Poll: Bullies..ahem, why?

[fulano]

Yellow. I'm making this thread because I looked on the search page and I didn't quite find the exact thing I'm looking for, and also, this draws inspiration from another thread though this one is more specifically geared to something else.

As, I'd say, mostly sane (or functional insane) people we've all had a case of being exposed to bullying. I remember I had been bullied up until preparatory school (the equivalent of highschool in Mexico) when I started standing up for myself. But I do remember that my bullies did at least matter enough for me to remember them, and that got me thinking about them when reading a thread in here.

Many of us are adults already, or pretty round minded young folk, and I'm sure we can tackle this thing without resorting to name calling or the likes. I honestly just want to know what the bullies themselves have to say. It, very well, may turn out to be not very rational, but I'm sure many of us NEVER got told an honest why, as farfectched as it might have sounded.

This, being an all around entertainment site, visited by the general internet population seems like a good place to ask a simple question to the bullies or once bullies themselves:

Why did you do it (or still do it)?

I'm only asking for arguments, they don't have to make sense.

Also, there is a general purpose poll to see how the numbers stand on bully/bullied.

 

[Space Spoons]

There are a few reasons.

1. Acceptance. As ashamed as I am to admit this, in my elementary school days, I would occasionally join in on the teasing of one of the members of our class. To this day, I don't know why we chose him to torment... All I knew was that I wanted to be part of the group. It was like having friends, as terrible a justification as that is.

2. Inoculation. It's like the great Johnny Cash once said, "Get tough or die." Some kids bully out of fear of rejection, and so choose to reject the world first by putting on a facade of cruelty.

3. Sadism. Simply put, some kids just like to cause other kids pain. They're the same kids you'll see pulling the wings off flies and growing up to vote Republican.

 

[fulano]

Hmm...so far out of six 5 were bullied and one was a bully.

1. Acceptance. As ashamed as I am to admit this, in my elementary school days, I would occasionally join in on the teasing of one of the members of our class. To this day, I don't know why we chose him to torment... All I knew was that I wanted to be part of the group. It was like having friends, as terrible a justification as that is.

Hmm, I can understand that one. In secondary school, at the last year(third), two of the three bullies that wouldn't leave me be, kind of came around and left me alone, and I remember them being genuinely apologizing at one point. Then they sort of wanted to hang out and stuff(playing basketball and the like), which we did, and I found out they were quine nice kids. I also found out that the situation at their homes wasn't much better than mine(one always thinks that bullies are so fucking privileged).

The other one never did apologize but kind of left me alone. I guess he didn't have anyone to follow suit and it wasn't fun now, and also started being kind of nice to me.

I think part of the reason was that the three bullies kind of had a fallout for whatever, and the last one kind of got stuck with no real friends either, which I thought was weird because he was talkative and popular, and made everyone laugh, yet not one kid walked with him on the way home, and he kind of decided it would be cool to tag along with me, and me being me, I didn't object--also, his home was kind of on the way to mine. He was kind of a nice person, though, but in hindsight he was also a little hypocritical.

EDIT: Now twelve bullied to one bully.

 

[JRslinger]

I think bullying is mostly about the competition for mates. When the bullied person feels inferior he wont compete with the bully for girls. A bully may be perceived by girls as a dominant male and so they are more attracted to him.

In school I was a socially clueless geek and small for my age so not surprisingly I was bullied.

 

[Nimbus]

What about a "none of the above" answer?

 

[pigmonkey]

I physiologically bullied two people in my high school career, the first guy was just because he was a giant dick that went around punching everyone among other things, so pretty much our entire school decided to make his life a living hell for the rest of the year. Eventually his dickishness wore off and he was once again accepted into normal junior high life. The other guy was an ultra conservative, Norse god worshiping, loser who in his first conversation with me said given the chance he would kill every gay person on earth... and he was serious. Needless to say he wasn't very popular and on several occasions me and my friends made him cry. At this point I?d like to point out that these guys were bullied not because they were anti-social but because they were complete assholes to people so I feel it was justified. So i guess my reasons were 80% because I don't take kindly to jerks 10% because it was funny and 10% because I was young and foolish.

