Fruitbat]

A study in the UK found that victims of bullying hid or gave up on their talents because they were targeted for them:

http://djsresearch.co.uk/EducationMarketResearchInsightsAndFindings/article/Children-Hiding-Talents-At-School-To-Avoid-Bullies-01000

It's all very well saying that people should learn to deal with their problems when you're capable of doing so, but those who aren't strong enough to do so are utterly failed by that kind of policy.

And frankly, if you think that people with intelligence and talent should be allowed to be harassed and intimidated into giving up on their strengths and regressing into cowed, miserable nobodies because brainless, pointless morons without a grain of worth to their existence have been allowed to grow up without their unjustified arrogance being stamped out of them, then you are part of the problem.