 

[Aqualung]

Is there a niether option? I've never been bullied nor do I bully others. I rarely even use the word word 'noob', except to tease my boyfriend. Point being there's always a grey line where some of us stand.

 

[Maze1125]

I believe that 'both' should be an option too.

 

[Arntor]

I've never been truly bullied, just teased but it wasn't that harmful. I also did some teasing as well, but I never meant any harm by it. Basically, we were just dicking around and no one took it seriously.

 

[willard3]

I was always too polite to bully anyone...plus I was the quiet kid who was always reading. If I ever "bullied" someone, I always made sure to let them know it was in good fun...I never did anything mean, and it mostly consisted of me shouting "freshman!" at freshmen I knew when I was a senior.

 

[fulano]

Is there a niether option? I've never been bullied nor do I bully others. I rarely even use the word word 'noob', except to tease my boyfriend. Point being there's always a grey line where some of us stand.

Well, you could just sort of not add to the poll, you know. The poll was there to sort of draw an average by me of how much bullies for bullied there are. If you are neither then I'd say "awesome!," but you can't add to the specific measurement because you are in said gray line... ...then again it would have been better if I had added it because I could have drawn more information that way.

Bummer. I admit it was my bad.

 

[new_age_reject]

I was bullied as a kid, who knows why.
I also took the piss out of this lad every day, it wasn't in a mean way but I guess it is classed as bullying, I feel bad for doing it now but at the time it was just a jokey thing like you would do between mates but a bit OTT.

 

[sky14kemea]

i technically started as a bully, when i was really little we'd pick on this one kid

but when i moved to secondary school, i was bullied by 3 different people at once
and the kid i used to tease in primary ended up becoming one of my best friends

so hopefully the cycle is continuing, and somewhere, those guys are getting bullied by someone...
*wishes really hard*

 

[magicmonkeybars]

I suppose both although more bullied then bully.
why did I tease people because it was fun in the moment because I was caught up in the group feeling being part of the herd so to speak which is why I was bullied in turn.

I never liked being around groups of people to much posing and vying for status.
people picked on me because they wanted me to be like them but I never saw a need or had a desire to be a part of that world.

I know that I could have been part of the group and saved myself the trouble of being bullied but I refuse to conform I don't fit inside a box that lables me something I'm not nor care to be.

In the end I valued the outside staring in rather then following inline with the rest of the sheeple.

I know I had their respect and I knew that they feared me more then any horror they could imagine because when they looked at me they saw what they could never be.

 

[RavingPenguin]

I was bullied until I snapped and went badass on the poor sap who had the nerve to be the final straw that broke the camels back. Looking back I dont feel bad about it, though, I would have liked to beat the real bullies of my childhood.

 

[Kogarian]

I used to be bullied quite often...and this kind of pains me to say it, but then I became the bully. If I see someone who used to bully me, or who acts like a prick and bullys others, I insult them and belittle them infront of their friends and teachers. The teachers don't care as they never gave a shit about us. Their friends might try to come in and 'defend' them, but then I start attacking them. But a good offense is the best defense.

 

[fulano]

Everyone will say bullied as the human mind is programmed not to remember how mean you were to others but how others were mean to you. You never felt the emotional baggage of your words against others.

Shite, now that you mention it, I do remember I once spoke really hurtfully once to this girl in secondary school, I called her "Ballena," which in english translated to "Whale," for no reason other than that I could, and I remember that she quite off handedly threw it in my face that she never bothered me while the other kids did do it, and that I was being mean. And that made me feel like shit, and I half heartedly apologized to her, feeling like a dick and not wanting to be there anymore, and never talked to her ever again.

Her name was was Amalia, and she was overweight. I don't remember her at all except for that one exchange and that particular new feeling (as of then) of being an asshole.

So yeah, you're right. And I'm starting to think that it was dumb of me to put the poll the way I did.

 

[Aardvark]

Some people just need that feeling of power. They're the ones most likely to leave you alone the moment you start fighting back, because you don't make them feel powerful. You cause them pain and that pain rips into their fragile egos like locusts through a fresh corn crop. Sometimes people do it to get a message across. If words fail, repeated application of fist to face is a potent communicator of one's displeasure. Some people do it just because they can. No more complex reason than that.